Probably the most notable changes are to seyDoggy.com. It’s no longer a portfolio site for past work since we don’t actually do client work anymore. It’s now just a calling card, if you will, or a hub I guess.

Also, the seyDoggy blog has been moved over to this blog. All of the original posts have been maintained so all the posts on RapidWeaver tips, AppleScripting, browser hacking, etc, are still available.

And last but not least, I’ve brought the Merrifield Photography blog over here as well. There are some pretty old stuff in there that I didn’t want to let die.

So there we are… my web-life is a little tidier, a little cleaner, a lot simpler. Now I just need to give the layout here a little tender loving care.

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The most notable change is the width. I’ve all but given up on narrow sites — I’m over the skinny… and the scroll. The second most notable change is the boxes. Each new article shows up in a box — small, compact, easy to get through in a hurry.

Ok, I lied… the MOST notable change is that the site is just plain sexy now! Don’t you think?

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If you know where the add-ons are kept (~/Library/Application Support/RapidWeaver/) then you might be able to determine a plugin or themes version number with the Finder, or if you have RapidWeaver open you can find out a plugin’s version by opening the plugin browser, or if you show a themes package contents and…

Well, I like to have these sorts of things at my fingertips and do as little thinking as possible, so I wrote an AppleScript to gather this information for me no matter where I am or what I am doing*:

-- file types to choose from
set rwTypeArray to {"Theme", "Plugin"}

-- choose from those file types
set rwTypeLong to {choose from list rwTypeArray ¬
    with prompt "Which RapidWeaver product type ¬
        you like to find the version of?" ¬
    with title "Theme or Plugin"} as string

-- logic from result
if rwTypeLong is "Theme" then
    set rwType to "rwtheme"
else
    set rwType to "rwplugin"
end if

-- get name of hard drive
tell application "System Events"
    set diskName to (get name of startup disk) as string
end tell

-- get name of user
set userName to (do shell script "whoami") as string

-- select file from RW directory
tell application "Finder"
    set rwFile to (choose file with prompt ¬
        "Please select your RapidWeaver " & rwTypeLong & ":" ¬
        default location (diskName & ":Users:" & userName & ¬
            ":Library:Application Support:RapidWeaver" as alias) ¬
        of type rwType without invisibles)

    -- read version number
    tell application "System Events"
        set rwInfo to (get version of the file (rwFile as string))
    end tell

    -- and display it
    if rwInfo = "" then
        display dialog ¬
            "It seems that your " & rwTypeLong & ¬
                " doesn't have a version number that I can read. ¬
                Sorry.\n\n¬
                Would you like me to reveal it's ¬
                package contents for you?" ¬
            buttons {"Cancel", "Yes"} default button (2)
        set rwPath to rwFile & "Contents" as text
        open rwPath
    else
        display dialog "The version information:\n\n" & rwInfo & ¬
            "\n\n ...has been copied to your clipboard." ¬
        buttons {"OK"} default button (1)
        -- copy to clipboard
        set the clipboard to rwInfo

    end if
end tell

Notes

* If a theme is to have it’s version number read, it must have an Info.plist in it’s package contents. Some theme developers do not include this file. For those that don’t, the script will reveal the theme’s package contents so that you can inspect the version number at the bottom of the Theme.plist file

Download

Get your fresh copy of RapidWeaver_Addons_version.scpt from CodeCollector.net

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I enjoy solving process streamlining needs on my own with AppleScript and I am not one to keep good things to myself so here are just 3 little scripts I would like to share. You might have a use for them and they might just make your day easier.

Toggle apps on or off

If you’re like me you might have one or two apps that do all that you need them to just by turning them on or off. So why leave them running in the background all the time? Two apps that I can think of in my list are Nocturne and Isolator. I use them from time to time but not often enough to keep them in the menu bar permanently. Activating their features requires me to select their icon from the menu bar and selecting the option that toggles their behavior on or off. Or if you just leave their behavior toggled on then quit and restart the app, it has the exact same effect. Quitting the app turns the feature off (obviously) and starting the app turns the feature on…

Sounds like a job for AppleScript:

-- replace "YourAppName" with your app
set yourApp to "YourAppName"

-- leave the rest to us
if appIsRunning(yourApp) then
    tell application yourApp to quit
else
    tell application yourApp to activate
end if

on appIsRunning(appName)
    tell application "System Events" to ¬
        (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning

By changing the name of “YourAppName” to the app you want to toggle on or off and then setting yourself a keyboard shortcut for the script, you can then activate the app and it’s only desired feature with a stroke of the keys.

Download

Get your fresh copy of “On-Off_AppToggle” from CodeCollector.net

Simple Web Search

Do you remember when a query to a search engine was a simple string that looked like http://www.google.com/search?q=this%20or%20that? Now-a-days search strings tend to include all sorts of information like the source of the search, encoding, language, client, OS… and ends up like and unreadable bunch of garbage like this http://www.google.com/search?source=qsb-mac&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&q=this%20or%20that&client=qsb-mac&ie=UTF-8. I for one don’t need every one of my queries to be counted so I wrote a simple script to pose that basic string once again. For your own purposes you can change the search engine and browser to suit your needs.

set userQuery to text returned of ¬
    (display dialog "Google search:" ¬
        default answer "" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} ¬
        default button 2)

set httpArray to ¬
    {"http://", "www.", ".com", ".ca", ".net", ".org", ".info", ".us"}

set httpBool to false
repeat with httpAny in httpArray
    if userQuery contains httpAny then
        set httpBool to true
        exit repeat
    end if
end repeat

if httpBool then
    tell application "Safari" to open location userQuery
else
    tell application "Safari" to open location ¬
        "http://www.google.com/search?q=" & userQuery
end if
tell application "Safari" to activate

When you launch this script you just enter your search query and press return.

Edits

r4 10-29-09 09:43 – It would be handy if you could use this script to open known urls to, so I’ve edited the script to do so in a basic manner. It’s not perfect yet as I need to write some regular expressions to really detect proper TLDs and such. But it will do for now. So, perform a query and Safari will open that query in as a Google search. Or, enter a URL and Safari will directly open that website.

Download

Get your fresh copy of “Google_Search” from CodeCollector.net

Launch apps by task

My days, weeks and even months can often be broken into many different tasks. I wear a lot of hats as a small business owner. One day I might be providing support for the RapidWeaver themes I make and the next day I will be knee deep in code making the latest greatest product. One minute I am social networking and the next I am designing something shiny.

Each of these tasks involves a unique set of apps to be open which can make changing gears a time consuming — if not confusing — process.

To address this I wrote a script that launches (or quits) a particular set of apps based on the task I need to do. For example:

• If I am busy with support, I want to launch:
  • Mailplane
  • Safari
  • TextMate
• If I am networking I will use:
  • Safari
  • Adium
  • LimeChat
  • Mailplane
  • TweetDeck
• If I am designing I want:
  • DigitalColor Meter
  • LittleSnapper
  • Photoshop
• Or if I am developing a new theme:
  • RapidWeaver
  • Safari
  • TextMate
  • MAMP

And so on… As mentioned, I can use the script to either launch these sets of apps or quit them and I can do so with a single keyboard-shortcut. This saves a lot of time and helps keep the clutter to a minimum. You can fill in your own task sets and your own apps to suit.

-- define the sorts of tasks you wish to activate multiple apps for
set taskArray to {"Surfing", "Media", "Designing"}

set taskName to ¬
    {choose from list taskArray with prompt ¬
        "Pick your process:"} ¬
            as string
set toDoArray to {"Launch apps", "Quit apps"}
set toDoResult to ¬
    {choose from list toDoArray with prompt ¬
        "Would you like to launch or quit these applications?"} ¬
            as string


if taskName is equal to "Surfing" then

    -- define the apps you would like to open/close
    set appArray to ¬
        {"Safari", "LittleSnapper", "Mail"}

    runTrue(appArray,toDoResult)
else if taskName is "Media" then

    -- define the apps you would like to open/close
    set appArray to ¬
        {"iTunes", "Last.fm", "DVD Player"}

    runTrue(appArray,toDoResult)
else if taskName is "Designing" then

    -- define the apps you would like to open/close
    set appArray to ¬
        {"Adobe Photoshop CS3", "DigitalColor Meter", "LittleSnapper"}

    runTrue(appArray,toDoResult)
else
    display dialog ¬
        "Something is wrong! Please check your array values."
end if

-- runTrue function
on runTrue(appArray,toDoResult)
    repeat with appName in appArray
        if toDoResult is "Launch apps" then
            tell application appName to activate
        else if toDoResult is "Quit apps" then
            tell application appName to quit
        else
            display dialog "Houston, we have a problem!"
        end if
    end repeat
end runTrue

Download

Get your fresh copy of “LaunchTaskApps” from CodeCollector.net

Go play

I hope you can make use of these scripts in your own daily workflow. I know I would be lost without them. Do have any scripts of your own you want to share? Feel free to comment and let me know.

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I loath the mouse and if I can avoid ever using it I will go to great lengths to make sure my hands stay firmly atop my keyboard. Perhaps you’re the same way, so for kicks I turned Realmac Software’s bookmarklet into an executable AppleScript that I can assign a hot-key to.

What’s a bookmarklet?

First you have to understand what a bookmarklet does. A bookmarklet is nothing more then a bit of javascript (in many cases) that when clicked performs a basic task. It’s like a mini application… like an applet… in fact, it is an applet, hence the name “bookmark”-”let”. In the case of the LittleSnapper bookmarklet, clicking the bookmark (or URL) tells your browser (in javascript) to change the URL in the address bar from http://example.com to littlesnapper://snap/http://example.com. You’re just adding littlesnapper://snap/ to the front of any URL! You can actually do this yourself, provided you have LittleSnapper. Try going your favorite website, click the address field, type littlesnapper://snap/ in front of the URL and hit return… ta-da!

Make one-click easier?

So let’s go back to actually using the bookmarklet… you have to click on it and that’s no fun. It’s time to turn it into AppleScript!

The bookmarklet, if you look at it in your bookmarks folder, looks like this:

javascript:location.href='littlesnapper://snap/'+location.href;

The quick and dirty way to turn this into an executable AppleScript would be to use Safari’s built in do JavaScript method, like this:

tell application "Safari"
    do JavaScript "location.href='littlesnapper://snap/'\n
    +location.href;" in document 1
end tell

But that would leave you pretty much locked into using the script with Safari when using hot-keys, while clicking the bookmarklet will work in any browser. So do JavaScript is too limiting.

Since we only need to pass in the string littlesnapper://snap/ before the URL, why not just write a method that does that:

tell application "Safari"
    set currentURL to URL of front document
    open location "littlesnapper://snap/" & currentURL
end tell

This works, but if you want to apply it to all other browsers — Opera, Camino, Firefox, etc — you have a lot of work ahead of you as you discover the various degrees of scriptability each app has. To grab the URL in some of these apps you have to jump through hoops:

• in safari it’s URL of front document
• for Firefox «class curl» of window 1 will sometimes work
• Camino is URL of browser window 1 and so on…

Some apps need to use System Events to access them, others don’t. And then try and tell each one that you want to open location, again with or without System Events… it turns into argument soup very quickly.

A good rule of thumb when trying to script anything is to simplify the number of tasks you assign to any given process. In this case, for each browser I am trying to do two things; get the current URL and then open a new, modified URL.

LittleSnapper is a browser too!

Then it got me thinking — LittleSnapper uses webkit as it’s rendering engine and therefor it should share a lot of the same scripting dictionary that Safari uses. So I thought I would test something out; I attempted to open location "littlesnapper://snap... with LittleSnapper itself:

set currentURL to "http://www.google.ca"
tell application "LittleSnapper"
    open location "littlesnapper://snap/" & currentURL
end tell

Viola! Without opening a “browser”, I just snapped a web shot of Google.ca, right in LittleSnapper. This now cuts the workload of running unique scripts for each browser in half since I can now tell LittleSnapper to open the URL… once I have it.

Scripting a common thread

So now to get the URL from the browser — any browser — without making a code spaghetti like this mess:

if application "Firefox"is running then
    tell application "Firefox"
        set currentURL to «class curl» of window 1
    end tell
else if application "Safari"is running then
    tell application "Safari"
        set currentURL to URL of front document
    end tell
else if application "Opera"is running then
    tell application "Opera"
        set props to GetWindowInfo of window 1
        set currentURL to item 1 of props
    end tell
else if application "Camino"is running then
    tell application "Camino"
        set currentURL to URL of window 1
    end tell
end if

There has to be a better way… and there is. Here comes System Events to the rescue with a couple of keystroke executions like so:

tell application "System Events"
    -- highlight address field with ⌘L
    keystroke "l" using {command down}

    -- copy to clipboard with ⌘C
    keystroke "c" using {command down}
end tell

This will allow us to access any browser the same way, with global hot-keys as executed by AppleScript.

Now we just need to talk to those browsers to find out which one is in use. We can do this with an if statement, like this:

if application "Safari" is running then
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke "l" using {command down}
        keystroke "c" using {command down}
    end tell
end if

But with four or more browsers this would be a bit much.

The full deal

So let’s make an array out of our favorite browsers, run that array through a loop, mash in our System Event keystrokes, and finish it all off with a variable passed into LittleSnapper and this is what we get:

-- let's define our array
set appArray to {"Safari", "Firefox", "Opera", "Camino"}

-- then run that array through a loop
repeat with appName in appArray
    if application appName is running then
        tell application appName to activate
        tell application "System Events"
            keystroke "l" using {command down}
            keystroke "c" using {command down}
        end tell
        delay 0.5

        -- make a variable from the clipboard
        set currentURL to the clipboard
    end if
end repeat

-- pass that variable in to LittleSnapper
tell application "LittleSnapper"
    activate
    open location "littlesnapper://snap/" & currentURL
end tell

Is this overkill to get a hot-key combo that does what a bookmarklet does in one click? Depends on who you ask I guess. I think it’s a pretty good solution in fact. Now instead of copying a bookmarklet to the toolbar of every browser I use, I have a script that I can assign a global hot-key to (via FastScripts or some such tool) and use it across any browser I set in my array.

Yes, I am that much of a geek.

Download

Get it fresh from CodeCollector.net

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I first came to FastScripts when a blogger (who and for what blog I cannot remember) mentioned that it might help solve a problem I was having, issuing a hot-key combination to an AppleScript I wrote* to open a selected item (RapidWeaver theme package, project, php file, whatever…) in TextMate from my favorite file browser, Path Finder. You see this sort of thing used to be dead easy in QuickSilver (triggers, we used to call them), you enable proxy’s, grab the item, do what you want with it. But in my long struggle to ween myself off QuickSilver and all that it made it mighty, if not temper-mental, I found myself needing to script the things that QuickSilver took for granted. I actually enjoy this hands on dig through what makes Apple tick though.

So it was then that I discovered the magic of FastScripts and what it brought to the AppleScripting platform. It did what I needed, allowed me to assign an application specific hot-key combo to my Open-in-TextMate script. But it does more then the AppleScript menu ever allowed. It makes more sense, completely accessible with hot-keys and keyboard navigation, both global and application-specific shortcuts can be defined… It runs scripts fast and effectively, ties in exceedingly well with any app I’ve used it for, runs AppleScript, Perl, Automator workflows, etc… It just makes a lot of sense to me.

I might be a little script happy these days, but for as many hot-key combo’s as I can remember, I will gladly write AppleScripts for to help automate my day. Like this one for mounting and un-mounting hard disks when needed; instead of opening up DiskUtility and selecting a disk to mount or writing a few commands Terminal.app, I simply use a hot-key shortcut to run this script:

set diskname to "MyDisk"
        do shell script "diskutil mount `diskutil list | awk '/ " & diskname & " / {print $NF}'`"

* In the end I just ended up using Allan Craig’s Open-in-TextMate script as there was little point in reinventing the wheel… and his worked better.

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I don’t know whether I started seyDoggy in any traditional sense or not, but it seems my answers didn’t completely satisfy most people who asked. The process seemed too safe perhaps, or too long. I’m not really sure. But the common thread I could see each time I was asked, which seemed to be what they were really getting at was, “How long did it take you to become successful?”

So for weeks now I have been thinking about both questions and how, or if they are even related. I’ve decided the two do not belong on the same line of sight. Since I am no authority on the right or wrong way to start a business (I’ve really only started one and it seems I did it right), then I will address the other question here, “How long did it take you to become successful?”

First, let’s define success as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. I think that’s where many young people are getting it wrong today. They think success is getting rich. If that is your aim then I suppose getting rich would accomplish that but that’s not what success is to me.

For me, my professional successes as they pertain to this company, have come in stages. For starters, I wanted to start a serious company that would some day be my sole source of income. I wanted to be able to make as much, if not more then I was at the day job. I called it my 5 year plan.

That was in the summer of 2005. By September of 2005, seyDoggy was a registered company and by November of 2006 I was no longer on anyones payroll. The 5 year plan was truncated to a little over 1 year… that was a success to me.

But I had more aims that evolved as the company grew. I wanted to make a living doing what I wanted to do, not what clients wanted me to do. I wanted to have a product based company, not a service based company. This was my next 5 year plan. Within the next two years, however, I was able to realize that goal as well. I was able to limit or eliminate all client based contracts, consulting contracts and service contracts and focus solely on the RapidWeaver theme distribution devision of seyDoggy. Again, for me, that was another success.

And how about the bigger picture? That all encompassing notion of success? That question, “Are you successful?”

That depends on what you consider successful I suppose. I am able to fulfill the needs of the family, pay the mortgage and the bills, pay my taxes, pay my contractors/employees, entertain and buy the little extras. We, as a family, don’t want for anything. But those are just the financial gains, a measure of which I have little use for. What’s more important to me, and perhaps what you could aim for as a measure of your own success, are the financial freedoms that I have earned with my company.

Here are my top 10 measures of my own success:

1. I attend my daughters school assemblies in the middle of the afternoon.
2. I take my children to their doctors appointments.
3. I take the Fridays off that my wife doesn’t work.
4. I take a few weeks worth of holidays and still make money.
5. I go for an hour walk every morning and I am never late for work.
6. I can take lunch at 10 am, 12 pm or 2 pm (or take lunch at 10 am and 12 pm and 2 pm).
7. I can take a sick day and not call in.
8. I stay home with the kids when they get sick.
9. I can take 20 minutes out of the day to play a video game and call it professional development.
10. I haven’t worked a weekend in over 3 years.

But do I stop here? Absolutely not. I want to be able to travel more, work less and hire more people. I keep making new goals, new levels of success to achieve and I have no intention of ever stopping. And maybe that is how I should have answered the first question, “How did you start your own company?”

I kept redefining my own measure of success. I kept setting higher goals and greater aims. I kept myself honest and my company genuine. I had a focal point for the company and at the end of the day, if I was happy with what I was doing then I was successful.

How about you? What do you consider to be success?

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We’re absolutely thrilled to see RapidWeaver take the honours in a large group test, and to keep people weaving even more rapidly, we’re also releasing RapidWeaver 4.2.3 today – an update that we strongly encourage all RapidWeaver 4.2.2 users to download. This update fixes a number of issues, including linking to blog posts and assets, as well as significant improvements in memory usage when saving files.

This is the exact sort of thing that allows us to be full time RapidWeaver theme developers. It’s the care and attention that Realmac Software puts into it’s products, not only making them look good but addressing the needs of their users and continually pushing to make the product better all the time.

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Ryan and I have worked closely together in the past. He’s created some tutorial movies for us and we have both been active in cross promoting each others services. Ryan is an absolute wizard when it comes to RapidWeaver usage and his students say his approach is kind, patient and always measured. So when Ryan asked if I could create a custom theme for his new site, I jumped at the opportunity.

Ryan knew exactly what he wanted and being the expert in RapidWeaver that he is, I knew he would have no trouble expressing his needs. We had a working draft in about a days time and we were able to nail down the final version in very little time.

Now that I have seen the final result, I can see why Ryan’s students sing his praises. He is truly a consummate professional in RapidWeaver circles.

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Stacks from YourHead Software is one of those tools that made RapidWeaver more complete then we ever knew it needed to be. What makes Stacks so amazing is that it is what ever it needs to be to whoever needs it. So far it’s been a power layout tool of endless shapes and sizes, an ExtraContent device, and RSS scraper, a Twitter badge, a media player… and now, thanks to Joe Workman, a CMS.

A Content Management System (CMS) allows clients to edit their content after their web design/development staff has published the site. So far there have been only a handful of attempts to bring CMS to the RapidWeaver platform; WebYep and PlusKit’s @gdoc(()) implementation. The former requires site licensing and the latter rely’s on Google ever changing Google Docs API.

Now there is a CushyCMS(free) implementation built into a Stacks Library item (or Stacks plugin) available from Joe Workman. By simple dragging a CushyCMS stack onto your stacks page, anything you drop into that CushyCMS stack will be editable on the client side.

Brilliant!

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