Open Special Folders provides simple access to many of the special folders defined by OS X, including a few of the otherwise hidden folders such as etc and var. The installer creates simple AppleScripts, separated into domains as shown below.
Check out this page for a full list of the folders available.
Just double-click the "Install Special Folders" application to install the scripts in the Scripts folder of your user folder. They will be available for immediate use from the ScriptMenu.
The scripts cannot be installed manually because the installer creates them. Feel free to check out what the installer does by opening it in your favourite script editor. If you don't trust the installer then I guess you'd best not use it.
Select the menu item corresponding to the folder you wish to open and click to run the script. If you are running OS 10.3 or later, you will get the option of creating the folder if it doesn't already exist. Otherwise, the folder will just open in a new Finder window.
The scripts cannot generally create folders in the System Domain because root privileges are required to do this. They will return error number -5000 if an attempt is made. There also appears to be a bug either in the OS or the Standard Additions osax that makes it impossible to create a folder with the same script twice in one session. The scripts return error number -43 under these conditions under OS 10.3.3. Logging out or restarting fixes this problem.
Feel free to delete items (scripts) for which you have no need. This will make the menus shorter & easier to read at a glance. If you change your mind, just run the installer again and it will replace the missing ones.
Open Special Folders requires OS 10.1 or later and the ScriptMenu, which is part of the standard installation of OS 10.2 and later. It should work on any machine capable of running X, though it has only been tested under 10.2.6 & 10.3.3. on a G4 MDD.
If you don't have the ScriptMenu installed already, you will find it in the AppleScript folder of your Applications folder. Just double-click to run it.
Open Special Folders is kiteWare. Please read the licence before using the software.
Download Open Special Folders (147k)
The Open Special Folders Installer is distributed in editable form, which means it can be opened, viewed and edited in any AppleScript editor. The scripts it creates are also editable.
It uses the path to command to open all the folders and contains many of the available four character codes that can be used with it. It also demonstrates a method I devised for overcoming a long standing bug in the store script command which causes scripts created with it to be about the same size as the script that created them - usually far larger than they should be.
The package also contains a run-only copy of my standard library - baseLib - and its documentation. Feel free to use baseLib in your own projects.
The FooDoo Lounge is Copyright © Richard Morton 2002-2005
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|| created: 10-Nov-03, 11:35 AM; updated: 5-Sep-04, 1:20 AM
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