Hi
** Warning: Begin a sort of rant **
Unfortunately, the Firefox issues have been in Window-Eyes for years.
Essentially, dynamic content causes the entire page to be refreshed.
Google's edit field causes the page to change as you type in order for
it to suggest search results, and this triggers window-eyes' page reload
behavior. We have been promised a fix for this for years and have never
gotten it and, while I don't know about anyone else, I'm losing my
patience with window-eyes on the web with Firefox in particular, but
with IE as well. Window-Eyes' support for Firefox is a joke. Standard
elements such as onclicks are not identified (most other screen readers
call these clickables), image links are not identified as links,
reviewing edited text doesn't work, the auto completion and history list
in the address bar do not work properly (they briefly flash in Braille
but never speak), flash within Firefox is not accessible, mouseOvers and
other dynamic content do not update the buffer or when they do you are
thrown to the top, and I could go on. These are things we've been
promised fixes for, and what do we get? New whiz-bang features with old
bugs. Internet Explorer 9 is not much better (GW, did you even test IE9
at all?). Dynamic pages with hidden elements are not properly rendered
(the hidden elements are shown when they should not be, have a look at
Gmail or Google Voice's pages for that one), There are random headings
and lists with 0 items inserted everywhere while real headings are not
identified (blindbargains.com for that last), entering text in forms
somehow fails to allow all typed characters through (I'm a fast typist).
Each and every one of these problems I've listed, the free screen reader
NVDA has overcome (most of these it never exhibited at all). Jaws, that
other screen reader, isn't far behind and Baum's Cobra doesn't have
these troubles either. Quite frankly, given the importance of the
internet, this is unacceptable and, as a Window-Eyes customer for years,
I feel more than a little cheated. To GW: Don't follow FS down the path
of release release release but don't fix. I don't care if it takes two
years for a new version, as long as that new version of Window-Eyes
works to the best of your abilities. This is not the best and, if you're
going to brag about your IE9 support, you'd better make blasted sure it
works as advertised. The 7.5 release only had one beta cycle. One. Let's
look at this honestly for a second, no marketing, no pr. What does 7.5
offer over 7.2 that is worth paying $175 for? A new set file format? Not
worth that much. A few new scripting functions? Again, not worth that.
Cascading settings (a nice feature and long overdue, but worth $175?). A
rename of scripts to app (boy, that must've taken a lot of effort
there). Meanwhile, long standing bugs go unfixed, and the web is just
one area. I could go on but, these days, I'm not sure that GW Micro
really care. I can't tell off the top of my head exactly how much I've
put into window-eyes over the years since I've owned it, and I'm now
using NVDA instead because it's less buggy and actually allows me to get
real work done. That's just not acceptable QA in my book, and I can't in
good conscience put my hard-earned cash behind a product with this many
problems. I apologize for the harshness, but I've reported many of these
within the past several years and have never seen one fix. Perhaps a
little harshness will get my point across a bit better. I leave that up
to you, GW Micro.
** end rant **
I've never seen the IE8 hanging issue but I'm well familiar with the
rest of the problems you're having. You're not alone.
On 6/12/2011 14:58, Cory Martin wrote:
Hello,
Just wanted to report a couple of issues that I've noticed with
Window Eyes with web browsing:
With Internet Explorer version 8:
Firstly there seem to be issues with Google, specifically after
doing a search, for some reason browse mode doesn't come back on. It
can be enabled with the usual command, however it's the only site
which doesn't seem to bring browse mode back on after entering a
search string.
More difficult to identify however is a strange issue which seems
to affect Internet Explorer where when the browser is first opened it
just hangs, yet opening a second instance of it may work just fine.
I've tried resetting it in the advanced tab under internet options, as
well as using C-Cleaner to remove extra files, as well as clearing
personal data. The issue persists, yet with other screen readers it
doesn't seem to happen. This does not seem to be a problem with Firefox.
With Mozilla Firefox latest version:
I switched to Firefox full time after having the unsolvable
hanging problem with Internet Explorer. However with Firefox, there
seems to be issues with staying in forms for entering text. For
example if I'm trying to enter a word in to Google it keeps dropping
me back in to browse mode every time I press the space bar. I've had
to use notepad to type out my search string and then paste it in to
the browser. I'm not sure which is more annoying.
With either browser:
When trying to arrow arrow around in edit boxes on web pages in
both Internet Explorer or Firefox, Window Eyes just makes a ding sound
when trying to review text entered. It is necessary to drop back in
to browse mode to review what's been entered and then re-enter the
edit box and re-position the cursor to where one wants to correct
something based on best guess, or by cutting the text to notepad and
editing it there.
Does anyone have any experience with these problems to either
confirm or deny them? Also and more importantly, does anyone know of
work-arounds to these issues?
Thanks,
Cory
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