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BrowserService is a free Mac OS X service which provides a consistent interface for opening URLs and files in various Mac browsers. URLs and file paths selected in Services-aware applications can be opened in a specified browser or in the default browser with a keyboard shortcut. Please send any questions or feedback to matsakis@mit.edu |
To install BrowserService for every user account, drag it to the folder named in the folder of your hard drive (you may need to create this folder if it does not exist). To install BrowserService for an individual user, drag it to the folder of the folder in that user's home folder. You will need to log out and log back in again or restart the machine before BrowserService will appear in the menu.
BrowserService adds itself to the menu, which can be found under the application menu of the current application. To use BrowserService, select the text of a URL or UNIX-style file path in any services-aware application, such as TextEdit. Then, select the browser you wish to use from the menu, or press to open the item in the default browser (or application in the case of file paths). In order to use the keyboard shortcut from within an application, it is necessary to first expose the menu in that application. This needs to be done every time the application is launched.
BrowserService processes the selected text slightly before handing it off to the web browser. In addition to removing leading and trailing whitespace, it also removes any newline characters and surrounding whitespace that appear in the middle of the text. This is usually the correct thing to do, since URLs should not contain whitespace. BrowserService does not check for illegal characters and assumes that the URL or path is otherwise well-formed. In particular, BrowserService does not require or handle shell escape sequences in file paths.
One powerful way to use BrowserService is to select a URL from one browser and open it in another. For example, if you are viewing a page in Safari and would like to see how it would look in OmniWeb, you can select the URL (by typing ) in Safari and then invoke BrowserService to open up the page in OmniWeb. Note that BrowserService only copies the URL between browsers and not the state of cookies, javascript, and so forth, so some web sites may not transfer gracefully in this way. Note also that none of the Carbon browsers, including Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, iCab, and Opera, support services yet.
Please send comments or questions to Nick Matsakis