I can't take it anymore ... What is this for?

[bigbadbill]

boi—

I have actually used this menu a few times lately. I know that it didn't work before, but now seems to work fine (maybe my latest upgrade to Jag helped). I can open a text document in TextEdit, selct the text, and choose SERVICES/SPEECH/START SPEAKING and wala, it starts yappin'. Also I use it from time to time to e-mail an attachment by selcting the attachment file and using SERVICES/MAIL/SEND FILE.

Or try this:

Open a New TextEdit document. Use the SERVICES/GRAB/SELECTION feature to take a screenshot of part of your screen and paste it into the text doc. Very usefull for collaborating on projects.

[roger]

I use services to create stickies of things that I want to remember or act upon. Very handy.

[genghiscohen]

Services is one of the things I like about OmniWeb. If I find a news story that has some interesting comment buried deep inside it, I can highlight the interesting comment and go to Services > Mail > Send Selection and it opens a new Mail window with that text right in the body of the email message.
Or if I'm reading newsgroups with Thoth and I come across some kewl info, I highlight it and go to Services > TextEdit > Open Selection and presto - there's the text I want in a new TE document!

[sheepguy42]

Services only work in Cocoa apps (like OmniWeb) and most (if not all) work only on selected text.

[genghiscohen]

Services can potentially be used by Carbon apps, but the apps have to be rewritten to access them. And I have heard that Apple needs to tweak the API to make that easier to do before we see Service-using Carbon apps.

[LordOphidian]

The Go To... field is very usefull in some apps, but completely useless in others. It helps, for example, if you want to open or save files to locations that are hidden (/usr, /var, etc), but those cases are rather rare for most users.

As for services, they are quite usefull, in Cocoa apps that is. OmniDictionary's Define is great. Just select a word in OmniWeb or some other app and hit Cmd-= and it pops up with the definition. Quite nice. Carbon Services are still broken in many apps, but some do support it, and the api is supposidly getting better with each release of Carbon.

[sheepguy42]

Originally posted by LordOphidian
Carbon Services are still broken in many apps, but some do support it, and the api is supposidly getting better with each release of Carbon.

What Carbon apps support Services? I would really like to know, it could make services more useful to me. Also, is it possible to put Services in the contextual menu? I am not a programmer, so i would not know, but if any of you want to give it a shot i would love to see what you come up with.