Use it like,

if ApplicationIsRunning("Mail") then
	display dialog "Don't forget to write mom!"
end if

On Mac OS X 10.5, this worked for me even when the application-file’s name was changed. On 10.4 I do not expect that it would still work if someone renamed the application, unless you used the creator type to locate the process, not the name.

You might also be interested in how to get the name of the frontmost application, here’s how:

tell application "System Events" to set FrontAppName to name of first process where frontmost is true
if FrontAppName is "DVD Player" then
	display dialog "Get to work!"
end if

I’ve known for some time that dark text on a white background is most readable. But it until recently it was just “book learnin”. I’m young, my eyes are healthy, and I can read both color schemes just fine. I didn’t have proof I could see.

But I have trouble sleeping sometimes. A few days ago I had an “accident” with a 2L bottle of Mountain Dew and a late-night dinner of salty pizza. Look, the details of blame aren’t important here, the point is I didn’t get to sleep that night. Now, when you are very tired, it’s harder to focus your eyes — and having to focus them on a computer screen doesn’t help. About 3 in the afternoon it got downright painful to read trendy looking webpages with midnight backgrounds and petite white text. Remembering the color theory behind contrast, I gave Command-Option-Control-8 a shot, and holy shit, it worked! My screen looked like an adventure in black-lighting gone horribly wrong. But I could focus on those webpage’s text more clearly. Degraded vision from eye-fatigue gave me proof that I could see.

Now please don’t take this as anything but a biased anecdote. Trust the science, not me! But it was a neat (and painful) experience. I can see why Command-Option-Control-8 is there now. Give it a try sometime, and see if it helps for you. The most you have to lose is impressing any shoulder surfers with your computer wizardry. (Honestly though Command-Plus — make text bigger — will probably do more to enhance readability.)

Just in case you want to inver the screen programatically, this Apple Script will do the job:
tell application "System Events" to tell application processes to key code 28 using {command down, option down, control down}


tell application "iChat"
   set status message to "testing"
   set status to away
end tell


You might expect to have the away message “testing”. But what you get is an empty away message. That’s because set status destroys your status message. It behaves as if you had selected “Away”, “Available”, etc. as your status from iChat’s status menu.

If you want to set a custom away message, call set status first, so it won’t over-write your message.


tell application "iChat"
   set status to away
   set status message to "testing"
end tell


Filled as radar://6505882, but Apple considers it expected behavior.

When run quine.applescript will make Script Editor create a new window containing the source code. It’s particularly meta if you use Script Editor (the default application) to run the quine, because it’s not just printing itself, it’s writing itself in the IDE!

Fortunately, the problems I’d originally had with Script Editor and the quine seem to have been fixed.

EDITED TO ADD: Here’s the quine’s source, but you really should download it to run it, because wordpress has a habit of subtly mucking with copied code…

set d to "on string_from_ASCII_numbers(x)
	set s to ASCII character of item 1 of x
	repeat with i from 2 to number of items in x
		set s to s & (ASCII character of item i of x)
	end repeat
end string_from_ASCII_numbers
set set_d_to to {115, 101, 116, 32, 100, 32, 116, 111, 32}
set scriptEditor to {83, 99, 114, 105, 112, 116, 32, 69, 100, 105, 116, 111, 114}
set quine to string_from_ASCII_numbers(set_d_to) & quote & d & quote & return & d
tell application string_from_ASCII_numbers(scriptEditor) to make new document with properties {contents:quine}"
on string_from_ASCII_numbers(x)
	set s to ASCII character of item 1 of x
	repeat with i from 2 to number of items in x
		set s to s & (ASCII character of item i of x)
	end repeat
end string_from_ASCII_numbers
set set_d_to to {115, 101, 116, 32, 100, 32, 116, 111, 32}
set scriptEditor to {83, 99, 114, 105, 112, 116, 32, 69, 100, 105, 116, 111, 114}
set quine to string_from_ASCII_numbers(set_d_to) & quote & d & quote & return & d
tell application string_from_ASCII_numbers(scriptEditor) to make new document with properties {contents:quine}

I think this “like English but not quite” aspect of AppleScript is the Uncanny Valley of programming languages. Because AppleScript looks like English it is easy to fall into the trap of believing it has the flexibility of English. When that mental model fails its more unsettling than when you screw up the syntax in a regular programming language because your mental model isn’t making unwarranted assumptions.

– Mark Reid