Starting a Slideshow Applescript help

Question

I am trying to make an Applescript to launch a slideshow from the finder, not an iPhoto slideshow, but the one you get by clicking the Tools button and selecting slideshow. It is much easier to choose which photos I want to save my computer by using that, but it is a pain to have to select all the photos, and then click multiple buttons to view it.
So I set out to create a script to select all the files in the folder, and start a slideshow. I am very close. I can click that button, but don't know how to script the menu it displays when clicking the button. Much help would be appreciated.
Here is my script so far:
tell application "Finder"
activate
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Finder"
tell menu bar 1
tell menu bar item "Edit"
tell menu "Edit"
click menu item "Select All"
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Finder"
tell window 1
tell tool bar 1
tell group 2
tell menu button 1
click
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
13" Macbook Mac OS X (10.4.9) 2 GHZ Core 2 Duo, 2 GB RAM, 80 GB HD

Answer 1

I assume you're after the 'Quick Look' option, right?
If so, there's a far more direct way of doing what you want. In general, avoid using UI scripting (the whole 'tell application "System Events" stuff) as much as possible. You can't do it all via direct scripting, but you can simplify your script a lot:
<pre class=command>tell application "Finder"
activate
select every file of window 1
tell application "System Events"
tell process "Finder"
keystroke "y" using {command down}
end tell
end tell
end tell</pre>
In this case I'm using the Finder's direct commands to select all the files. This is much better than trying to drive the menu bar (what happens to your script, for example, if you're running on a non-English version of the OS that doesn't have a 'Select All' item in the 'Edit' menu since those words are translated to some other language.
Unfortunately I can't see a way to invoke the slideshow directly, but I'm using the command-key equivalent of Quick Look. This is also preferable since your script would fail if the toolbar wasn't visible in the current window, and using keystrokes wouldn't have any negative effects if the menu item wasn't available for some reason.
The other advantage of using direct scripting is that you can get more creative/precise in what you want to do. For example, selecting all the items in a folder might not be appropriate, especially if there were mixed media files (word processor documents, spreadsheets, photos, etc.) or folders.
By driving the Finder directly you can do things like:
<pre class=command>tell application "Finder"
activate
select (every file of window 1 whose kind is "JPEG Image")
end tell</pre>
This makes sure you only select JPEG images, leaving everything else deselected, which is hard to do via the menus.