Beginning AppleScript®

Chapter 14. Introducing AppleScript Studio

So far throughout this book, you've developed programs that have a simple user interface. You relied on the trustworthy display dialog command to display a message or to get input from the user. As useful as this command is, however, it is very limited in its capabilities. For example, this command only allows one field for data input and cannot display multiple fields of output. In fact, I showed you how to build a list and use the choose from list command to display multiple lines of output in a not-so-straightforward manner.

Certainly, other programs you use on the Mac are friendlier than AppleScript. In fact, the Mac's reputation is based on its user-friendly dialogs and ease of use. It would be great if AppleScript could somehow tap into that paradigm and support interfaces that provide for multiple inputs and outputs and perhaps even show tabular data, images, and so on.

You are lucky; this is where AppleScript Studio comes to the rescue! Not only does AppleScript Studio provide the tools for developing sophisticated graphical user interfaces (GUIs), but it also provides a powerful environment for program development, consisting of editing and debugging tools and convenient access to online documentation.

To do it justice, a sophisticated tool like AppleScript Studio requires a book at least as long as this one. Therefore, this chapter can provide only an introduction. But I offer sufficient coverage here to give you a solid understanding ...