Set value of screen saver to never won't save

Question

So I wrote this script:
tell application "System Preferences"
activate
set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.desktopscreeneffect"
end tell
delay 1
tell application "System Events"
tell process "System Preferences"
tell slider 1 of group 1 of tab group 1 of window "Desktop & Screen Saver"
set value to 361
end tell
end tell
end tell
which works quite nicely to set the value of the screensaver in preferences to "never"
The problem is, when system prefs closes or moves on to another pane, and I reopen it, the screensaver has not been set to never, it is back where it was before!
So what am I doing wrong?
Please help!

Answer 1

The UI of System Preferences is geared to manual user input, so when you're writing a GUI script there is a penalty for using precise value adjustments like that. You'll have more success with the blunter user-like instruments, such as banging on the keyboard…
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">tell application "System Preferences"
activate
set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.desktopscreeneffect"
tell current pane to reveal anchor "ScreenSaverPref"
end tell
delay 1
tell application "System Events" to tell front window of process "System Preferences"
tell slider 1 of group 1 of tab group 1
set value of attribute "AXFocused" to 1
end tell
repeat 7 times
key code 124 -- right arrow
end repeat
end tell</pre>Edit: this was meant to be a response to the OP, I clicked the wrong button. Good suggestion NS.