What Can I Do With OneClick?

You can do anything with OneClick!

Okay, probably not anything, but just about. Because OneClick has such a powerful scripting language, clever programmers have made OneClick palettes that do incredibly powerful things. At its simplest, you can use the standard OneClick palettes (see OneClick's Standard Palettes for more) and add or override applications shortcut keys with your own. For example, Photoshop does not have a shortcut key for my scanner plug-in, but with OneClick I created a button that simply brings up my scanner dialog (from the "Acquire" menu) when I pressed Control-S. In some programs I don't like the default keys so I use OneClick to change them.

More complex actions require scripting -- but you don't even have to know how to script to use them. Hundreds of people just like yourself have worked hard to create palettes and buttons that you can use for free -- it's the OneClick way!

Here are a few things people have done with OneClick:

• HTML tool palettes for BBEdit
• icon rearranger for the Finder
• audio CD controller palette
• file type/creator changer for the Finder
• file renamer for the Finder
• EMailer Tools (commercial product)
• text processing palettes
• turn SimpleText into a full-fledged word processor (with style sheets!)
• a virus checker
• Tic Tac Toe and other games
• a URL bookmark utility
• calendars
• time-tracking ultilities
• handy shortcut palettes for dozens and dozens of applications

(You can find most of these, free for downloading, at the WestCode Software website.)

OneClick is a program that once you begin to use it, you'll soon begin to think of all sorts of things you can do with it. Soon you'll never understand how you lived without it. I'll give you some examples.

The other day I copied some text from a web page to e-mail to someone. However, when I pasted the text into my e-mail software, it came through with no space between the paragraphs, making it very hard to read. I quickly created a new OneClick button (on my e-mail software's palette) and put in the following script:

Variable oldClip, newClip, theWord, i


oldClip = Clipboard
newClip = ""
ListDelimiter = Return
For i = 1 To (ListCount oldClip)
	newClip = newClip & (ListItems oldClip i, i) & Return & Return
End For 
Clipboard = newClip
Beep 

I copied most of it from another script, so there was very little I needed to change. This script simply takes the contents of the clipboard and counts through each paragraph one by one. I just added two returns at the end of each paragraph instead of one. To use it in my e-mail software I just click on the button. Almost immediately there's a beep (the last instruction of the script) and I know my clipboard text has been reformatted! With a blank line between each paragraph, it's now much easier to read.

The above script is quite simple for me, but I've been programming OneClick for a while. But you'd be surprised how easy OneClick makes doing things. Read the Don't Be Shy! section for some examples of how easy OneClick is to program.

The best thing about OneClick for me is its convenience and power. It's always there, always available, helping me solve repetitive tasks. When I'm in an application and doing something over and over and I find myself thinking, "There's got to be an easier way," I think of OneClick and usually I can quickly write a button that will save me tons of time and tedium.

Sometimes its easy to think that the effort of writing a script is more than finishing an ugly job by hand -- but keep in mind that once you've created a OneClick solution, it's always there for you. You can also reuse scripts, like I did above. I'd already created a script that indented the clipboard text for me by inserting some spaces before each line:

Variable oldClip, newClip, theWord, i


oldClip = Clipboard
newClip = ""
ListDelimiter = Return
For i = 1 To (ListCount oldClip)
	theWord = ListItems oldClip, i, i
	theWord = "    " & theWord
	newClip = newClip & Return & theWord
End For 
Clipboard = newClip
Beep 

Compare this script to the other one: there are very few changes. That not only made writing the second script easy, but it reduced the chances of my making a mistake and having to figure out what I did wrong.

I encourage you to use your imagination and think carefully as you work with your computer. What are you doing that's boring and repetitive? Do you have tasks that you do often? If you had OneClick automate those actions for you, just think of the time you'd save!

The power of OneClick is that you control it. You may not buy enough copies of XPress to have Quark write you a customized version just for you -- but with OneClick you can have it.