Rating: 

I originally started looking on the web for an applescript book a week ago and came across several unfavorable reviews for this book. However when I went to my bookstore they only had this and one other title in stock so I decided to look into them. After spending an hour scanning through both books, I thought this to be the superior manual based on its TOC, general appearance, and how the information and examples contained within were presented. Let me tell you that appearances are deceiving.

Contrary to what I originally thought, I found this book to be of minimal educational value. I just spent 8 hours a day for the last 5 days reading through this manual and trying its examples and am now on page 281 of it's 311 pages. At best I can say that I have a better understanding of what applescript can do but my ability to program anything worthwhile is going to require something much more meaty.

Sure this book has shown me how to make some dinky scripts to handle tasks I will never or rarely use. However it has barely taught me a thing about how to actually use applescript in a constructive way to produce scripts of real value. I have attempted several times now to understand & construct small scripts using previously unused dictionary functions for various applications and find myself frequently lost and confused. Referring back to this manual gives me little help in understanding how to construct and use the classes and commands correctly.

Furthermore, the information presented in this manual is meant to be read sequentially. Examples of previously unused commands are often presented in example scripts dealing with another topic. If you need to refer to examples of such commands later on you'll have to remember where you saw them. Another thing I found lacking was the absence of "tests" to challenge your understanding of the topic at hand.

On the other hand, this book is fairly easy to read and somewhat entertaining. I admit that some of it's scripts will be useful and it has given me an understanding of what applescript is capable of. Unfortunately I am going to have to purchase a more informative manual if I hope to have any ability at construct decent scripts to handle multiple applications.

I regret to say that overall I found this manual to be sorely lacking.