Chapter 22. Application Switcher Extension

Rest your gaze upon the upper right hand corner of the Mac screen and you find the subtle but handy Application menu. It displays the icons and names of the programs that are currently running, including the Finder. By simply selecting this portion of your screen and dragging the mouse, you can tear off the menu and convert it to a floating palette. This small window is called the Application Switcher, shown in Figure 22-1. You can also cycle through the running apps by using the keyboard combination Command-Tab or a different combination that can be controlled with AppleScript.

Figure 22-1. Application Switcher palette

With AppleScript, you set the size, orientation (vertical or horizontal), and position of the floating palette by altering the properties of Application Switcher’s window class. You can also recreate the keyboard combination you use to cycle through the open programs and the order in which the programs are displayed in the palette (e.g., ordered by when they were launched). The following description of commands and classes applies to Application Switcher Version 1.0, which is installed with Mac OS 9.