Hi Chris
Agreed on every count, except the preferences dialog. This is in fact
not obvious, and is not truly accessible, but there are quite a few
tabs. What you do is tab to the ok button. Tab, then shift-tab. You
should be on a control that says nothing, this is a control that will
not read and VO will not see. You can arrow up and down to get to the
different preference tabs, using vo+f2 to check the window title which
will reveal which tab you are on. The options in each tab are
accessible, but the tab list or category table, or whatever it is, is
not.
On Nov 5, 2008, at 18:36, Chris Gilland wrote:
OK, I cannot really vouch for the whole suite. I only have so far,
played with Writer, but I wanted to give my first initial thoughts.
1. I must say, when the application comes up, I was shocked at how
long it took to load. I think it took maybe half a minute to a
minute. I dono if that's cause I'm only running 800mhz or what.
So, I really can't make a fair complaint there, as I dono if OO is
to blame for that. My guess is, probably that they're not.
2. Upon the first look of the Writer screen, just voing around, I
was very! very very impressed. Not quite, but almost everything
read. There were a few things here and there that I wasn't really
totally sure about. I didn't vo H on them though, as it's not that
they are not labeled, it's just I don't really know what they are
used for, or do. So, I'll rtfm on those. Really, they're probably
things I'll never use though anyway.
3. I noticed that some of the menu buttons in the two toolbars at
the top, didn't seem to drop down when I hit vo space on them.
Neither did they seem to do anything when I rooted my mouse and then
did vo shift space to click. I've not tried vo shift m yet as that
just occured to me right before typing this mail. So, that actually
might work.
4. The edit areas on the main writer screen are disgusting in my
opinion. I can't for the life of me figure out what they are.
There's about 4 or 5 of them that I am seeing.
I also am noticing, that if I have a file that has multiple lines of
text, which 99.99 percent of files do, I'm finding it's for some
really peculiar reason, putting each line as a seperet item.
meaning, I can actually vo left and right, and hear each line
seperetly by item. Now that! is annoying! Command up arrow does
not seem either to be taking me to the toppa the file.
5. I don't like the fact that I am a low vision user, and there is
no zoom option in the window menu. This means the only way to
maximise the application where it takes the whole screen is to
either resize the window, or, spend a few minutes looking through
the menus only then, to find that command F will give you full
screen. I just don't like the fact that that option wasn't more
obvious.
6. I went into the preferences. I was quite disappointed that
there is only one tab, and that one tab hardly is worth anything.
All it has is like, your name, your e-mail address, your phone
number, etc. There is really no customization.
7. The fact that I could not apply certain formatting very
obviously and easily really ticks me off. I'm sure it can be done,
but, I've not found any way. For instance, like I said before,
creating tables and then entering data into them, seems a royal pain
in the behaunkus. Furthermore, I want the ability to change
accessibily the color of the font text, as well as change the
document's background color.
I've not found either how to do that.
8. Conclusion: I think at least that Writer, is o, Kayyy. I think
it still however needs a ton of work. It's a real good first try/
start, but, there are just enough annoyances to really drive me
insane. Does this mean I am giving up? Absolutely not! If someone
can work with me, and show me how to do, and how to get around these
things that are confusing me, I'd be more than happy to give them a
chance to do so. Do I think this is a bad product? Again:
Absolutely? not! I think it actually, is extremely promising. I
think it has fantastic potential, but there are just so many kinks
right now, that I really don't think I'd use it as my primary
editer. I'm not very good at editing things on a Mac, anyway, in
general, but, I'd like to get better at it, that's for sure.
Chris.
