Chapter 1. Ways to Use AppleScript

If you've never used AppleScript before, you probably have two questions at the outset. You might like to know: "What is AppleScript?" And you also might like to know: "And why should I care, anyway?" This chapter gives general answers to both questions, by focusing on the question: "What is AppleScript for?" The chapter classifies the main kinds of use for AppleScript, and provides some examples showing AppleScript being put to these various kinds of use.

The purpose of this chapter is as much motivational as informative. By demonstrating AppleScript in action, in some typical real-life contexts, I hope to get you thinking by extension about ways in which you might now or in the future want to use AppleScript in your own life. If you can mentally formulate some appropriate tasks you actually want to perform with AppleScript, you'll have more reason to learn it, and you'll learn it more easily and more enjoyably.