Beginning AppleScript

Rating:
Summary: Finally a book about AppleScript
Review: Finally a book about AppleScript that's not just for professionals. This book is for all Mac users that want to have some fun and learn how to write AppleScript programs. Kochan uses tons of examples and shows how to do some fun things, like write a guessing game, or write a program that says "Good morning" (or whatever is appropriate for the time of day). His iLife chapter shows how to write iTunes programs, and how to do things like make a photo album or DVD from a folder full of photos. This book rocks!

- A Mac Hobbyist

Rating:
Summary: Good, up-to-date starting point
Review: Frankly the pickings for Applescript books is pretty slim. To have a new book on the subject is a welcome surprise. I would have preferred that the book had more exposition in relation to the amount of code, but that's a small gripe with what is otherwise a well written book. The basics are covered from the syntax of the language and the tools, to file management and logging. Then the author discusses scripting the common iLife applications. This is where I appreciated the up-to-date information as the other book on Applescript from O'Reilly is badly in need of an update.

I would have preferred some additional information on Applescript Studio, as this is an exciting new development for Applescript. But that is also a minor grip.

A must buy for those interested in a starting point for scripting their OS X box.

Rating:
Summary: It's About Time, and It's a Good Book
Review: It's interesting to see just how powerful AppleScript has become. Initially scripting languages were not well suited for general purpose programming because they lacked too many features and/or were too inefficient. Both of these constraints have gone away. Computers are so powerful, the inefficiency doesn't matter. And the languages have gotten enough features that in many cases AppleScript works just fine as a solution to a general programming problem.

It's about time for this book. Up until now the information about AppleScript has been thin. Now this tutorial has been published to explain the use of the language. I like Mr. Kochan's writing style. He starts off having you write a program. If you type it the way he says, the program has a bug in it. (Kind of like my programs.) That way, about the first thing you see is how AppleScript reports an error. With that out of the way, you can move on to learning the language.

It's quite a comprehensive book, talking about things like classes of variables, there's quite a bit on string manipulation. Of course all the usual things like logic, loops, files and so on. He saves the description of AppleScript Studio until the end of the book, that way you learn more about the language itself and are ready when Studio comes in to help make the task so much easier.