Save for Web and dynamic destinations revived. Also, is there a way to tweak the image size action?

I am working with CS version 7.0. I searched in google groups and
other places and found question 2 asked in 2002 and 2004. Apparently
there was only a workaround for this although I am not sure which
version of PS this referred to. To solve this people mentioned the
Batch rename Action. This means that you run your first Action set
and then run the Batch rename Action. I cannot find the set where the
Batch rename Action resides. Besides, with CS 7.0 this may have been
fixed.

I have a set of photos that I want to resize and save for the web. I
created an Action where 1. I have the action open up the image size
menu and 2. does the save for web. This works pretty well except for
two things:

1. It would be great for the image size action to be able to resize
wider images to 8 inches in width and taller images to 4 inches in
width. Right now I am simply resizing everything to 4 inches in
width.

2. The Action that I created has the destination built in as part of
the export action. When I created the Action, upon the second step
where I went to the file->save for web menu I simply clicked Save and
proceeded to click on OK for the last step. The destination folder is
built in. So basically, if the folder where the image was saved to no
longer exists, when I run the Batch I get the message "Could not
complete the Action, since the destination folder does not exist."
The thing here is that the destination folder option under the Batch
window does not come into play when the export Action fires up.

Is there anyone that has an answer to the following questions? Any
help is greatly appreciated.

 

OK, I stumbled upon the following site that describes the process of
batch resizing and saving (using the batch rename action).
http://www.tutorialwiz.com/batch/. If I use this method, I still
would like to do the following:

1. resize images a bit smarter. Wider images get resized to 8 inches
and taller images to 4 inches, automatically. This is probably not
doable but it is worth asking.

2. is there a way to mimic the save for web feature? Since we cannot
manipulate the save for web/export action to use the destination
listed in the batch command, a way to get this same effect is to a)
run a bunch of things to get the equivalent of what save for web does
and b) use the save as command within the new action (just like the
article I pasted suggests). This save as command can be manipulated
by the batch command.

The reason for asking question 2 is that save for web does indeed
produce better quality images per Kb than save as. I know it has to
do with sampling for the most used colors etc so if anyone can provide
an explicit method I would really appreciate it.

Thank you all again.