AppleScript: Finder commands

Great tutorials for a beginner! Had my mac for nearly 2 years but never opened applescript until now or even known what it does for that matter. I like what you're doing here with starting at the basics. Thanks

Where can I find a list of all the available voices for the 'say' command?

This is all fine and well, but I still don't get it. I can click on a bookmark in my browser and get to this site faster than opening AS and typing in tell application "Finder" to open location "http://www.tuaw.com". What use is it? Can I save this script somewhere and run it with one click at a later date without opening AS and running it? Am I missing something about AS? Give me something useful to do with it or something that saves time. Seems like a lot of watsed time to create & run a script for something I can do with a few mouse clicks a lot faster.

Thanks a lot!!! I have wanted to learn Applescript for a while now, this is a great place to do so!!!

The whole 'tell application "Finder" to' stuff is completely unnecessary for most of these commands, as they are provided by the Standard Additions.

You can use 'open location' without a tell block to open the URL in the default handler for that URL's protocol (http in Safari, mailto in Mail, vnc in Screen Sharing, etc).

The 'say' command will work the same whether enclosed in a tell block or not.

Putting 'display dialog' in a tell block will cause the dialog to be layered as if it belonged to the target app, so it can sometimes be useful. If you're running your script from Script Editor and the Finder has become frontmost in the course of running the script, using 'display dialog' without targeting Finder will cause the dialog to "belong" to Script Editor, making its icon bounce and requiring you to switch back to it to dismiss the dialog and continue the script.

Restart, sleep, and shut down actually belong to the Finder, so the tell block is actually required there. However, if you're distributing your script to others, it might be better to use the System Events app instead -- it also implements those commands, and it is always present even for users who might have disabled the Finder.

BTW, the 'say' and 'display dialog' commands are part of Standard Additions--not the Finder. So, one can drop tell "Finder" portion to simplify this in the editor:

say "Hello, my name is Macintosh." using "Bruce"

display dialog "Hello, there."

whats the difference between the normal "display dialog" command and telling finder to do it?

Great stuff this. I've known about the Dictionary in Script Editor for quite some time what puzzles me though is if there's any resource for all the other "system wide" commands? Things like delay or shut down etc. I once heard that the last official documentation on AppleScript is from when Mac OS 8 was current. Which would suggest there are no great resources out there.

Thanks for this series. AppleScript was one of the things I had been hoping to learn when I switched to Mac, and these tutorials are a great help. Keep them coming!

me too, this was very fun, i always wanted to be able to write up apple scripts, and i currently only have one that i use, even though i didn't make it. make the next lesson soon, because i can't wait to learn...i wish school was this fun.