Hi Holly and Others,

It there's anyone still running Tiger, you can use that Automator
action to place, say, your folder of Podcasts under iTunes in the 
Dock and navigate the episodes very fast from there. You simply
navigate to the dock (VO-keys+d), left arrow (or right arrow) to 
the "Podcasts Folder", then use the contextual menu command
(VO-keys+shift+m) to display this as a hierarchical menu.  Type
the first few letters of the podcast subscription folder name to go
to that folder (or use the up or down arrow keys), then press
the right arrow key to get a submenu of the podcast episodes in
that folder.  You can either type the first few letters of the episode
name or use the up and down arrow keys to navigate the 
submenu.  When you carriage return, iTunes will open up (if it
wasn't already open) and start playing the episode you selected.

There are some neat features about this.  For one thing, the
hierarchical menu navigation is very fast if you have lots of
folders -- faster than using the Finder because you're navigating
aliases to each of the folders rather than opening up each folder.
For a second thing, you can play podcasts continuously, because
in the iTunes Songs list you're actually in smart playlist named 
PODTRUE (if you check the Sources Outline).  The default order
is the date added.

If Leopard ever brings back hierarchical menus (in place of 
stacks), you could also do this in Leopard.

Just to reiterate, you don't want to open this folder in the Dock.
If you use VO-keys+space, VO-keys+shift+space, or carriage
return after you've navigated to this folder, you'll simply open
up this folder in finder.  What you want to do is open the 
contextual menu with VO-keys+m, or with the down arrow, or 
Control-click.  Then either type the starting letters of the folder
or use the up and down arrow keys or some combination of
both to navigate the menu. When you are at your selected 
folder use the right arrow key to enter the subfolder/submenu
and again use your up and down arrow keys or typing of the
start of the episode name to select the file.  Press return to
start playing your selection or escape to quit without making
a selection.

Hope this is of interest to somebody!

Cheers,

Esther

On  June 01, 2008, at 05:33PM, Holly Anderson wrote:
>Hi. Thank you thank you thank you.  I've been looking for a way to do  
>this.  It works like a charm.  Your instructions are brilliant.  Nice  
>job.  :)
>Holly
>On Jun 1, 2008, at 4:46 PM, Tim Kilburn wrote:
>
>>> Hi Matthew,
>>
>> You wrote:  i somehow got this removed by mistake when i tried to  
>> open it up. how can i get it back in the doc? thanks in advance.
>>
>> TK:  VO normally does not have that feature of dragging folder  
>> references to the dock.  If you go to my web-site at 
>> http://homepage.mac.com/kilburns/voiceover 
>>  and then click on the Downloads link.  There is a download there  
>> that allows VO users to add folders and such to the Dock.  All the  
>> instructions you need are within the download.
>>
>> HTH.
>>
>> Later...
>>
>>>
>>
>> Tim Kilburn
>> & Carter the Canine
>> Fort McMurray, AB Canada
>
>
>
> 

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