I do have to say I agree with one point in Jacob's original post...I
have noticed that Firefox doesn't seem to work quite as well as IE,
because if you view a page using IE, and you view that same page with
firefox, the differences are sometimes vast. The virtual buffer doesn't
seem to pick up on some of the links and elements that are there, which
can kind of be frustrating. This is why I use IE 8 most of the time.
I'm not going to get into any other bashing of GW, because I'm very
happy with wineyes 7.5 and will continue to use it. We're living in a
beautiful time right now, we have a lot of choices for a
screenreader...window-eyes, JAWS, system access, NVDA... so if you're
not happy with one, you're always welcome to switch to one of the other
ones.
On 6/13/2011 11:05 AM, tony c wrote:
Hi,
I was a jaws user back when 3.7 was new. A friend of mine introduced
me to window eyes in like 2003 not sure what version. But it was great
it worked well and had little trouble as far as crashes go.
I used win eyes with XP pro and loved it. I kinda for the most part
skipped Vista and just got windows 7 about a month or so ago. I am
very disappointed
in the way win eyes performs now. It laggs and misses a lot of links
and information.
Tony
*From:* Edward <mailto:[email protected]>
*Sent:* Monday, June 13, 2011 9:53 AM
*To:* [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
*Subject:* FW: A bit of a rant (was Re: Observations with Window Eyes
and Web Browsing)
I agree. I find myself using jaws more and more on the net these
days. I am tired of IE hanging or links not being clickable, edit
boxes being sluggish, wineyes crashing. It seems like wineyes doesn't
like being used quickly. Meaning if you are a quick navigator wineyes
struggles to keep up, and when it can't, it crashes. I find myself
having to slow down in order to give wineyes a chance to catch up with
me.
thanks
Edward
-----Original Message-----
*From:* Jacob Schmude [mailto:[email protected]]
*Sent:* Sunday, June 12, 2011 9:03 PM
*To:* [email protected]
*Subject:* A bit of a rant (was Re: Observations with Window Eyes and
Web Browsing)
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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