How to know the name of UI elements using Accessibility inspector (or any other tool)

applescript

I'm trying to interact with a print dialog via Applescript.

What I want to emulate is the user setting a value on a specific dropdown.

Say I have:

tell application "System Events"
  tell process "Preview"
    set value of pop up button XXX to YYY
  end tell
end tell

How should I know the name XXX? For example, how would I distinguish between the "printer" and "presets" dropdowns?

I've opened the Accessibility Inspector, but from the information displayed there, I cannot spot a reference to the name or some other unique identifier for the specified dropdown.

I've seen many people using numbers to refer to the different dropdown, but I'm not sure this is good practice. What happens if Apple decide to swap the order of two dropdowns at some point?

Any help would be appreciated.

UPDATE:

Using 10.6.8 and inspector as suggested below, I get the following:

enter image description here

Best Answer

UPDATE. this will work in 10.7.x but 10.6 has les element info.

The Buttons (drop downs ) in the Print Sheet have Description to describe the function.

In Accessibility inspector; you see this when hovering the mouse over the element (button). you can lock the Accessibility inspector's view with cmd+F7.

The Description will be listed as AXDescription

enter image description here

In the cases for the Printers its is Printers for Presets it is Presets

If you know the AXDescription you can avoid the numbers using something like this. But this is not the only way. Just one example.

activate application "Preview"
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Preview"
        click ((pop up buttons of sheet 1 of window 1) whose description is "Printers")
    end tell
end tell

For the above to work in this example the Print Sheet must be visible along with 'Show Details'

The button/drop down has a menu. So you can select or click it by referring to the menu items of the menu of the button.

Either by number or using its title/AXTitle.

activate application "Preview"
    tell application "System Events"
        tell process "Preview"
            click ((pop up buttons of sheet 1 of window 1) whose description is "Presets")

click menu item "Last Used Settings" of menu of ((pop up buttons of sheet 1 of window 1) whose description is "Presets")
        end tell
    end tell

You can shorten repetitive code by using a variable for the button and calling that. When doing it like my example below; 

   activate application "Preview"
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Preview"
        set Presets_button to item 1 of ((pop up buttons of sheet 1 of window 1) whose description is "Presets")

        click Presets_button
        click menu item "Last Used Settings" of menu of Presets_button
    end tell
end tell
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