Apple on OS X 10.1: Third parties can create System Preferences panes; Services menu supported in Carbon; more

The Apple's Developer Connection site has recently posted a large number of new and revised development materials, which reflect changes introduced with Mac OS X v10.1. Highlights include:

Inside Mac OS X: Preference Panes This article indicates that third parties can now create their own plug-ins for System Preferences panes. They will then appear in the System Preferences window. This was not supported in earlier versions of Mac OS X.

Setting Up Your Carbon Application to Use the Services Menu Application services give applications an open-ended way to extend each other's functionality by allowing them to provide services to other applications; access functionality provided by other applications. You access this from the Service. Services are access from the application name menu (to the right of the Apple menu). However, prior to OS X 10.1, Services only worked in Cocoa applications. This article indicates that Services are now supported in Carbon.

Making XML-RPC and SOAP Requests With AppleScript This describes how to use Apple Script and the Apple Event Manager in Mac OS X to make remote procedure calls using the XML-RPC and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) protocols.

See the next item for coverage of more new/revised documentation from Apple.