We’ve just released an update to Script Bay which contains a number of significant improvements and innovations.
If you have Script Bay installed, you should be automatically prompted to update. You can either update automatically, or download the installer, and update using Extension Manager.
If you are new to Script Bay, please read this post for full installation instructions.
There were a few usability improvements (the version notes have the details), but the most significant improvement to Script Bay is AppleScript support. There is now a toggle on the bottom of the script editor which allows you to switch between Javascript/ExtendScript and AppleScript/Visual Basic. On Windows, Visual Basic currently only works in InDesign and InCopy. On Macintosh, AppleScript works in InDesign, InCopy, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, and Fireworks.
The support of AppleScript in Flash and Fireworks is rather interesting. Flash and Fireworks do not have built-in support for AppleScript, and Script Bay does nothing to change this. Rather, being able to run AppleScripts from within the Script Bay panel allows you to control external applications. Script Bay’s ability to “chain run” scripts means you can execute a Javascript and on completion automatically run an AppleScript. This could be useful for something like emailing the resulting files.
One point worth noting regarding AppleScript support in all the applications besides InDesign is that the scripts are run asynchronously. This means that your application should be freed up as soon as the script is run (as long as the application’s DOM is not being used). On the other hand, if you “chain run” scripts, the second script might execute before the first one finishes. We’d love to hear what you think about this. Good? Bad?
If you are a Windows user you probably are thinking “what about Visual Basic support?”. Visual Basic is a bit harder to implement than AppleScript, so we implemented AppleScript support first. We hope to add Visual Basic support for the next release.
