Hi Martin, I think you've run up against the accessibility issues in the Java Preferences Utility, which is why you can't find options to clear your temporary files. This issue was discussed on list last year in connection with updates a user had to run to update Blackboard, and that discussion centered on Lion. However, the same underlying accessibility issues for using Java Preferences were true for Snow Leopard. I've changed the subject line of the post so people will know this is a general issue, especially for academic web sites of different sorts that use Java for course materials, and not specific to the fact that you were using Snow Leopard. You'll find most of the relevant posts if you search the Mail Archive for this list, and enter a search string like: from:Esther java preferences (Case is not important, and when you use the "from:" argument it doesn't matter whether or not you leave a space after the colon". Press Return to get the results.)
The first linked post that gets returned, "Blackboard & Java authentication problems after updates [was Re: technical help]", includes a link to a support page I found at the time, titled "Troubleshooting Blackboard Java Issues:" https://elearn.usu.edu/java/java_tutorial.html I suspect you'll want to refer back to this web page for other related issues, such as clearing Java certificates. There's a Safari reader option for reading this page (Command-Shift-R). If you refer back to this page, you may prefer to ignore using Safari reader so you can navigate directly to the links for "Clearing Java Cache", "Clearing Java Certificates", etc. at the top of the page. In any case, here's the list of instructions pasted from the linked page on clearing the Java cache: 1. Using the spotlight tool, search for "Java Preferences" 2. Open Java Preferences and click the "Network" tab. 3. Click the "Delete Files" button. 4. When prompted to "Delete the following temporary files," make sure both options are checked and click "OK." The basic issue is that there's an accessibility problem with the Java Preferences Utility such that VoiceOver doesn't see and let you navigate to the tabs that are present in the normal fashion and there are also issues with accessing items in the tables on these tabs with VO where you hear "empty table" even though there is content. So the immediate answer to your question about why the Java Preferences utility doesn't seem to have anything to do with the Java Runtime Environment caches is that you've opened the utility on the "General" tab, and VoiceOver isn't showing you the tabs for "Security", "Network", and "Advanced". If you could navigate to the Network tab, you'd see a "Delete Files" button with a help tag that this is for deleting temporary Java files. The discussion evolved from trying to give instructions on how fix a single issue to how to navigate to the different tabs, since the user may have to deal with more than one issue and require access to multiple tabs. The workaround I posted was based on using Mouse Keys to move your mouse cursor down from the title bar of the Java Preferences window onto the tabs. If you set your announcements under verbosity in VoiceOver Utility to check the box for "Speak text under mouse after delay" and set the slider so that this delay is 0, then you'll be able to hear when reach the tab you want and click it using Mouse Keys. This is described in the archived post: • Moving your cursor with Mouse Keys as an accessibility work around for Java Preferences [was Re: changing tab group in java preferences using Voiceover] http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/msg11288.html Dónal filed another bug report with Apple's accessibility team based on the discussion posts. I think the accessibility of the Java Preferences Utility may still be an issue, but I'm not running Mavericks, so I can't tell. This may be moot if people are now using utilities for Oracle's Java releases instead. I hit this issue back in Snow Leopard whenI had to update the version if Java that was running. As always, you can read up and down the other posts in the archived discussion post threads using access key shortcuts, which for Safari on a Mac are Control-n for the next message in the thread Control-p for the previous message. And if you share this information with a sighted colleague who has started Safari on a Mac with VoiceOver turned off, his or her access key shortcuts will be Control-Option-n for the next post and Control-Option-p for the previous post. HTH. Cheers, Esther On Dec 4, 2013, at 8:53 AM, "Martin G. McCormick" wrote: > I must occasionally use the skillsoft web site which > makes extensive use of java to run what they call their "course > player." It tends to lock up tighter than a drum and if you poke > and prod long enough, one can get this document to appear > telling you things to try such as setting the browser type to > safari and clearing the cache. That is easy enough to do but the > last step is to clear the JRE or Java Runtime Environment. Like > any really important step, their description doesn't match what > one actually gets so I wonder if snowleopard might have changed > the procedure slightly. > > What you are supposed to do is clear temporary files in > the JRE that may not be suitable for you, when using safari. > > The instructions in the course player said to go in to > the finder menu, select go and then utilities but the only > utility having anything to do with java did not have anything to > do with the runtime environment. > > Thanks. > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. 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