Hi. I’m new to Mac, and new to Devonthink. I’ve just downloaded the trial version, like it, and am trying to figure out the Services feature. When I’m browsing in Firefox, highlight text, and check the services item in main menu, I have yet to see anything like a feature that is specific to DT that will let me shoot it over and become a new item. I have done some exploring and can’t find an obvious answer to this. I don’t know if the issue arises from my my DT or OSX ignorance.
What should I be seeing as a service? How do I get it there.
this is a problem that has do to with Firefox, not with Devonthink. Firefox does not support features specific to Mac OS X, as it is developed platform-independent. So it does not support services, among a couple of other things (for example, firefox has its intern way of handling passwords, while other apps more tailored to the mac use the keychain already supplied by OS X).
You can use Camino instead, which is very similar to Firefox, and supports services. You will, however, only be able to send plain text to DT. You can of course also use Safari, and then RTF is also possible.
Does Safari have to be the default browser? Are there any other steps? Because when I browse with Safari, I still don’t see anything DT specific under Services.
Oh ok, so it might be yet something else (although the information about firefox not supporting services is correct indeed).
First thing that comes to my mind is that you need to restart the finder (or reboot your computer) for the DT service menu entry to become listed.
Here’s a funny thing - in Firefox now, I can see the DT services, but when I have text selected the all the options are grayed out, I can’t actually use them. Any ideas?
Safari works fine, and I can use it. I just like Firefox better.
Like you I do not like Safari, and since Firefox doesn’t support Services, I do not use either of them. If you want to use services and do not like Safari, OmniWeb is a shareware solution with lots of comfort (workspaces, great tabs, per-site preferences of extra-class); Shiira is another great browser, extremely speedy and freeware.
I love the speed of Firefox, but its lack of compatibiity with Mac OS X Services cripples it for capturing Web information into DEVONthink. That can be done, but it’s slow and tedious.
The alternatives suggested by Maria do work well with Services.
Version 1.3 of Safari in the OS X 10.3.8 update is faster than previous versions of Safari.
Safari under Tiger will be able to capture Web pages, which is a plus. I would expect OmniWeb to be able to do that also, as they use the Safari “engine”. Shiira may be able to pick up that feature also – I’m not certain.
For “heavy duty” captures into DEVONthink, Christian’s adaptations of WebKit in DEVONagent and in DT’s own Web browser give the best current options for capturing notes or pages. The downside is that bookmarks must be imported from another browser and/or (in DT) manually entered into the database. DEVONagent is my default browser.
you can set up a hot key for taking the selected text in Firefox (or any other application, cocoa or carbon) into a new note in DT.
you need to add iKey to be able to do so but you can automate any application and override/customise built-in keyboard commands in any application. best $20 i ever spent on software. sadly the new version (i am on version 1.0.6 still) seems to have added unnecessary complication and is $30, not $20.
in any case iKey does not seem to have slowed down my computer or destabilised it in the time that i have had it (one and a half years). check it out. and unlike other macro editors, iKey is really, really easy to use.