AppleScript to view HTML in a browser with TextWrangler

I really like TextWrangler, the free Mac text editor from Barebones Software, who make BBEdit.

I’ve just worked out how to set up TextWrangler so you can view HTML files in one or more browsers — simultaneously if necessary, and with keyboard shortcuts.

Mike Piontek at Junecloud gives instructions on how to do this in Safari:

tell application "TextWrangler" to set theFile to file of document 1 tell application "Finder" to open theFile using (path to application "Safari")

Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to work for Google Chrome.

So I did a bit of hacking (with help from a comment by someone called Rob on TUAW) and came up with this:

tell application "TextWrangler" to set theFile to file of document 1


set appleScriptPath to theFile as text

set currentURL to POSIX path of appleScriptPath

set currentURL to ("file://" & currentURL)

tell application "Google Chrome" activate if (exists window 1) and (URL of active tab of window 1 is "chrome://newtab/") then tell window 1 to set URL of active tab to currentURL else open location currentURL end if end tell

It may not be elegant, but it works.

About Sam Dutton

I am a Developer Advocate for Google Chrome. I grew up in rural South Australia, went to university in Sydney, and have lived since 1986 in London, England. Twitter: @SW12

View all posts by Sam Dutton →

tell application "TextWrangler" to set theFile to file of document 1 set appleScriptPath to theFile as text set currentURL to POSIX path of appleScriptPath set currentURL to ("file://" & currentURL) set _atid to AppleScript's text item delimiters try set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " " set currentURL to text items of currentURL set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "%20" set currentURL to currentURL as text set AppleScript's text item delimiters to _atid on error a number b set AppleScript's text item delimiters to _atid end try tell application "Google Chrome" activate try tell window 1 set _tabs to tabs set _tabNumber to 0 repeat with _tab in _tabs set _tabNumber to _tabNumber + 1 if URL of _tab = currentURL then set URL of _tab to currentURL set active tab index to _tabNumber return end if end repeat end tell end try -- If no tabs contain the URL: open location currentURL activate end tell

8 Responses to AppleScript to view HTML in a browser with TextWrangler

Michael Bierman (@mbierm) says:

1 August, 2012 at 8:40 pm

This is exactly what I was looking for! Well almost. The one thing I would wish for is to reload in the same tab (or the front tab) so that I don’t get an endless number of new tabs in preview. Any suggestions?

- Sam Dutton says:
  
  2 August, 2012 at 2:57 pm
  
  Thanks for your comments and information!
  
Michael Bierman (@mbierm) says:

1 August, 2012 at 8:45 pm

So one way, maybe not the best or smartest would be to make one change to your script:

if (exists window 1) and (URL of active tab of window 1 is “file:///Users/”) then

this reloads the file in the current tab if it is coming from the local machine. There may be a more elegant way but at least this seems to work.

Thanks for the help!

Michael Bierman (@mbierm) says:

1 August, 2012 at 9:22 pm

After more experimentation, the following seems to be an improvement:

if (exists window 1) and (URL of active tab of window 1 contains “file:///”) then

Michael Bierman (@mbierm) says:

2 August, 2012 at 1:56 am

Ok here’s my current version (hope someone finds this useful

tell application “TextWrangler” to set theFile to file of document 1
tell application “TextWrangler” to save document 1

set appleScriptPath to theFile as text
set currentURL to POSIX path of appleScriptPath
set currentURL1 to POSIX path of appleScriptPath
set currentURL to (“file://” & currentURL)

— this script will get the tag from the web page for comparison below.
set theTitle to do shell script “grep -i ” ” & currentURL1 & “| sed -e ‘s#]*>##g’ | sed ‘s/^[ ]*//;s/[ ]*$//'”

tell application “Google Chrome”
activate
— using the tag above, we compare to the current open tab. If they are equal, replace the contents, otherwise, open a new tab.
if (exists window 1) and (title of active tab of window 1 is theTitle) then
tell window 1 to set URL of active tab to currentURL
else
open location currentURL
end if
end tell

Michael Bierman (@mbierm) says:

2 August, 2012 at 4:07 pm

I’ve added updated versions for Chrome and Safari https://gist.github.com/3232063 and https://gist.github.com/3232318 Thanks again!

Mitch Powell says:

1 May, 2013 at 2:54 am

Thank you so much!

lovequicksilver says:

22 June, 2013 at 1:57 am

Thanks for the script! I’m going to start using TextWrangler to write posts, now that I can preview HTML quickly.

Here’s a version of the script that activates a file tab if it’s already open in Chrome (avoiding lots of duplicate tabs). The script replaces filename spaces with ‘%20’. Other special characters are not accounted for.