Worthless "Services" Menu

M

Mac Osxtopus

Registered
Someone tell me why in the heck they put in this "services menu" even though everything is grayed out? :confused: I havent seen one mac os x app that can use the services menu. :( If there is, tell me what, or show me how to activate the services menu, because i want to be able to use it. :mad:
 
It's NOT worthless, thank YOU! :p

To use services, you need to be in a Cocoa application. The predominant way to tell if you are in a Cocoa app is if you have a toolbar like the Finder. OmniWeb is one example of a Cocoa application (the Finder is the only Carbon application that has a toolbar).

You also need to have something selected. Usually this is text. For example, if in OmniWeb, you select text on a webpage and then go to the Services menu, you can then select the "Mail" submenu and then "Mail to", and Mail.app will compose a new message with the selected text as the body.

Get it?
 
Well... i still kinda think that the guys/girls who made mac os x should have made a few more apps work with the services menu instead of people having to download not-originally-come-with-the-os apps in order to use it.
 
Actually one of the primary examples would be TextEdit, which can share (via services) it's ability to spell check, or use (via services) Grab to place images. Ideally you could have a ton of small apps that each did a couple things very well that would replace a hand full of very large (expensive) apps. You would only get the apps that gave you the features you wanted, so the system would be customized for you (instead of the general public).

Carbon is very new and it's apps are not able to use services yet, but Apple plans on them being able to in the near future (which is why the menu is there now).
 
As was wisely said by simX :) , Services are extremely useful. Though Cocoa apps will use it by default, Carbon apps CAN use it, if enabled. One example is clipEdit, which I am 99% sure is Carbon. And btw, one app I use Services in all the time is Terminal.app. :)
 
Have a look on versiontracker for a thing called Textwielder. It's very very useful indeed...

Services are something new to OSX, and OS9 didn't really have anything like it, so it's going to take a while before people start taking advantage of them I think (it's unusual for anyone to even notice the menu is there!). But when they do, I think it'll become one of teh most powerful parts of the OS
 
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For those who don't want to read that:
Services can be very useful. It's too bad that most Carbon apps don't take advantage of them. (I think only certain mach-o carbon apps do)
Hopefully Apple can get developers to actually integrate them into the system. They were a great idea back in the NeXT days, and they didn't transition very well.

(Backwards text courtesy of my ReverseText service ;))
 
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