October 29th, 1998

Think 'Review Sections' In The Beginning Under-The-Hood Improvements Think Different, My Dear Watson Scripting On Steroids| Keeping Up Appearances The Best Of The Rest Mac OS 8.5: GO FOR IT! By Michael Lambert Part III: Scripting On Steroids Like much of the rest of OS 8.5's underpinnings, AppleScript has finally been rewritten entirely in PowerPC-native code, so you can expect major performance increases (up to five times faster according to Apple). We didn't see earth-shaking increases in our casual use, but our scripting needs are pretty tame when it comes to pushing the Mac's processor. Beyond that, AppleScript supports scripting of even more aspects of the Mac OS (including ColorSync, improved network and printing configuration, and even Sherlock searches). Brand new in OS 8.5 are Folder Actions, which allow you to attach a script that will automatically run when the status of a folder (or its contents) changes. In our testing,this has proved quite useful -- in one case, we attached Folder Action scripts to documents in a shared work-in-progress folder on a server. When a document in that folder is opened, the script pops the Get Info dialog box, listing the last author's name, along with the date and time that document last changed in the Comments box. Folder Actions make AppleScript even more useful than before.   Continue to Part IV: Keeping Up With Appearances Back To The Mac Observer for more Mac news!