You’ve probably all read this by now: http://macosxautomation.com/lion/applescript.html. Building Cocoa-based apps without having to resort to Xcode is pretty exciting, IMO, especially given that Xcode 4 is the only official version usable in Lion.
But if you want to build Cocoa-based apps without upgrading to Lion, or you are upgrading but you want more flexibility than AppleScript Editor in Lion offers, AppleScriptObjC Explorer 2 has just been released. You can read about it and download it here: http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/apps/explorer.html
AppleScriptObjC Explorer 2’s main advantage is its logging, but it has a raft of other features that make it easy to use.
And it’s not confined to use for building apps: it is an ideal place to test code snippets and handlers that you’re using in Xcode projects.
It’s free to try for 30 days, and requires 10.6 or later.
Shane where is the bug report?
I need to force quit the application quite often when shutting down the machine.
Please email me the details. But has the app actually crashed?
it’s quit possible for a Cocoa error to stop a script progressing without generating an error. It’s one of the things that makes debugging a challenge at times.
When that happens in AppleScriptObjC Explorer, the script will behave as if it is still running; most of the toolbar items will be dimmed, the spinner at the bottom-right will keep spinning, and you may not be able to quit. This can usually be fixed by choosing Script → Abort, or by just clicking on the spinner.
If that’s the case, then it’s working as expected. If it really has crashed, please email me full details. By its nature, this app has some fragility – your code becomes part of the app – but that shouldn’t happen.
FYI, version 2.3 is now available. See the Web page for details…