Automator to change Exposé and Dashboard settings?

Question

Hello,
I play a couple of games that only run properly under Classic. Difficulties can arise when running games in classic as I have exposé set to use hot corners. Things can end up a bit messy! In my real life when I'm working in OS X, I really depend on these hot corner settings.
It's a bit of a drag manually changing these preferences back and forth just to play a game. I'd like to write an Automator action that can change these settings back and forth. Is such a thing possible?
I don't know where to start - any ideas?

Answer 1

Easybourne,
Here's a question to start the ball rolling.
Do you regularly run the games at the same time as you work on other tasks?
If not, then maybe the easiest thing to do is set up another user account on your machine in which you only run the games and can turn off the hot corners. You can always turn on the fast switcher option to switch between accounts.
If you do, then it can probably be accomplished using either AppleScript System Events GUI control or through modifying the preferences file.
Here is an example of an AppleScript that could be added to an Automator workflow through a "Run AppleScript" action. This script must be copied into Automator from the Script Editor and completely replace the text in the "Run AppleScript" action and not just the (* Your script goes here *) text. You must also make sure that the "Enable access for assistive devices" option is turned on in the Universal Access panel of System Preferences.
This example just sets the corners to the first four items on the pop up button. I can adjust if you tell me what you need. I can also set this up to toggle between those settings and off if you wish.
click here to open this script in your editor<pre style="font-family: 'Monaco', 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; overflow:auto; color: #222; background: #DDD; padding: 0.2em; font-size: 10px; width:400px">property theCornerOptions : {"All Windows", "Application Windows", "Desktop", "Dashboard", "Start Screen Saver", "Disable Screen Saver", "-"}
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "System Preferences"
activate
delay 2
my SetExposeCornerOptions(item 1 of theCornerOptions, ¬
item 2 of theCornerOptions, ¬
item 3 of theCornerOptions, ¬
item 4 of theCornerOptions)
quit
end tell
return input
end run
to SetExposeCornerOptions(TopLeftCorner, TopRightCorner, BottomLeftCorner, BottomRightCorner)
tell application "System Events"
tell process "System Preferences"
set frontmost to true
click button "Dashboard &
 Exposé" of scroll area 1 of window "System Preferences"
delay 2
tell group 1 of window "Dashboard & Exposé"
click pop up button 1
click menu item TopLeftCorner of menu 1 of pop up button 1
delay 2
click pop up button 2
click menu item BottomLeftCorner of menu 1 of pop up button 2
delay 2
click pop up button 3
click menu item TopRightCorner of menu 1 of pop up button 3
delay 2
click pop up button 4
click menu item BottomRightCorner of menu 1 of pop up button 4
end tell
end tell
end tell
end SetExposeCornerOptions</pre>
PowerBook 12"   Mac OS X (10.4.7)