AWSBrowser

 

AWSBrowser is a great way of extending the functionality of your OS X services without additional application code. To understand what is possible and what is not possible, it is necessary to take a brief look at OS X services and how they work.

Cocoa Services

Cocoa services are OS X services available to Cocoa applications. They can provide data, transform data, or process input data. They're based on the system passing data back and forth over a clipboard. The nature of the service is determined by the service provider. Most but not all services need selected text to perform.

ACP Services

AWS.service is a behind-the-scenes application which never appears on screen. It runs services on the Cocoa services menu.

The ACP Services include both bidirectional and unidirectional services. The freeware version of the ACP Services, the ACP Web Services you have here, are unidirectional.

AWSBrowser

Use AWSBrowser through browse through the AWS resource catalogues. You can use AWSBrowser to test resources before you export them to your Services menu.

Drawers

AWSBrowser has two 'drawers' to help you browse. One is the 'config' drawer with data that's included on your Services menu; the other is the 'detail' drawer with specifics about the service and a 'test field' you can use to try the service out before installing it.

Export

Use 'Export' to export selected services to your 'Services' menu and activate them immediately if at all possible.

Goto All

'Goto All' immediately accesses all selected services with your test input field contents.

[Note: this is limited to two services in the standalone edition. The ACP version has no such limitations.]

Caveats

OS X will update the Services menu of all Cocoa applications - but not Finder. Finder is not a Cocoa app and the code it uses is unfortunately not 100% compatible with Cocoa either. You'll need to 'kill' Finder to get it to update.

Open a Terminal window and type in:

sudo killall Finder

That should do it.

 

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