HiMaralyn 07 Introduction to Windows This learning module is entitled, "An Introduction to Windows." This lesson introduces you to the primary controls of the Windows Desktop and how to navigate between and within these controls. We will also discuss how to modify the Windows Desktop for optimal use with JAWS for Windows.
You can think of the Desktop as the parent window to all other windows. Each of the components of the Windows Desktop and the various programs or applications that you want to run on your computer, such as your word processor, e-mail package, or Internet browser can all be considered descendant windows of the Windows Desktop. As we move on through this tutorial, you'll get a good idea of how the hierarchy of Windows works. Currently, my focus is on the Windows Desktop, but there is nothing selected. If your focus is not on the Windows Desktop, please press LEFT WINDOWS+M. Okay, now that we're at a common starting point. I'm going to press the TAB key one time. TAB. Start button. To open, press ENTER. We hear JAWS speak, "Start button." The Start button is what's activated when you press the Windows logo key. When you press spacebar on the start button or when you activate the Windows logo key, it opens a menu called the Start menu. The Start menu is where you go to launch all your Windows programs. We'll come back to the start menu later. There are three other parts of the desktop that I'd like to show you. To move to the next item, simply press the TAB key. Most of you will probably land on the Task bar. However, some of you may hear something like the following: TAB. Tool bar. Launch Internet Explorer browser button. A series of graphical buttons. Menus usually contain the same options. This is the Quick Launch Toolbar and it can be turned on or off by the end user. By default in Windows '98, the Tool bar is turned on. By default in Windows XP, it is turned off. If you landed on the Quick Launch Toolbar, press TAB one more time and you will land on the task bar. TAB. Task bar. To move through items, press LEFT or RIGHT ARROW. The task bar is where we can go to find out what programs are currently open on our computer. To navigate the Task bar, simply press the LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys. I'm going to press the LEFT ARROW now. JAWS TAB. I hear, "JAWS tab," and now I'll press the RIGHT ARROW. JAWS TAB. >From this, we know JAWS is currently the only program running on my computer. If you heard something else, it means that you currently have more than one program running on your computer. For the moment though, we won't worry about that. I'm going to press the TAB key again. TAB. System tray. JAWS speaks the first icon. Use your left and right arrows to move through all the items in your system tray. Show how you wrap back to the beginning. Mention that you can move to the system tray in this manner, but it is much more efficient to use INSERT+F11. Press TAB again. TAB. Desktop. List view... Now we land with our focus on the Desktop. The Desktop list view contains icons, or shortcuts, that allow you to launch programs or access folders and files. As a Windows user, you can specify what shortcuts you want to be placed on your Desktop. Of course, we can easily remove these shortcuts from the Desktop, as well. When we first tabbed to the Desktop list view, we heard JAWS speak, "Desktop. List view. So, moving to our Desktop gave us several important pieces of information. First, it told us that we had just tabbed to the control called the Desktop list view. Next we were told that the item we landed on in this list was selected or not selected, and it's name. We also learned that there were a total of ## items in this list on my computer, and that the focus is on the ## item in the list. Finally, JAWS' Tutor Mode instructed us how we could move in this environment. If the item that we're over isn't currently selected, any action we attempt to take regarding this item wouldn't work. Before we can take an action in a list view such as this, the computer wants to know which item we want to change. We could select the item that we're over by pressing the SPACEBAR, or by moving to another item with our ARROW keys as Tutor Mode instructed us. You can unselect an item on the desktop by pressing CTRL+SPACEBAR. Select the icon if needed. My Computer. Space As you heard, My Computer, the first item in my list, is now selected. I can move around within the Desktop list view by using my UP, DOWN, LEFT, and RIGHT ARROW keys. Throughout these lessons, we're going to encounter some list views that are arranged vertically, in which you only need to use the UP and DOWN ARROW keys to navigate. However, the Desktop list view is arranged in rows and columns, and since the Desktop list view is definable by the user, the number of times that you need to press the LEFT, RIGHT, UP, and DOWN ARROW keys is going to vary from computer to computer, depending on how many items your Desktop contains. I'm going to press the TAB key once again. TAB. Start button. To open, press ENTER. All right, we've cycled back around to our Start button. Just to recap, by default in Windows XP, there are five primary components to our Windows Desktop and less if you're working in Windows NT or Windows '95 operating systems. First, there is the Start button, which when activated opens a Start menu that allows us to launch applications. The Start menu often contains items with sub-menus that allow you go to other sets of menus for that particular item. You can also access various dialogs, such as the Run dialog from the Start menu. Second, there is the Quick Launch toolbar, which will likely be turned off in Windows XP. Third, there's the Task bar, where we can check to find out how many applications are open at any given time. Just to the right of the Task bar is the System Tray. We'll be talking about this later on. And when you press TAB again you move from the Task bar to the Desktop listview, which contains the icons that are usually shortcuts to launch your programs and are definable by the user. You can see that we have at least two ways of launching any given application, either from within the Start menu, or from the Windows Desktop. We'll be using the Start menu to launch most applications because it is usually a more direct and logical way of doing so. However, as you become more experienced, you will most likely use hotkey combinations that you will assign to Desktop icons for the programs you use most of the time. This is faster than navigating the Start menu. To open the Start menu initially, you can place your focus on the Start button and then press the ENTER key. This isn't entirely necessary, as there are a couple of other ways to go about opening the Start menu. The first way is by using what's known as the Windows logo key. There are two windows logo keys on most 104 key Windows keyboards. Going out from the spacebar, on the bottom row, they are the second key on either side. You can press either Windows logo key from wherever you are, whether you're in an application, or on the Windows Desktop. For example, I'm going to tab over to my Desktop list view. TAB. Toolbar Launch Internet Explorer Browser button. A series of graphical buttons menus usually contain the same options. TAB. Task bar. To move through items, press LEFT or RIGHT ARROW. TAB. System tray. TAB. Desktop list view. And now I'll press the Windows logo key. Left windows. Start menu. New Office Document. To navigate, press UP or DOWN ARROW. N Now, let's go ahead and open an application. Almost every computer has a program called Notepad. Notepad is located within the Programs sub-menu under Accessories. You can down arrow until you hear the word "programs submenu" or you can press the letter "P" to move directly to it and open the corresponding submenu, provided that there is nothing else in your start menu that begins with the letter P. Now remember, as with your Desktop list view, you can add and remove Start menu items. So when you activated your Start menu, you may not have heard the same things on your Start menu as are on the computer I'm using. So I'm going to move to and open my Programs submenu now by pressing the letter "P". P. Accessories submenu, A. JAWS speaks, "Accessories submenu, A." JAWS is announcing the first item within the Program submenu, which in this case, is Accessories. Accessories is a submenu of the Programs menu. Because the Start menu allows us to use first-letter navigation, pressing P automatically opened our Programs submenu. However, if you have more than one item in your Start menu beginning with the letter P, this would not have been the case. In this event, you would have to press the first letter of the menu item that you'd like to activate until you land on the correct item that starts with that letter. Then you would have to press the ENTER key to open that item. I'm going to press ENTER here to open our Accessories submenu, because that's where the Notepad program is located. ENTER. Communications submenu, C. Because I know that Notepad on my computer is the only item located within the Accessories submenu beginning with the letter N, I'm going to press the letter N now and Notepad will be launched. N. Leaving Menus. Start button, to open press ENTER. Untitled dash Notepad edit. Type in text. One of the last things that we heard JAWS speak was untitled dash Notepad. For those of you who may not be aware, Notepad is nothing more than a basic text-editing program. So now I have two applications open, JAWS and Notepad. I can move between these two open applications with a keystroke ALT, plus the TAB key. I'll go ahead and do this now. ALT TAB JAWS. This announcement let's me know that JAWS currently has the focus. I'll press ALT plus TAB again. ALT TAB. Untitled dash Notepad edit. Type in text. Now we're back to the Notepad main application window. Each time you press ALT plus TAB and release that key combination, you're going to toggle back and forth between the last two applications that you opened. Remember, you can have several applications open at any given time. However, if you hold DOWN the ALT key as you press the TAB key, and keep that ALT key held DOWN, you will cycle between all currently open applications. While doing this, be sure to listen to what JAWS speaks, as if you press ALT+TAB and don't listen to everything spoken, you may skip over a program you want to hear. Also, remember to hold down the ALT key and keep it down while trying this, and only press the TAB key to move from one item to another. If you keep both keys pressed together, the computer will cycle through the list of running applications too fast for you to hear anything. So, in summary, you want to hold down the ALT key continuously, and press the TAB key one Tab at a time, until you hear the program you want to move to. Then release both keys and that program will come into the foreground, or as they say in Windows terminology, it will receive the focus. My focus is currently on Notepad, but I'd like to go directly back to my Windows Task Bar. To do this, I'll use the WINDOWS key plus the TAB key. Press windows+tab. Task Bar. To move through items, press LEFT or RIGHT ARROW. Excellent. Now we can tell whether Notepad is listed as a running program on the Task Bar. Press your LEFT ARROW key. JAWS says: JAWS TAB. There's JAWS, right where it was before. Press RIGHT ARROW again. JAWS says: untitled dash notepad. TAB. Ok, so we hear that Notepad is the last item that appears on our Task bar, moving from left to right. Now remember, the Notepad application is already opened, we're just simply moving along the taskbar to hear what programs are currently running on the computer. Another technique that I'd like to show you for accessing open applications from the Task bar is by using the JAWS Window list dialog. This is a feature built into JAWS that when activated, allows you not only to bring up a list of open applications, but also lets you hear the state of any of those applications, whether they are minimized, maximized, or restored. I'm going to go ahead and bring up the JAWS Window list dialog by pressing the key combination of INSERT+F10. JAWS says: window list dialog, running applications, List box, not selected desktop. To move to an item, press the arrow keys. Desktop. We end up in a vertical list and we heard JAWS speak, "Desktop." I'm going to press DOWN ARROW to listen to the other items in this list. JAWS restored. Untitled dash Notepad restored. So those are the only two applications currently open on my computer. You may have a different number open on your computer. As we ARROW DOWN through the list of currently open applications, we not only hear the name of the application, but we hear what window state that application happens to be in at the time. As I mentioned just a moment ago, a window can be in one of three states. If minimized, the application appears at the bottom of the screen on the taskbar as an icon. If maximized, the program window fills your entire computer screen and this is the best way to use most applications with JAWS. If restored, the program is somewhere between being minimized and maximized and this can be changed by the user. Since you may not know the exact size of a program window when it is in the restored state, I usually use the example that it could be the size of a 3 by 5 index card. To be able to have more information on the screen, you want your programs to be in the maximized state, where they fill the entire screen. You can feel free to TAB through the other controls in this dialog box, but just to give you an idea of what else there is here besides our list box, I'm going to go ahead and press the JAWS keystroke to read the current window. That keystroke is INSERT+B. This keystroke is a useful way of rereading a window for information you may have missed, or, as we're doing here, to get some idea of how an unfamiliar dialog is laid out. I'll go ahead and press INSERT+B. JAWS speaks. Another JAWS command I'd like to show you is how to find out what the default button is in a dialog box. First though, what do I mean when I mention, "default button?" In a prior lesson, we learned about different dialog box controls that can be used. For example, list boxes, check boxes, and buttons. As it turns out, every dialog box you encounter will have almost always have one default button, which is the button that gets chosen if you press ENTER over any non-button control in that dialog. So, if JAWS reports the okay button is the default button for a certain dialog box, this means that you don't actually have to tab over to that button and then press ENTER when you get there. Instead, you can simply press the ENTER key from where you are and that button will be activated. The keystroke to check the default button is INSERT+E, as in echo. I'll press INSERT+E now. JAWS says: default button is switch to. In this dialog box, the default button is "switch to." If I press ENTER while I'm on the item currently selected, Notepad, I would activate that "switch to" button. I'll press ENTER now. ENTER. Untitled dash notepad edit. Type in text. We're not going to use Notepad at this time, so I'm going to exit this program now. In Windows, any program can be closed by using the command ALT+ F4. I'll press ALT+F4 now. JAWS says: alt f4 JAWS. When we closed Notepad the focus returned to the JAWS program and we heard JAWS read the title bar JAWS. The next thing that I'd like to show you is how to read items within the system tray. What is the system tray? The system tray is part of the task bar, and when you install programs on your computer, some of these programs place icons in the system tray. The system tray is not accessible from the keyboard with Windows 9X, but it is in TAB order with Windows Millennium, Windows 2000, and Windows XP. The icons in the system tray are most often used by mouse users, who would use the mouse pointer to point and click on them to perform various tasks, depending on the application running in the system tray. It also depends on whether a right mouse button or left mouse button is used, and whether they single or double-click that icon. JAWS has the ability to examine the system tray and place those icons in a simple list view. We'll look at this list view next by pressing INSERT + F11. I'll press INSERT+F11 now. JAWS says: select a system tray icon dialog. List box. This list of items is going to depend on what programs have been installed on your computer. So here, you'll just need to understand the concept we're presenting. In my system tray is an icon for our anti virus software. If I use the JAWS system tray list to right click on it, I get a context menu. If I use the JAWS system tray list to left single-click on it, nothing happens. However, if I use the JAWS system tray dialog box to left double-click on it, I get a dialog box asking if I want to go out on the internet and update my anti virus files. So again, the system tray on your computer will have different icons in it, each with it's own purpose. Earlier in this lesson, I mentioned that windows 98 had an additional component added to the windows desktop. That extra component is known as the quick launch toolbar. This toolbar contains icons that a sighted user could quickly glance at, move their mouse pointer over, and click to activate them. However, that toolbar isn't the most efficient thing to use with a screen reader, so I'm going to show you how to turn that on and off. I usually remove it from TAB order on the desktop if it is there. Windows 98 users follow these instructions (Windows XP follows this section): The quick launch option can either be checked or unchecked, and it is found in the start menu. Press your windows key to open the start menu. Arrow down until you come to Settings and press right arrow to open this submenu. Press the down arrow until you hear taskbar and start menu, then press ENTER. A dialog box opens. This is a multilevel dialog box, and you should land on the taskbar page. If you land on the start menu page, just press control plus tab to move to the taskbar page. Once on the taskbar page, press the tab key until you come to the checkbox called show quick launch. There it is. The spacebar is used to check or uncheck a checkbox. If yours is not checked, press the spacebar to check it, then press the enter key to close this dialog box. Press windows key plus m to minimize all applications and put your focus on the desktop. Then press the TAB key to move to the quick launch toolbar. Once there, show how you can navigate across the icons by pressing left and right arrow keys. Then press TAB several times until we land back on the desktop. Now, let's turn it off. Press your windows key to open the start menu. Arrow down until you come to Settings and press right arrow to open this submenu. Press the down arrow until you hear taskbar and start menu, then press ENTER. The taskbar and start menu properties dialog box opens again. Again, this is a multilevel dialog box, and you should land on the taskbar page. If you land on the start menu page, just press control plus tab to move to the taskbar page. Once on the taskbar page, press the tab key until you come to the checkbox called show quick launch. There it is. Press the spacebar to uncheck it, then press the enter key to close this dialog box. Press windows key plus m to minimize all applications and put your focus on the desktop. Then press the TAB key to verify this is now off as we cycle one more time through the Windows desktop. I'll press TAB several times until we land back on the desktop, and you'll hear that the quick launch toolbar is now gone. This has been an overview of the main windows screen and it's various parts. Let's move on to the next lesson now. 17 07 Introduction to Windows ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marilyn Walker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2007 3:12 PM Subject: [JAWS-Users] what is the system tray > > Hi, all. What is the system tray for? How do things get into it? What's > the point? Thanks. Marilyn > > > > > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.1/640 - Release Date: 1/19/2007 > 4:46 PM > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Visit the JAWS Users List home page at: http://www.jaws-users.com Address for the list archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/jaws-users-list%40googlegroups.com/ Address to contact the management team: [EMAIL PROTECTED] You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "JAWS Users List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/jaws-users-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
