Blog of Zeke Franco—Quasarkitten.net

I posted an article called Automated Dashboard Widget Installer on July 4th, 2007 about a workflow I wrote that automatically installs dashboard widgets for me. Leopard contains a new version of Automator which breaks my workflow. So I’ve created a new workflow for OSX 10.5 Leopard.

The BOMAchiever in Leopard has seems to have been improved. In Tiger if I selected five or more .zip files it would choke when trying to unzip them all at once—at least on my system. Now that I’m running Leopard this has been fixed. So if you download ten widgets that are contained in .zip files, you can install them all at once.

Instructions

1. Download the Install User Widget(s) workflow file
2. Double-click to unzip it
3. Double click the .workflow file which will open it in Automator
4. Then Select Save as Plug-in—a dialog will pop-up
5. Name the Plug-in (In the text field Save Plug-in As:)
6. Make sure the Drop-down list is set to Finder (see Figure 1 below)
7. Press Save

Figure 1

I have also created a video demo which shows how to use the workflow and how to install the .workflow file. You can watch the HD version on Vimeo if you to actually want be able to read the screen text.

If you want to learn more about Automator or maybe just download some other workflows then check out automator.us. Automator.us is the personal website of Sal Soghoian who is the AppleScript product manager at Apple. If you head over to twit.tv, Sal has done some video podcasts showing some really cool things you can do with automator. Just do a search for automator to find the shows.

Install User Widget(s) by Zeke Franco is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.quasarkitten.net.

Labels: apple, automator, mac, productivity, tutorial, video