Hi all,
GW Micro have released GWConnect version 2.0. For anyone not familiar
with GWConnect it is an accessible interface to Skype designed to work
with Window-Eyes and other screen readers. It can be downloaded from
www.gwmicro.com/App_Central/Apps/App_Details/?scriptid=1353
Below is a list of the 71 changes that have been made in this version.
Regards Steve.
GWConnect can now be made ad-free for non-Window-Eyes customers. Please
visit http://www.gwmicro.com/catalog/gw_connect for details.
GWConnect's startup time has been reduced.
You can now rename contacts in GWConnect. Either choose the Rename item
from the Contact/Context menus or hit F2. If the renamed text is blank,
GWConnect will fall back to the contact's own display name or phone
number (in the case of Skype Out contacts).
A new privacy dialog has been added to the Skype menu. This will allow
you to limit who can call you, send you IMs, etc.
Also under the Skype menu is a voicemail options window. Here you can
enable/disable whether voicemail is active for your account as well as
record your own greeting. Note that it appears that for this feature to
work, you have to explicitly enable the voicemail option from your Skype
account on the web if you haven't already done so.
Added SMS support. Note that the Skype Kit only supports sending SMS
messages. There is presently no way to receive them. Additionally, you
must have sufficient Skype Out credit or sending the message will fail.
Added an "Answer" item to the Call menu so you can now use this directly
from the main UI in addition to the dialog or global hotkeys.
When a call begins, GWConnect will now tell you who's calling if you
have enabled speech messages.
Under the call menu is a "Hold/Resume Conversation" menu item. This will
let you put the active call on hold locally and resume it. GWConnect
will announce the new status of the conversation; e.g. "conversation on
hold" or "conversation resumed."
The Contact menu has a "View Mood Text" item for people who weren't able
to see the full mood text column. All this does is open a message box
with the mood text for easier review.
Added Alt F1 through Alt F12 (excluding Alt F4) to switch to different
preset contact views such as Skype Contacts, Skype Out Contacts, etc.
The name of the new view is also announced.
There is a new tab in the options window called "Startup & Shutdown."
All choices related to GWConnect's startup, minimization, and shutdown
behavior have been moved here.
Added an option to the Startup & Shutdown tab to ask you whether you
want to close GWConnect on exit. This is enabled by default.
Added the option to have Alt-F4 minimize GWConnect rather than close it
outright. This option is found in Options/Startup & Shutdown.
Added an option to automatically answer incoming calls (under
Options/General). When active, any incoming calls will be answered but
only if you aren't already in a call with someone else. If you are, the
caller is sent immediately to voicemail.
In options/general is an edit box where you can instruct GWConnect to
hang up if you don't answer an incoming call after X number of seconds
(default is 30). Enter only whole numbers greater than 0. Note that this
option will only do something if you have set this value to be greater
than 0 and if you have enabled voicemail for your account.
An option to speak timestamps for incoming and outgoing chat messages
has been added to Options/Speech (default is unchecked). This setting is
entirely independent of the "show timestamps" option for the message log.
A new checkbox has been added to the speech tab to cause GWConnect to
always say "alert" prior to any of its messages. This is disabled by
default. Note that this only applies to program-generated events such as
when contacts sign in, a message is received, etc. Anything you do which
would normally cause speech (such as changing contact views, reading
messages in text chat windows, etc. will not produce the extra
"alert" text.
The message log tab in the options dialog has been renamed to "History."
Under the history tab of the options window is a new group of radio
buttons which will let you choose how much text chat and recent event
history should be retrieved.
The default is to only retrieve activity from the last 30 days.
Added a checkbox under the "Startup & Shutdown" tab of the options
window to let you choose whether to run GWConnect when Windows starts.
There is now no need to re-run the setup program or manually delete the
GWConnect shortcut from the local user's startup group if you want to
change this behavior after installing GWConnect.
A setting has been added to Options/Files which will allow you to have
GWConnect automatically close file transfer windows when they complete.
You can now automatically accept incoming files when the respective
checkbox is checked in the Files tab of the options window. When
enabled, any existing file will be overwritten, and the incoming
transfer will be accepted without any intervention.
If you place or accept a call while one is already active, you are now
asked if you want to put the original conversation on hold, hang up on
the original, or try to merge the calls. If you choose to put the
original on hold, it will automatically resume once the new conversation
ends. This behavior is configurable under the options
window.
Added a "Call Back" button to the voicemail playback window. When
clicked, it will stop the active voicemail (if one is playing) and place
a call to the person who left the message.
If you place a call to one or more contacts with phone numbers defined
(either by you or in his/her profile), you are now asked which one you
want to call.
You can now assign office, mobile, and other phone numbers to contacts
by choosing the "Assign Phone Numbers" item from either the Contact or
context menus. Note that whereas you can assign three numbers to a
regular Skype contact, you can only assign two for a Skype Out contact.
Your Skype Out balance can be viewed via the respective option from the
Skype menu.
You can now view a contact's local time in the view profile window.
The program now says and shows user display names for incoming calls.
Before, GWConnect would show only the person's Skype name or telephone
number.
The names of call participants are spoken when calls begin.
When editing your profile or assigning phone numbers to a contact, each
respective entry is normalized before the change is committed to Skype.
Text chats now include a status line which will allow you to see when
members of the active conversation are typing. Similarly, a checkbox to
options/speech has been added to let you choose whether GWConnect speaks
something when someone in an open text chat types a message. In
addition, GWConnect likewise will send the appropriate notifications to
members of a chat when you type.
Added Control-A, Z, X, C, and V hotkeys to select, undo, cut, copy, and
paste text inside chat and SMS windows.
Messages in text chat windows are now displayed a bit differently to
make them easier to read visually.
When inviting users to a text chat, you can now choose as many people as
you like rather than only being able to add one person at a time.
If you sent a message whose contents was a single emoticon, GWConnect
would play the outbound message sound but failed to display it in the
message log. This has been fixed.
Adding users to an existing one-on-one conversation worked, but the
title bar of the chat window would never update when adding someone to a
conference. This has been fixed.
If a conversation is put on hold remotely or if a participant puts you
on hold locally, GWConnect will now speak and display a message saying
as much. In addition, a short beep will play every ten seconds while the
active call is held.
GWConnect can now detect when the list of available audio devices
changes; e.g. if you plug in a USB headset, GWConnect will re-initialize
the audio devices and try to keep hold of your input/output preferences.
There is still a known problem where
the microphone on certain cards such as the Sound Blaster Audigy will
become active regardless of your preference in the Windows Volume
Control. This is a known SkypeKit limitation awaiting resolution.
If you have more than one voice conversation active, you can now switch
among them by using Control-Alt-F1 to go back or Control-Alt-F2 to go
forward. Or, use the Previous/Next Conversation items under the call
menu. GWConnect will speak and display the information about the new
call which is activated.
When a call ends, GWConnect will speak and display its final duration on
the status line similar to native Skype. If you don't want this to
happen, uncheck the respective checkbox in Options/General.
GWConnect now keeps track of individual conversation durations as long
as they're live. This means that if you switch among conversations,
GWConnect will be able to keep up and display the correct duration on
the status bar. Note that timing will cease whenever a live conversation
is put on hold and start again when the call resumes.
When adding Skype Out contacts, you can now optionally assign a display
name to the newly added phone number.
You can now send multiple files in a single file transfer request.
In the view profile window, GWConnect now shows the person's birthday
(if given) in the default locale's format. e.g. in the US, you will see
something like 8/29/1984 or in the UK, 29/8/1984. We also show the
person's age if his/her birthday is available.
Under the Skype menu is a new item called "Change Language." This allows
you to set GWConnect to run in any of its supported languages. If you
decide to change the language, GWConnect will ask if you want to restart
for the new change to become active.
If you first ran GWConnect in one language, hotkey descriptions in the
options window would always appear in that language even if a new
translation later became available. This has been fixed.
You can now send and receive contacts to people in your contact list or
in text chats.
Use the "Send Contacts" option from the Contact or context menu in the
main window or by clicking the aptly named button in the chat window.
Choose the contact(s) you want to send, and once done, the people at the
other end will receive notifications allowing them to add the contact to
their Skype buddy list, view his/her profile, or ignore the contact.
Added a reset settings option to the Help menu. You will be asked
whether you want to continue. If you answer yes, your settings will be
deleted and GWConnect will restart as if for the first time.
The system tray icon is always present so long as GWConnect runs.
GWConnect now stores window positions in addition to sizes when you move
or size them.
If you moved or resized the main GWConnect window, the defaults would
continue to be used on the next launch. This has been fixed.
Shortened the message descriptions in the recent events window; e.g.
instead of "message received from Blah," there is now just "message from
Blah." Additionally, call durations are displayed when available.
Sent/received messages in the recent events window now include their
contents when applicable.
Under the Call menu are two items for turning the speaker volume up and
down. Additionally, you can use Control-Alt-F11 and Control-Alt-F12 to
accomplish the same from within any other active program. A "speaker
volume" slider has also been added to the devices tab of the options
window. Note that until Skype provides a way to disable microphone AGC,
GWConnect will be unable to adjust your microphone volume. Appropriate
controls will be added once this becomes possible.
Custom contact groups are now fully supported. You can add, edit, and
switch to custom groups of your choice from under the "Custom Groups"
item of the View menu.
GWConnect will no longer receive keyboard focus if it is configured to
run from the system tray on launch.
Unicode (rather than ASCII) text is sent to your chosen screen reader.
Text written in non-Latin languages will be spoken correctly, assuming
the screen reader in question correctly supports Unicode.
Control-Alt-End has been added as a global hotkey to Hold/Resume
conversations.
Added a hotkey to mute/unmute program-generated speech (Control-Alt-F3
by default).
A global hotkey has been added to repeat the most recently spoken
message. it is Control-Alt-F10 by default.
Fixed the problem where the incoming authorization sound would play but
no window would appear.
GWConnect would not always speak or display messages whose contents were
single links. This has been fixed.
An option to repeat the caller ID of an incoming caller has been added
to Options/Speech (enabled by default). When active, GWConnect will
repeat the name of who is calling every five seconds.
Added a hotkey to focus the most recently active chat within the active
GWConnect session (Control-Alt-C by default).
Choosing "Show Main Window" from the GWConnect system tray icon would
sometimes do nothing. This has been fixed.
When you tried to leave a voicemail for someone, GWConnect would
sometimes hang up immediately when the voicemail window opened. This has
been improved. Note that Skype are still investigating voicemail-related
issues that some GWConnect users have reported. An updated runtime will
be shipped with GWConnect when the issues have been corrected.
A number of visual changes have been made which will not impact screen
reader users.
Fixed the issue where the settings file would sometimes become corrupted
at program shutdown.
Many minor bugs have been corrected thanks to error reports. Thank you!
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