long time, no post, but i noticed that Apple's revamped the AppleScript section of their site: it now includes links to the latest news about the venerable newbie-friendly scripting technology built into the Mac OS.

and what's the latest news, you ask? Apple has released previews of a completely new Script Editor application for Mac OS X, and new System Events technology that allows AppleScript to control the GUI (again, only on Mac OS X). As they say, this gives scripters the ability to manipulate apps that don't directly support AppleScript:

Scripters have often requested the ability to control, via AppleScript, applications which either do not have AppleScript support or are only partially scriptable. The December 2002 Developer Tools release contains a beta version of the System Events application with support for controlling the GUI (Graphic User Interface) of applications with scripts.