AppleScript: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition

Reduction

Even when a task doesn't involve repetition and calculation, it may involve many steps. If you can get AppleScript to perform many or all of those steps, you reduce the number of steps you have to perform. This can make for a noticeable improvement in your relationship with your computer, even if you perform this task fairly infrequently. Another advantage of reduction is that you no longer have to remember a sequence of steps; your AppleScript program remembers it for you.

Here's an example involving URLs. Often, working in some application, I see a URL that I'd like to "go to" in the approprate manner. If it's an http URL, my default browser should open and fetch that page. If it's an email address, my email program should create a new message to that addressee. In some applications you can just click a URL and the right thing happens, but many applications provide no such facility, so I have to resolve the URL manually. This means I must look at the URL and decide on the appropriate helper program; then I select and copy the URL; then I somehow start up the helper program; finally, I paste the URL into the appropriate location. In a browser, I must hit Return afterwards, in order to go to that URL; in an email program, I must create a new message first, in order to have something to paste into. This doesn't sound like very many steps, but it's all very annoying, especially in comparison to those applications where the right thing just happens with a single click.

The ...