New to apple script...

Question

Hi I am new to apple script; I was using Automator but it became too dumb to it's surroundings after a while. Can you please tell me why these don't do what I think they should; Safari has 2 windows open one with four tabs (window 1 as I have used exists to be sure of) and one with 9 (window 2).
tell application "Safari"
activate tab 6 of window 2
end tell
all it does is bring the frontmost safari window up
Please help

Answer 1

There are a couple of reasons behind this, mostly because you're using the wrong command.
The main thing is that the 'activate' command is used to activate the application. Any other parameters (such as 'tab 6 of window 2') are discarded.
Instead, the appropriate syntax is to set the current tab property of the window:
tell application "Safari"
  set current tab of window 2 to (tab 6 of window 2)
end tell
It's a little verbose, but it works.
If you also want to bring that window frontmost you need to change its index:
tell application "Safari"
  tell window 2
    set current tab to (tab 6 of window 2)
    set index to 1
  end tell
end tell
Note though that changing the window index will now also change this window to 'window 1' instead of 'window 2'. Something to bear in mind if you're taking further actions.