UI Actions
Features
For detailed instructions and more information, launch UI Actions Setup and choose Help > UI Actions Setup Help. In addition, review the contents of UI Actions Folder 1.1 on the downloadable disk image for a tutorial, example scripts and UI Actions, and extensive documentation.
UI Actions and "universal attachability"
UI Actions brings "universal attachability" to AppleScript, greatly enhancing your control over applications running on your computer. Attach a UI Action script to any standard native Mac OS X application, and UI Actions automatically runs the script whenever you perform specified user actions in the target application. You write the script, and you select the user action that triggers it, including any of the following:
- choosing a menu item
- choosing a tab
- changing the value of a text field, radio button, or checkbox
- clicking a button that changes a value in the user interface
- selecting a user interface element
- scrolling a view
- opening a sheet or drawer
- opening, moving, or resizing a window
- bringing a window to the front or minimizing it to the Dock
- activating, deactivating, showing, or hiding an application
UI Actions is a scriptable faceless background application, offering AppleScript commands to attach and detach UI Action scripts, to enable and disable them, and to get a reference to the affected UI element for use in your UI Action scripts.
UI Actions Setup works with UI Actions. It provides a convenient graphical user interface to attach UI Action scripts to applications and to manage all of your UI Action scripts.
When you attach a script, UI Actions starts monitoring the target application for notifications that are issued by all native Mac OS X applications written to Apple's specifications. When UI Actions detects activity, it runs the attached script automatically. You select the user action that triggers the script from a list of notifications, such as opening a window or choosing a menu item, and you apply an optional filter that limits the response to a specific kind of UI element or a UI element with a specific title.
You can write UI Action scripts to do almost anything in response to a user's activity in the target application. UI Action scripts use standard AppleScript commands and AppleScript commands recognized by the target application, as well as AppleScript commands added by Apple's GUI Scripting technology. Every UI Action script receives a reference to the UI element that triggered it, and it can use this reference to fine-tune its control of the target application.
You can attach a UI Action script to a target application and specify its trigger and filter by using the included UI Actions Setup application. You can also automate the process by running a setup script that uses the UI Actions 'attach UI action script' command.
UI Actions is similar to Apple's Folder Actions and Digital Hub Actions scripting additions, because it lets you respond and control what happens when a user does something with the computer. But it is universal, because UI Action scripts can respond to almost anything a user does in almost any application.
This page was first published by PFiddlesoft on July 31, 2010.
Copyright © 2003-2010 Bill Cheeseman. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.
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