CarPC type project

Okay, I’ve been searching for the last three to four hours on how to accomplish what I need to here, and can’t seem to find even remotely where to start looking for what I’m needing to do.

Essentially, I’m about to start putting together a large carpc type system for use in a tourbus or limousine type situation. However, before assembling all the components and buying all this Mac hardware, I would like to already have the application developed for it.

A little background… I’m okay with php or asp/vbscript. I’ve never done anything in Applescript before tonight. I’m thinking iTunes would be the best program to play the catalog of mp3’s, as well as CD’s. Then any movie files would be controlled by QuickTime, and DVD’s controlled by the dvd player…

I don’t mind learning AppleScript… that’s not such a big deal… my problem is how to create a user interface for it. I’m going to be using approximately a 17 inch touch screen to control everything, so I can’t just have iTunes up on the screen, as there are too many lines on the screen to really be precise when choosing a song. My thoughts then turned to leaving Safari up, and just creating a simple webpage that would launch various AppleScripts. However, I’ve found just doing a simple a href to that particular script name doesn’t seem to do anything but give me a blank screen in safari.

So my question is this… (I know, get to the point…) is it possible to call AppleScripts from a webpage if I’m running Apache locally and have big buttons so people can say, let me hear Rock, or Classical, or Techno, or whatever… The details from there, I can do as far as letting people browse through artists, song titles, etc, but need a way to call these AppleScripts, and possibly even pass variables to them…

It’s 2:30 am, and I’m not the type that runs well on little to no sleep, so forgive me if I’m rambling, but at this point, I have no clue as to what to use for a user interface… Help!

Thanks in advance!
David

Actually, I think I just found my answer, but feel free to point me in the right direction if not… I finally found XCode, which it says includes Appescript Studio… I’m assuming I need to learn Applescript studio to do what I want to do, am I right? It seems that with that I can develop a full GUI, and have everything full screen passing applescript to iTunes, QuickTime, and the DVD player…

Anyhow, I’ll check back in the morning when I wake up… I’ve gotta hit the sack… downloading XCode 1.5 right now, so hopefully I’m on the right track…

You are in the rigth way.

You can also design your web page and use applescripts, but that is a long way (if you run a static page, you can launch applescripts using a specially designed protocol helper -just the same that happens when you click a mailto: link-; if you intend using Apache, you can execute applescript-cgis, using third-parties such as ACGI Dispatcher, ASCGI or peacePipe, and even use a combo of PHP and command-line’s “osascript” tool).

If you’re interested in AppleScript Studio, here is a very simple FAQ about it:
http://macscripter.net/faq/as_studio.php
You can find some interesting links to resources in this faq, though the best way to learn AS-Studio is browsing the sample projects you can find in “/Developer/Examples/AppleScript Studio” dir.