Hil,
hi i can not find a podcast tab now in my i tunes eight preferences
Anyone else noted it hass gone?
This has been moved. Select "Podcasts" in the Sources table. Now when
you VO-right arrow from the Songs Table you'll find additional buttons
for "Subscribe" and "Settings". Press (VO-space) the button for
"Settings" to get the options that used to be under a separate Podcast
menu under preferences. You'll also find additional items after the
"Settings" button. There's "Report a Concern" "button" and "Podcast
Directory" "button". These appear to be duplicate items in the sense
that "Report a Concern" and its following unlabeled "button" take you
to the same place, which is a page in the iTunes Store where you can
send a message. This might be appropriate in instances where there
were problems with the downloaded episode -- maybe an old episode was
repeated and mislabeled, or it was incorrectly tagged, or the episode
skips when you play it, a section seems missing, the feed has stopped
updating new episodes, etc. This feature allows you to send a message
for the podcast you have selected in your Songs table. It's a little
bit confusing because you have to click (VO-shift-space) to use
"Report a Concern" and press (VO-space) on the unlabeled "button" that
follows it if you want to activate one or the other options, and they
both take you to the same place -- a page in the iTunes Store where
you can choose a category for your concern from a pop-up menu button
and send off a message. If, instead you choose to press the "Cancel"
button, you'll be sent back to your podcast directory.
The other thing that's confusing about these buttons/links is that
when the source changes from your podcasts library to this "Report a
Concern" page at the iTunes Store, your iTunes app refreshes as though
you had just opened it, and your focus usually shifts to the initial
"Previous dimmed button" and you have to navigate to where the Store
page is (the location that used to be your Songs Table when you point
to a Source that is in your library) in order to get to the "Report a
Concern" page and when you press the button to either "Submit" or
"Cancel" your message and are taken back to your own iTunes podcasts
library your focus doesn't go back to the right area. Actually, this
is flakey, and at least once when I selected the "Report a Concern"
button or link I was able to interact and get focus on the iTunes
store page, but the usual behavior was that I had to VO-right or left
arrow around to get there. (In Tiger I would have used tab, but in
Leopard using tab to navigate iTunes doesn't always seem to work).
There's also a link on the "Report a Concern" page if you think
there's a copyright variation. But if you press that link, you're
taken to a web page about copyright guidelines, and you have to shift
back from Safari to iTunes to complete your submission or cancel it.
If you didn't subscribe to the selected podcast through the iTunes
Store you'll get a dialog window telling you that you did not
subscribe to this podcast through the iTunes Store and you should
contact the host of the podcast feed/web site directly. In case the
new window comes up but your focus hasn't shifted to it, you may have
to bring up the window chooser menu (VO-F2 twice) to read this,
dismiss it, and get back to your main iTunes window.
The next link/button combination for "Podcast Directory" (followed by
unlabeld button) will take you to the Podcast page at the iTunes
Store. Again you'd have to click (VO-Shift-Space) the link or press
(VO-space) the button to go there. Again, you may have to navigate
around to get to the Store page. If you want to get back to your
library's podcasts list afterwards, the easy way is to use "Command
left-bracket" -- that is, the command for moving back to the previous
web page (or the previous page in the iTunes Store). Again, this can
be confusing because your focus will probably not take you to the
correct place -- you might be at the buttons that show up after the
Songs Table, or the vertical scroll bar for the Songs Table, etc.
Finally, if you VO-right past the two link/button combinations that
take you to the iTunes Store, there is a "Refresh" button. If you
press this button, you will reset the time at which iTunes checks for
new podcast episodes (the every hour, every day, etc. options in
"Settings" to the current time (e.g. next check is one hour from now,
one day from now, etc.).
There have been other changes to the iTunes preferences menu in iTunes
8. The importing preferences for how you want to import a CD (e.g. as
AAC or MP3 and the encoding rate) has moved from a tab of the Advanced
menu (which now has no tabs) to an "Import Settings" button under the
General menu of podcast preferences. I'm also finding that I have to
use the window chooser menu (VO-F2 twice) more often to get to the new
dialog windows. The burning options have also been removed from the
Advanced menu and instead you get a dialog window with prompt for
option setting when you choose the "Burn Disc" button or select a
contextual menu option to burn a playlist
Cheers,
Esther
