Matthew Ericson's MultiExport

Reader Dan just alerted me to the existence of Matthew Erickson's awesome multiExport script. His script is very similar to my exportLayers script in that it will export selected layers as various image files, but his script also manages to export layers as PDF files, and can handle multiple artboards at the same time.

The only downside is, I believe it only works for CS5 and above.  So if you're rocking CS5, check out Matt's script and his incredibly clear and thorough walk-through of how it works on Matt's blog.

I had a lot of fun looking through how he solved the dialogue/ persistent data issue. My solution was to write an entire script on the fly, and then export the script and execute it remotely.  I think Matt's closure solution is much more elegant.

Also, to save variable state between runs, his script generates an XML string, and stores it in a new textField in a hidden layer on the top of the document and then on the next run, the dialog can remember the selected values. Mad Genius. I love seeing solutions that think farther outside the box than my own efforts. 

Props to Matt for providing this open source, and for sharing his work with the world. Matt, you sir, are a Hacker with a capital 'H', and I mean that in the best possible way.