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

 

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

 

 

Recent TidBITS Talk Discussions
 

 

Related Articles

 

 

PowerMail 4.2 Improves Speed, Searching

PowerMail 4.2 Improves Speed, Searching -- CTM Development has released PowerMail 4.2 , the latest version of their email client (see "Migrating to New Climes with PowerMail" in TidBITS-530 for a review of PowerMail 3.0). New in PowerMail 4.2 is CTM's high-speed FoxTrot searching technology, which reportedly offers speeds 300 to 500 percent faster than the previous Sherlock-based searching PowerMail used. PowerMail 4.2 also boasts other performance increases in launching and drawing large lists, enhanced filtering that can filter on message content, searching on cached IMAP information, and more. Upgrades are free for registered PowerMail 4.x users; they cost $30 for users of PowerMail 3.x, or $50 for new customers. A 30-day demo is available as a 5.0 MB download. [ACE]

<http://www.ctmdev.com/powermail4.shtml>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/05930>
<http://www.ctmdev.com/download.shtml>

 

READERS LIKE YOU! Support TidBITS with a contribution today!
<http://www.tidbits.com/about/support/contributors.html>
Special thanks this week to John & Nichola Collins, Chris Williams,
John K. Lilley, and Honeymoons By Sunset for their generous support!