Hey Krister, thanks for your note.
No, the Automator is specifically designed for non-programmers and
is completely accessible with VO from my exp so far. Of course, there
are others here who have had more exp with it so they may want to
contribute as well.
it's actually quite simple to get started. the concept you're
working with, with the Automator is that you're simply creating a
workflow, which is simply a list of connected actions. The Automator
window shows this workflow as an area with which you can interact with
VO to see / edit your list of actions.
so there are essentially four main areas you'll be working with for
the most part. These are the workflow, the actions library, the
actions table and the description area.
As I said, the workflow displays just that, the list of actions
which make up your workflow.
• the actions library shows the applications on your system that have
automator actions associated with them, which means that Automator can
access them and use them in a workflow.
• the actions table shows the actions themselves, that are available
for the given application.
• and lastly, the description area is just that. It's an interactive
html area that describes the action you've selected in more detail
than just it's name.
So basically the process goes something like this:
• select an application from the actions library.
• select an action from the actions table.
• Add that action to your workflow by double clicking it / pressing
return on it.
• Interact with your workflow and edit that action's parameters if
you'd like.
• Rinse and repeat! lol!
Once you have a workflow that you'd like, you can test it by
running the workflow in automator in various ways.
I hope this gets you started, and if I've missed anything you were
curious about, please do let me know. <smile> I may write an article
about this for Lioncourt.com and at the moment, I don't believe there
are any podcasts on it, but that's a possibility too.
Have a terrific weekend and hope this helps!…
Smiles,
Cara :)
On May 17, 2008, at 3:45 AM, Krister Ekstrom wrote:
Hey i just wondered if the Automator is hard to use for a non-
programmer and if there is any podcast or something to read
somewhere about Automator from a blind persons viewpoint, so that i
could perhaps start discovering this tool?
Thanks for any answers.
/Krister
16 maj 2008 kl. 20.35 skrev Cara Quinn:
Hey All, Happy Friday to you!… :)
I just thought I'd send this along as a nice lil tidbit about
Automator. These tips may have been chatted about before, so
forgive the rehash if that's the case, K? :)
Anyway, I often have the need to resize photos quickly to attach to
emails or such, and I've recently discovered that one can do it in
Preview, but only with Automator actions. I.E. If you select the
Scale Images action; as you add it to your workflow, you'll be
asked if you would like to add a Finder option to save a copy of
the file or resize the original file. So once you choose your
options, including the size you'd like the images scaled to, you
can then save the workflow as a Finder plugin. So then when you
select any images in Finder, and ctrl click them, you will find the
option to resize them. It's amazingly cool and easy. they will be
resized, and placed in a folder you set in your workflow.
I used to use the Image Resizer Powertoy on WinXP so this is a
terrific option which is way more customizable and tres cool!…
The second thing I'd found while working with Scaling Images was
another Preview option to simply convert a pdf file to text or
rtf. So, you simply add the 'Extract PDF Text' action to your
workflow and save it as a Finder plugin. then, when you simply
ctrl click a pdf file, you'll get the option to save it as the file
type you selected in your workflow. The action has a choice for
the folder you'd like to have the file saved in, however, for
myself, I'm finding it a bit finicky as it seems to want to keep
saving to my desktop but we'll see what happens. Even if that's
the case, it's still way cool!
Anyway, I just thought I'd share these in case they hadn't been
discussed before. Hope they help.
Have a terrific day!…
Smiles,
Cara :)
---
View my Online Portfolio at:
http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn
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View my Online Portfolio at:
http://www.onemodelplace.com/CaraQuinn
