They never put it in bait a software. Its hard enough finding bugs
without merging other settings into the mix.
At 01:55 AM 9/15/2011, you wrote:
The merge settings utility seems to be broken. This isn't a huge deal,
though I'm having to recreate a lot of web customization as I go, which is
mildly annoying.
Chris Bartlett
-----Original Message-----
From: jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com
[mailto:jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com] On Behalf Of Hamit Campos
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 5:47 PM
To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com
Subject: Re: [JAWS-Users] JAWS 13 Impressions
See, I new it. I told you all that the OCR would make using things like
Media Center easyer. Some of the other things were kind of under welming for
me too though. But yeah, I'm using JFW 13 right now as a matter of fact, so
far so good.
-----Original Message-----
From: jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com
[mailto:jaws-users-list-boun...@jaws-users.com] On Behalf Of Grant Hardy
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 7:07 PM
To: jaws-users-list@jaws-users.com
Subject: [JAWS-Users] JAWS 13 Impressions
Convenient OCR
I was a little skeptical about how useful the convenient OCR feature
would be for me, but ten minutes with JAWS 13 made me realize that it
will be a fantastic addition to my screen reading toolbox! One place I
found it to be of tremendous use was in Windows Media Center. I do use
my computer as my primary means for accessing TV channels, but while
Windows Media Center works well when you're changing channels,
exploring the guide, or scheduling and reviewing recordings, in
general, informational messages displayed on the screen are not
accessible. For example, in all the setup wizards, you can view the
choices such as yes or no, but not the information on what exactly
it's asking. That means before now, if you wanted to get an accurate
idea of which settings you were changing in Media Center, or access
any advanced features, you needed to have sighted help. I am pleased
to say that the Convenient OCR feature did a great job in this
respect. There were a few clerical errors in the results, as is common
for most text recognition engines, but it made every single screen in
Media Center accessible to me. I'll now be able to use it, as well as
many other formerly inaccessible applications, independently.
Many people have stated that Convenient OCR won't perform very well
when you want to recognize large passages of text; unfortunately, I
think that is a completely accurate criticism. Where Convenient OCR
shines, in my view, is the ability to interact dynamically with the
OCR results. For example, suppose you took a screenshot of your DVD's
menu and performed OCR on it within openbook or Kurzweil 1000. You
might get accurate results, but it would be hard to do anything with
them. With Convenient OCR you'll be able to mouse-click on specific
portions of the text as though you were clicking on part of the menu.
This is where Convenient OCR excels.
I must say I find the default OCR voice to be a little bit silly,
though of course that is easily changed from within Settings Center.
In my case I simply deleted then re-created the voice alias, so that
it would use my current voice and not alter it.
JAWS Cursor support in Internet Explorer 9
I was pleased to learn that JAWS 13 includes full support for the use
of the JAWS Cursor in Internet Explorer 9, but I'm sad to say that
this still doesn't work for me. Attempting to use the JAWS cursor on
any website within IE9 results in a blank message being spoken, or the
computer hanging for several seconds. I have reported this issue to
Freedom Scientific.
JAWS Quick Settings
Of course JAWS quick settings isn't a true "feature" - it's merely a
reorganization of something that was always present in JAWS. That
said, I do find the new Quick Settings to be a more consolidated and
logical approach than the three separate dialogs (adjust JAWS options,
braille settings, and personalized web settings) that used to exist in
prior versions of JAWS.
Results Viewer
This increased flexibility for reading certain virtual screens within
JAWS is certainly welcome-though given that it only supports a few
designated screens (research it, skim reading, and custom summary-none
of which I really need full HTML support for) it's hard to get too
excited about the feature. I'm hopeful that script developers will
find some interesting and creative uses for the feature, though to be
honest I'd be surprised if the average user experienced any incredible
increase in efficiency because of the feature.
JAWS Find with context-specific history
Again, I see this more as an "enhancement" than a feature, but it'll
be nice to have a more relevant display of search history items. For
example, on a frequently-visited forums website I have a couple
different search strings that I utilize to navigate to specific parts
of the forums, but of course those aren't relevant when I'm reading
Email or another website. Now I'll be able to access only search
history items that are relevant at a given moment. It may well be a
good idea, with this increased organization of search history, to
increase the list of saved searches well past twenty-five.
Table layer keystrokes
It seems to me that Freedom Scientific could simply introduce a
feature where users could add or modify the behavior of layered
keystrokes, rather than doing so in each JAWS version and selling it
as a feature. Mute speech (layer + S) and these table navigation
commands could have all been added by an intermediate JAWS user
himself if the option was available in the keyboard manager.
Microsoft Word improvements
While I haven't done anything to test this empirically, it really does
seem to me that I experience a snappier and more accurate experience
as I navigate Word - good job!
Other thoughts
When I was reading the full list of new features, my first thought was
"that's it?" Given the history of pretty radical upgrades to JAWS with
dozens of new features, I found this version to be a bit underwhelming
in that regard.
In FSCast it is also mentioned that for the time being sports scores
will continue to be unsupported within Research It. I was afraid of
this when Research It was released. It relies upon dynamically
changing websites and applications to deliver its results, and that's
a problem unless you're inclined to take the time and modify your code
so that Research It will stay up to date. It seems to me that in most
cases it would be best to simply bookmark a web page or install a
sidebar gadget to accomplish the same task.
That said, I feel that JAWS 13 offers enough, particularly the
Convenient OCR feature, that it merits giving it a spin!
What do others think?
Grant
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