What is the Services menu for?

[Caezar]

Every software has a Services menu under the Application Menu (i.e. Firefox menu for Firefox, etc.).

It contains the following sub-menus: DiskUtility, FileMerge, Finder, FontBook, etc.

I never used it. What is it for?

 

[Makosuke]

Essentially Services are "abilities" that varous programs or utilities can offer to any open application.

The ones you're seeing are the ones you get from a "stock" installation--the ones offered by Text Edit, Disk Utility. and so on.

An example of one I use frequently is a small application for doing fancy Unicode stuff. It offers a service that converts any selected block of text to the appropriate HTML unicode codes. This is tremendously useful for inserting a few non-English characters into a web page without having to mess with character sets or look up anything.

There are probably thousands of services available--you can basically either browse through what's there based on what you already installed, or if you want a particular service (like the Unicode conversion I use), hunt around for an app that provides it.

 

[Caezar]

Thanks. For the other users that would like to know more about OS X Services, I found a tutorial at Screencasts Online:

http://www.screencastsonline.com/sco/Shows/files/SCO0105-osxservices.html