Archive for the 'Programming' Category

UI Browser 4

Sunday, October 30th, 2022

Recently, Mac automation legend Bill Cheeseman retired, and left his highly regarded UI Browser, a utility for interrogating the Mac’s accessibility and GUI scripting facilities, in the hands of Mark Alldritt, who develops Script Debugger. The app is no longer for sale but remains available to download as a free trial, and as a fully […]

App Movement Monitoring

Thursday, September 5th, 2019

I’ve been helping out when I can with the NetNewsWire open source project. Recently, Brent shared one of only a couple crash reports he’s received, in which the only plausible explanation would be if the app’s own internal files had failed to load. I recognized the likely cause of the problem immediately, because … After […]

Yosemite’s Automation Improvements

Wednesday, October 29th, 2014

Ray Robertson of Automated Workflows offers a good rundown of the automation changes Apple provides in OS X Yosemite and their iWork suite of apps. When you look at the mass of changes, including enhancements to AppleScript, Automator, and the addition of an all new JavaScript dialect for application scripting, it reads like a pretty […]

Yosemite’s Speakable Scripts

Friday, October 17th, 2014

One of the cool new features in OS X Yosemite is a major expansion of the system’s dictation features. Not only has the dictation become more accurate and reliable (probably by leveraging the work that goes into Siri on iOS), but there are new integration points that facilitate really interesting workflows. I developed FastScripts many […]