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AWS Resource Page


Intro - Components - Catalogues - Submit

Intro

The ACP Web Services are the simplest, fastest, and most viable way to get context sensitive information off the web. Starting with a mere 45 services, the AWS have today grown in number to well over one thousand, with the number increasing all the time.

This page is meant to be a one-stop page for all AWS needs: a place to both submit new services to the 'pool' and also download the lastest images.

The ACP Web Services run off the 'Services' subitem of your 'application' menu on your menu bar. They're an integral part of Cocoa (and NeXTSTEP before it) but they've never before been used in this way.

They take almost no disk or RAM footprint, they're easy to install, they just work, they're insanely great, and they make accessing resources on the web a lot faster and more intuitive than you've ever known before.

The ACP Web Services are freeware.

Components

There are three components in the ACP Web Services system: AWS.service, AWSManager, and AWSBrowser. Details on all three including download URLs follow.

AWS.service

The central component in the ACP Web Services system is AWS.service. It can be downloaded from the following URL. The download is approximately 6 KB [sic]. Install it in your ~/Library/Services folder and create this folder if it doesn't yet exist (if you have no prior services of your own running).

ftp://rixstep.com/aws/service.bz2   (Updated 17 October 2007)

You don't actually launch AWS.service as you would an ordinary program: OS X by itself will find it when you start your computer and fully initialise it for you. All you'll see on screen are the additions to your 'Services' menu.

[A screenshot of just how much a 'Services' menu can be expanded can be found here.]

AWSManager

An ancillary application that controls the content of your 'Services' menu (to for example edit the titles of your services or change their configuration) is AWSManager. It's a standalone application and launched as any other program on OS X. It's available at the following URL. The download is ~35 KB.

ftp://rixstep.com/aws/manager.bz2   (Updated 17 October 2007)

AWSBrowser

The final component is AWSBrowser. AWSBrowser was created to cope with the growing number of web services. Browse through the hundreds of web resources and select the ones you want to add to your menu.

(If you at a later point in time want to change the configuration of these services, use AWSManager described above.)

The download URL for AWSBrowser follows. The download is ~64 KB.

ftp://rixstep.com/aws/browser.bz2   (Updated 17 October 2007)

Catalogues

To be of any use, AWS.service must have resources to run. It comes with a default setup of 32 services, but you'll most likely want to change that and add to your collection with services of your own.

The easiest way to browse through the complete AWS collection is with AWSBrowser. AWSBrowser opens the catalogues you can download from the following URL. The download is ~64 KB. A single catalogue can contain hundreds of services.

To open a catalogue, double-click it as you would any other OS X document.

ftp://rixstep.com/aws/catalogues.bz2   (Updated 17 October 2007)

All At Once

To get it all at once - all three above components of the ACP Web Services and the resource catalogues - use the following URL. The download is ~170 KB.

ftp://rixstep.com/aws/aws.bz2   (Updated 17 October 2007)

Submit

If you've created or found a service, please submit it. If you've found a website you think should have a web service but don't know how to create it, send in the link. This is a 'community' project and only benefits by your active contribution.

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