Extendscript Toolkit 2 can't target Illustrator CS3

Question

I usually write scripts for Illustrator and save them in the scripts folder. Then during development I run them using alerts for debugging but this is getting tedious so I thought I would give the Extendscript Toolkit 2 IDE a go so I could use the console for logging.

I've used it in the past a little bit however I can't use it now. In the top left corner of the main window there is a dropdown menu which should have all the apps which are Extendscript enabled but Illustrator (and photoshop) aren't in the list so I can't run scripts from Extendscript and have them target my open documents in Illustrator. Anyone know why and how to sort it out?

I'm not holding my breath, not many people seem to use Extendscript Toolkit.

Answer 1

Ok I just fixed it. After some furious googling I found this snippet of information in a forum...

Im not sure what you are asking for but have you headed your .jsx files like so…

#target illustrator

alert('Hello');

They can then be executed outside of the app just by double click. The ESTK should always select the correct app in which to run/test the script when this is >included too.

This wasn't relevant to my question, however, intrigued, I put #target illustrator into Extendscript and sure enough Illustrator popped into the drop down list for targeted apps. I then removed the #target illustrator and it's still in the dropdown and I'm able to do what I set out to do.

So now you know.