Sams Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Being a part time (semi-pro) programmer (C, C++, Perl, PHP) for many years I finally decided to get started with AppleScript in order to make maintaining my Macs a bit easier and faster, plus writing scripts using AppleScript Studio.

At first it seemed that this was the right book to get off the ground, but in fact it turned out to be a waste of time and money. Lots of pages to wade through and no suitable examples to get a first impression and a start with AppleScript.

When starting with a new programming language I personally learn best by first learning a few necessary essentials and then building up knowledge and experience by writing programs, programs, programs. This book contains lots of talk about how wonderful AppleScript is (and it really is!), but thats pretty much all. More examples and short scripts with a not too steep learning curve and less blah-blah would have been great.

Finally found what I was looking for on the Internet, for free! Check out web sites like macscripter.net and save your money for a better book.

Rating:
Summary: Not really better than nothing
Review: Fortunately I read enough of this in the bookstore to hang onto my money and find something else. Lightweight and uninformative.

Rating:
Summary: Bettr than nothing, I suppose...
Review: I bought "SAMS Teach Yourself AppleScript in 24 Hours" because it was the only book on AppleScript in the computer bookstore I went to and I needed to learn something about AppleScript fast. What I found was a book long on explanations and short on useful examples. Particulary irritating were the skimpy sections on using AppleScript to run applications covered were the ones that come in the OS X package. FileMaker, In Design, Word, Photoshop, Internet Explorer, were all given short shrift; while other important applications weren't covered at all. The useful information in this book could have been covered in a quarter of the space and the reader would have been able to understand it better.

The only thing good I can say about this book is that it is better than "AppleScript in a Nutshell." I haven't looked at AppleScript 1 2 3 yet, but I would advise the beginner to look at that before anything else. "AppleScripting InDesign" and "AppleScripting Quark," both by Shirley Hopkins give the sort of examples this one so sorely lacks.

You can get a lot of good information and examples of AppleScript by browsing the web.

Rating:
Summary: Truly a waste of money
Review: I needed to get a quick reference to AppleScript and this was the only book available in the bookstore. This book fails on so many levels, many of which have already been outlined here. However, there are two important points I want to reiterate:

* If you don't already know a language, this book's coverage of AppleScript is too cursory to be useful. You can't learn basic scripting from this book.

* If you already know a language, this book's coverage of AppleScript is too cursory to be useful. Except for a brief AppleScript studio project, the examples rarely get past the complexity of "hello world". Get the language ref from Apple's web site and don't miss the AppleScript Guidebook of Essential Subroutines as examples to get you started.

Rating:
Summary: poorly written
Review: If poorly written documentation missing critical steps leading to hours of frustration whilst debugging the author's error-filled code is your 'bag', then by all means, buy this book.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth it
Review: Not to simply repeat the other reviews here, but...

This book lacks a few important "strategies" of a good programming training book. Namely a hands-on step by step project. There is no consistent application for the knowledge that you can build on as you progess into more sophisticated features. I kept turning pages expecting to come upon the solid code examples, and there were none. Granted, the AppleScript Studio instruction does mean there will be less hard code to show, but I did not feel confident with my foundations of applescript by the time i got to that section.

The text seemed to be way to much stating things I already knew or could easily figure out, without explaining broader concepts (or demonstrating them through subsequent examples) There is useful info here, but a lot of fluff; could have been edited way down. I normally like having a bound hardcopy instruction book (especially with example code) rather than getting info online, but that is usually the only benefit in my mind. This book doesn't supply that, so why bother?

Rating:
Summary: Try Soghoian first
Review: Soghoian's AppleScript 123 is more logically laid out and more complete.

Rating:
Summary: A book with poor topic coverage, well written
Review: The market for books on AppleScript cannot be a large one, since there never seem to be many volumes in it; usually only one at a time is up to date and worth the money. Now that O'Reilly's AppleScript In A Nutshell is showing its age (and wasn't that great in the first place), and Danny Goodman's book is even older, I was pleased to hear that this volume had come along.

Teach Yourself Applescript in 24 Hours (TYA) from Sams Publishing is more up to date: it covers Applescript under OS X and the use of AppleScript Studio to build GUI applications using the language. That's its strength. The book's first weakness, though, is that it starts too far down the learning curve in my opinion. The first few chapters of TYA could be read by someone almost totally new to the Macintosh -- they cover such basics as running the scripts installed with the OS and getting new scripts from Apple and installing them. At the same time, they introduce basic AppleScript programming terminology not really required for these sorts of tasks such as suites, classes and commands. This material would have best waited a few chapters. It is not really until 'Hour 6', most of the way through the first part of the book, that it really sorts itself out and gets down to really teaching you AppleScript.

The Basics

The book is divided into four parts: 'Getting Started With AppleScript,' which covers using scripts and basic programming concepts; 'Writing Scripts With Script Editor,' which takes you through using the Script Editor, details AppleScript syntax and how to script the Finder and various applications and using AppleScript Dictionaries; 'Working With AppleScript Studio,' which covers building AppleScript-based GUI applications using Project Builder and Interface Builder all the way through to complex applications that can store and retrieve documents; and a final section 'Advanced Scripting,' which covers Script Objects, scripting across a network (including SOAP and XML-RPC), and integrating scripts with the terminal and cron.

Each section is then divided up into chapters designed to be worked through in less than an hour ,with a small number of short exercises at the end. I found that most chapters took me about half an hour before I reached the exercises, which then took ten to fifteen minutes.

As you can see, almost everything you could ask for is touched on in this book. Once over the introductory chapters, I found the book to be well laid out, well structured and well written. I particularly liked Part III on AppleScript Studio; it started easily and worked up to quite an advanced little application explaining everything well along the way.

The Bad

There are some things missing, however. Debugging is hardly mentioned (3/4 of one lesson), and debugging is not exactly trivial in AppleScript. I also found no mention of my pet demon with AppleScript; its incredibly strong typing and problems with having data in the wrong type; this is a classic problem with files and file names. In reality, this book teaches you the language without really getting down to teach you how to program in the language. A fine distinction, I know, but after just reading Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules, I found TYA to be light on real examples and real world code. Even the best section, the one on AppleScript Studio, didn't touch on many things you will need to know.

Sams have a page devoted to the book at the Sams web site. It has the table of contents and a sample chapter and some of the code from the book. The sample chapter is the third chapter 'Running The Scripts You Already Have' and really doesn't give you a good feel for how the book teaches you AppleScript programming. The page to download the code examples says "All the code developed for the book in one convenient download," but in fact all you get are the AppleScript Studio projects and source from four of the chapters. Oh, and the introduction says "There are even a few goodies on the web site that aren't in the book" -- they sure must be good as I couldn't find them.

In conclusion, I think this book starts too far down the learning curve and leaves off too early, with not enough detail. It seems a shame, what we have here is well laid out and well written, I wanted it to be better after I had finished. This book might suit someone absolutely new to the Mac who wanted to learn enough AppleScript to perform a few basic operations, for everyone else it'll be better to go for AppleScript 1-2-3 will from Peachpit or AppleScript: The Definitive Guide from O'Reilly.

Rating:
Summary: clunky intro to Applescript
Review: While I found information in the book somewhat helpful, the tutorials are incomplete and confusingly presented. I'm especially referring to "hour 14," where the tutorial is missing key elements and isn't particularly adept at explaining what bits of code go where. There aren't many books about AppleScript Studio, but I would pass on this one and wait for Sal Sogoyans "AppleScript 1-2-3." Sal's public presentations are much clearer and I expect his book will reflect his excellent communication skills and mastery of Applescript.

Rating:
Summary: clunky intro to Applescript
Review: While I found information in the book somewhat helpful, the tutorials are incomplete and confusingly presented. I'm especially referring to "hour 14," where the tutorial is missing key elements and isn't particularly adept at explaining what bits of code go where. There aren't many books about AppleScript Studio, but I would pass on this one and wait for Sal Sogoyans "AppleScript 1-2-3." Sal's public presentations are much clearer and I expect his book will reflect his excellent communication skills and mastery of Applescript.