Smile

Smile has been around for a while. I can't believe it is 2016 and I have become even more a fan of it now, mostly because of it being such a useful R(apid) A(pplication) D(development) tool. More on that in a bit. There are a few drawbacks: 1) The developers (Satimage, France) spent a lot of energy –in the early days – on getting the word out and getting the documentation built, but it seems they kind of ran out of steam, probably because of the lack of demand in a niche market. So getting help can be frustrating. At this point they suggest plugging into their users list, but that can be frustrating, too, by my experience. 2) JXA (Javascript for Automation, a relatively new OSX addition) is not supported; you'll need to jump over to Script Editor for that. 3) Though updated semi-regularly, the updates at this point are not major. Unless Satimage gets a shot of inspiration, ambition or capital, Smile pretty much is what it is, I think. All that being said, for most script-writing, Smile is wonderfully clean and feature-rich. The Satimage Scripting Addition included makes the app worth the download, arguably, and the application itself is incredibly script-able (not record-able) and attachable. You can even hack the app if you're really adventurous, because much of its innards are AppleScript-built. And if you do look through those innards, it is a wealth of teaching material. About the R.A.D. capability: You can build superbly functional (and complex) interfaces to use with Smile and save them as dialog files. Each of these becomes like a plugin for the app. Using the dialog creator, I've created, to help assist in my work (or for fun): an ffmpeg-based video transcoding tool, which does everything I want and need to post updates of video pieces (in any format) I'm working on for clients and employers; automated scanning software for scanning (for example) hand-drawn animation; the best animated GIF creator I've ever used; a UI for changing various properties of individual "notes" (mark-up highlights, textual notes, boxes, lines, etc.) of a pdf document in Skim (another great free app); and others. There was a time when doing rapid AppleScript UI development meant using something called “FaceSpan”. The way FS worked made it ideal for making user interfaces at an unparalleled pace. FaceSpan is gone, and the only thing close to the level of speed and ease in creating AS-based UIs is Smile and its dialogs. I hope Satimage can keep the Smile script editor going. I find it a great resource. And it’s free.

App mostly works well, but can't get support by email: i.e., neither of the email addresses on the developer's "Contact us" webpage works (i.e., support@satimage.fr and contact@satimage.fr). Release notes are not up-to-date.

Macupdate admins, Smile is now at ver. 3.8.0(build 840) at the developer's website: http://www.satimage.fr/software/downloads/Smile840.pkg. Requires OS X 10.6. There are no release notes. Confusingly, the pkg installer's Readme identifies it as ver. 3.7, though after installation Finder's Get Info reports 3.8.0 (build 840)

Smile 3.8 is there: http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/downloads/index.html Runs well for me on Mavericks!

When I launch Smile it also launches Skype. If I delete Skype, Smile opens a file selection dialog on launch asking where to find Skype. Why is this happening? I'm not using any scripts to launch Smile and there's nothing in Smile's preferences that refers to Skype.

The release notes for version 3.7.0 build 361 state: "Smile 3.7.0 is for Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6.x) and higher. Release notes for Smile 3.7.0 build 761 SmileLab interface bug fixed in the Javascript bridge. SmileLab now works on Mac OS 10.8" I cannot get it to do anything but bomb on OS X 10.8.5. I also note that it's still 32-bit. Here are a few lines of the crash report: "Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS) Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000000" Meanwhile, a clean install of older version 3.6.1 still runs on 10.8.5, albeit with complaints and bugs. IOW: Version 3.7.0 is not ready for prime time from my consistent experience. I hope this version's problems are sorted out as I'd like to see Smile continue on OS X. I have not tested this version of Smile on earlier versions of OS X. I'd appreciate other people testing this version on OS X 10.8.5 to verify my results.

It's great to see that development of Smile continues!

quite cewl; but i'd really like something like a "mode" where everyone can get back to a "real" smalltalk-72/74/76 OS of the good old xerox alto again which insipred macromedia's "director lingo" or keyquencer's "keyquencer macro language" so definitely.

And the new XMLLib.osax, who use the Libxml2 library is is simple and realy usefull.

A great piece of engineering... Groovy!