Chapter 1, Quick Start

(or, how to avoid the rest of the User's Guide)

To install Player, double-click on the Installer file and follow the prompts. For details, see Chapter 3, Installation.

To write a script with Player, first determine the step-by-step procedure for performing the desired task manually from the user interface. Then, translate each step into the equivalent Player verb and enter into a Frontier script window. For example:

The manual procedure:

1. launch SimpleText and bring it to the front
2. from the "File" menu, choose "Page Setup"
3. from the "Page Size" pop-up menu, choose "US Legal"
4. accept the dialog (e.g. using the enter key)

The script:

SimpleText.bringToFront()     « requires a SimpleText "glue table" (included)
with Player
   chooseMenu("File", "Page Setup")
   choosePopup("Page Size", "US Legal")
   acceptDialog()

Important!

• Please review the many example scripts that are included with Player. Each was designed to demonstrate one or more verbs or key ideas.
• For help composing a script, select PreFab Player from the Suites menu. The resulting Player menu is documented in Chapter 4.
• This manual assumes you are familiar with Frontier. If not, please review the Frontier documentation first. For additional sources of information, see http://www.scriptweb.org/.

Notes

• To get information about specific dialog items, switch to the target application and call up the dialog of interest. Type control-option-? to display Player's special balloon help. When you move the mouse over a dialog item, the balloon will show the item name (if any), type, unique ID# and XY location. To have Player automatically compose the appropriate verb for that type of item, simply click the mouse. The verb will be entered into the frontmost script window. To turn the balloons back off, type control-option-? again. For details, see Balloon Help in Chapter 4, Composing Scripts.
• Some dialog items (e.g. icons) do not have names. These items can be targeted by the unique ID# displayed by Player's balloon help. Other items are invisible to Player, so the balloon will only show XY coordinates. Scripts that depend on XY location are less readable but still quite robust, since Player uses the location relative to the dialog (not to the entire screen). For details, see Appendix 1, Questions & Answers.
  .
• If your application lacks a glue table (an install file), you can either create one or directly call Frontier's low-level verbs (e.g. launch.application(appID), sys.bringAppToFront(appID)). For details, see Appendix 3, Advanced Topics.

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