Thoughtful, detailed coverage of the Mac, iPhone, and iPad, plus the best-selling Take Control ebooks.

 

 

Pick an apple! 
 
Mac OS X Services in Snow Leopard

Mac OS X Services let one application supply its powers to another; for example, a Grab service helps TextEdit paste a screenshot into a document. Most users either don't know that Services exist, because they're in an obscure hierarchical menu (ApplicationName > Services), or they mostly don't use them because there are so many of them.

Snow Leopard makes it easier for the uninitiated to utilize this feature; only services appropriate to the current context appear. And in addition to the hierarchical menu, services are discoverable as custom contextual menu items - Control-click in a TextEdit document to access the Grab service, for instance.

In addition, the revamped Keyboard preference pane lets you manage services for the first time ever. You can enable and disable them, and even change their keyboard shortcuts.

Submitted by
Doug McLean

 
 

John Norstad

Send Article to a Friend

John Norstad <j-norstad@nwu.edu> announced last Friday that a new version of Disinfectant, version 3.4.1, is available. Disinfectant 3.4.1 fixes the minor problems reported in TidBITS #216, and is available at:

ftp://ftp.acns.nwu.edu/pub/disinfectant/ disinfectant341.sea.hqx

In addition to the problem when scanning System Enablers on some Macs, John says that 3.4.1 fixes a tendency of the protection INIT to incorrectly identify INIT 9403 virus infections, using the wrong name.

 

READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS by becoming a member today!
Check out the perks at <http://tidbits.com/member_benefits.html>
Special thanks to Robert Joyce, Pat, Christopher Robbins, and Cathleen
McGarity for their generous support!