Service Scrubber Cleans Services Menu

Grabbing text from 'anywhere' and adding it to BBEdit is too simple: I use my own shortcuts in BBEdit, so I select text, Command-Tab to BBEdit (from any other app), hit F2 (paste selected text in new BBEdit document), F8 to name the new doc, done. (So it boils down to Select, F2, F8)

Also, as you will find out, many apps are not Services-savvy. This is due to Apple's schizophrenic approach to the Cocoa/Carbon nightmare. We can thank lazy, whining developers (and Apple) for Apple's caving in to this pressure, resulting in the current services, yes or no, paradigm.

Two comments - first, Services is even faster [just one "click"] using MenuMaster - and then it doesn't matter much how many Services are in the menu if you only use a few for which you yourself have created an instant shortcut of choice. Second, the use of the Keyboard & Mouse preference pane does not seem to work perfectly in 10.5.3 for Mail; trying to reassign CMD M to Get Mail in the pref pane simply won't work for me: Mail stubbornly continues to use CMD M to minimise the window - very annoying. I have not tried any other reassignments in Mail. Mail under Leopard also now won't allow MM to do its thing either - it did under 10.5.2 - which suggests to me something not so obvious may have changed under Leopard.

On 17-Jun-2008, at 16:37, norm.bzr wrote:
> trying to reassign CMD M to Get Mail in the pref pane simply won't
> work for me: Mail stubbornly continues to use CMD M to minimise the
> window

This is because "Minimize window" is a GLOBAL shortcut provided by the
system. I have Command-E set to send mail in Mail.app and it *mostly*
works. Sometimes I have to click the Message menu to get it to display
before the command key works. It's annoying. Not ass annoying as
Command-Shift-D, however. Worst shortcut ever.

No offense was taken Adam, I have felt your pain. :) Services are a funny beast in that as nicely as they work, they sometimes annoy just as much (as you found). It seems to be a crap shoot as to WHO even gets access to the shortcut (like when multiple applications use the same shortcut for different services, or when another application defines something globally and it conflicts).

MacGourmet uses shortcuts for the Services commands because many people wanted them and asked for them. Finding "globally available" shortcuts that don't conflict is really difficult though. For instance, when Safari 3 shipped, it took over a shortcut that MacGourmet has used for the text clippings for years. Service Scrubber really helps sort things out when things conflict, and it is something that I personally recommend as well.

Other "interesting" characteristics of the Services menu and Services: If you have older versions of an application on your disk, and it uses different shortcuts, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason as to WHICH version the operating system uses to define the Services menu.

Also, sometimes, you really have to "kick" the OS, hard, to get it to even recognize your Services, logging out and back in or rebooting, multiple times even.

Michael (the MacGourmet guy)

Unfortunately I find the services menu virtually useless, much like many of Apple's OS X features. I really would like to use it as it COULD be a good feature, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with most applications. Just try highlighting some text in Firefox and see what the Services menu allows you to do - NOTHING. Everything is greyed out.

The Services menu is also in completely the wrong place. It is a system-wide menu, therefore should be in the Apple menu. When it is in the 'Application' menu (the menu that reflects the name of the currently running application) the Services menu is always in a different place, and becomes awkward and confusing to use when changing between applications.

Most good applications provide contextual menu plugins which I find far more useful and reliable than the Services menu. Unfortunately the Services menu is very poorly conceived, a bit like the virtually useless 'Open With' contextual menu in the Finder. It works well for some file types which can only be opened by one or two applications, but try using 'Open With' with a JPEG or a TXT file and the entire system locks up for 30-60 seconds and you are presented with pages and pages of options, most of which you don't want. Windows XP has an Open With menu that can be customised by the user, so your regularly used applications can all be placed in there for easy access. The Services menu should be like that also.

I also find that when I attach a different hard disk with applications stored on it, the system sometimes adds services into my menu. This could be from a friend's hard disk or from my backup hard drive. It is simply unacceptable that plugging in an external hard disk can modify part of your system's menus. I'm sure there's a security risk in there somewhere, but maybe nobody has thought about it yet. It seems that simply viewing a folder with an application inside will place new services relating to that application in your menu.

Services are also stored *inside* the application, so if they are disabled for one user, they are disabled for *every* user. Rather than doing the smart thing where the application installs the service in a separate 'Services' folder either in /Library or /User/Library, Apple for some reason decided it was better to leave it hidden inside the application. Yet another poorly conceived implementation of a possibly very useful feature.

On 21-Jun-2008, at 16:49, David Greenland wrote:
> Unfortunately I find the services menu virtually useless, much like
> many of Apple's OS X features. I really would like to use it as it
> COULD be a good feature, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with
> most applications. Just try highlighting some text in Firefox and
> see what the Services menu allows you to do - NOTHING. Everything is
> greyed out.

Firefox is not an OS X application though, not really. It's a Linux
application with a Aqua skin. NOTHING works in Firefox. Notice the
lack of spell checking? Keychains?

> The Services menu is also in completely the wrong place. It is a
> system-wide menu, therefore should be in the Apple menu. When it is
> in the 'Application' menu (the menu that reflects the name of the
> currently running application) the Services menu is always in a
> different place, and becomes awkward and confusing to use when
> changing between applications.

It should be a top-level menu next to help.

--On June 21, 2008 3:49:47 PM -0700 David Greenland <greeniezip.com.au>
wrote:

> Unfortunately I find the services menu virtually useless, much like many
> of Apple's OS X features. I really would like to use it as it COULD be a
> good feature, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with most
> applications. Just try highlighting some text in Firefox and see what the
> Services menu allows you to do - NOTHING. Everything is greyed out.

Although I too rarely use services, I would point out that Firefox as of
version 3 barely qualifies as a Macintosh application. Before version 3 you
couldn't even use up/down arrows to move to the beginning/end of a line.
The fact that services still don't work isn't exactly big news.

Camino, the Mac browser built on the Gecko engine, does in fact support
Services.

The problem I have is that on my two week old Mac I have 28 services.
Sorting through them to find the ones that are active is insane. If the OS
instead of graying out unsable services, simply eliminated them from the
menu altogether, so only active services showed, it would be much more
useful.

Personally I find Keyboard Maestro + AppleScript provides what I need in a
better way than services.

On 6/21/08 at 3:49 PM, greeniezip.com.au (David Greenland) wrote:

>Unfortunately I find the services menu virtually useless, much like
>many of Apple's OS X features. I really would like to use it as it
>COULD be a good feature, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with
>most applications. Just try highlighting some text in Firefox and
>see what the Services menu allows you to do - NOTHING. Everything is
>greyed out.

It is the way Firefox is coded that is the issue here, not OS X.
There is no way for the OS to force applications to support
features of the OS.

>The Services menu is also in completely the wrong place. It is a
>system-wide menu, therefore should be in the Apple menu. When it is
>in the 'Application' menu (the menu that reflects the name of the
>currently running application) the Services menu is always in a
>different place, and becomes awkward and confusing to use when
>changing between applications.

Here you seem to be simply expressing your preference. From my
perspective there is consistency since I can always find the
services menu in the 'Application' menu which is located in a
consistent place. The fact different applications have different
items in this menu doesn't detract from the consistency. And the
ability of Service Scrubber to add custom keys for activating
these menu items pretty much eliminates the issue of exactly
where the menu is located for me since i would use the keys to
activate the item rather than a mouse.

>Most good applications provide contextual menu plugins which I find
>far more useful and reliable than the Services menu.

I agree contextual menus are incredibly useful. But they don't
offer the same functionality as services. Contextual menus by
their very nature are limited to providing access to features in
the application you are working in since it is that application
that provides context. There isn't any way for some other
application (which may not even be running) to know about the
current context. Consequently, there is no practical way to
dynamically customize the service items to be displayed. And
without dynamically changing the service items, the only
possibility is to construct the menu items without any regard to
context which leads to having more items than you like.

>Unfortunately the Services menu is very poorly conceived, a bit like
>the virtually useless 'Open With' contextual menu in the Finder. It
>works well for some file types which can only be opened by one or two
>applications, but try using 'Open With' with a JPEG or a TXT file and
>the entire system locks up for 30-60 seconds and you are presented with
>pages and pages of options, most of which you don't want. Windows XP
>has an Open With menu that can be customised by the user, so your
>regularly used applications can all be placed in there for easy access.
>The Services menu should be like that also.

Reducing the number of services presented is a key function of
Service Scrubber. But since this is a system wide feature, there
is no way to have different services appear in different
applications. That is eliminating a service eliminates it for
all applications.

>I also find that when I attach a different hard disk with
>applications stored on it, the system sometimes adds services into
>my menu. This could be from a friend's hard disk or from my backup
>hard drive. It is simply unacceptable that plugging in an external
>hard disk can modify part of your system's menus. I'm sure there's a
>security risk in there somewhere, but maybe nobody has thought about
>it yet. It seems that simply viewing a folder with an application
>inside will place new services relating to that application in your
>menu.

This is a design feature. My understanding is the intent of
services is to provide a single place to find useful items
provided by other applications. Certainly a user wanting to make
use of these services would not want to manually find
applications providing services and add them. So, the OS scans
external hard drives for any applications that provide services
and adds them. I don't see any reason to see this as a security
risk. Nothing in the process of scanning for services actually
activates the code performing the service.

>Services are also stored *inside* the application, so if they are
>disabled for one user, they are disabled for *every* user. Rather
>than doing the smart thing where the application installs the
>service in a separate 'Services' folder either in /Library or
>/User/Library, Apple for some reason decided it was better to leave
>it hidden inside the application. Yet another poorly conceived
>implementation of a possibly very useful feature.

Your suggestion of placing the services somewhere else than
inside the application will cause a different set of problems.
Consider what happens when an application is removed from the
hard drive but the user doing the removal doesn't think to
delete the service items associated with that application. Your
proposal would add to the number of things that have to be
removed in order to completely remove an application. I
definitely prefer having service items stored within the
application providing the services.