Hi Rod,
It's great that you're feeling in a generous helpful mood, so here are some
things you could think about:
* For offering general tech support, reading the gw-info list is about the
best. GW support does a great job, but there are *a lot* of people seeking
help there, so why not try to help them. If you find someone asking general
questions about browsers, you could work your info about T-bird into your
answer. I think this is a good place for a beginning scripter to be.
* For tutorials which will stay around for the long term and be available to
everyone (such as one on installing T-bird with WE), there's the GW wiki.
You sign up for an account, learn how to use the wiki (it's easy to use, but
a little difficult to find the info you need to get started), and then you
write articles.
There is no provision for audio tutorials, however, if you have a web site
where you can host the audio files, then you could link to them from within
a wiki article on the topic. I am not sure if this is mis-use of the wiki
or not (I mean if your article was only a sentence or two and a link to an
audio tutorial), so you might check with GW on this point. However, if you
did make an effort to write an article, and then chose to supplement it with
a link to an audio tutorial, then I don't think anyone would mind that.
You should have a moderately thick skin for writing wiki pieces; they are a
community effort, and anyone could possibly come along and correct or edit
your piece (there are places for discussing such edits if you feel they
weren't helpful, but I'm just saying, don't get too much of your own
personality tied up in a piece so that you don't like anyone touching it).
You can read the wiki and sign up for an account at:
http://gwmicro.com/wiki
* And the last idea I have is to watch the info list, or just ask, and see
if you can offer to write an app for someone to give them an ability that
they need. It's very good practice to write apps which you get to design
(where you decide what it will do), but it's a different world when you are
writing for someone else who is creating the specifications for what they
need an app to do. Also, I find that most of us develop our scripting
technical knowledge, and then start looking around and find it difficult to
come up with an idea for a reasonably difficult, reasonably useful, app to
write. We often end up writing an app which really isn't all that useful to
anyone, and these apps get added to app central and never get removed (even
when the author has moved on to write much more useful apps). They tend to
clutter-up app central so that newbies have a difficult time finding the
useful apps from the sea of all the others. It's better if you know the app
will be useful to your or someone else before you write it.
Well, hopefully one of these ideas will catch your interest and inspire you
to keep on developing your skills.
Good luck,
Chip
-----Original Message-----
From: Rod Hutton [mailto:rhst...@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2013 4:39 PM
To:gw-scripting@gwmicro.com
Subject: Re: E-mail client accessibility
Hi again, Chip,
Great idea about sharing my insights about Thunderbird. It occurred to
me that I could even do an audio tutorial on installing and configuring
Mozilla's browser as well
as the e-mail client. But where would I post them, and would they need
approval by someone? I mean I don't have your reputation. Smile. Taking
it a step further, I would like to offer some tech support in a more
verbal way than through e-mail. Any thoughts? I'm sure you have...you
always have good ones. Smile.
Yes, I do feel I'm missing out by not being able to use your apps, and
it did influence me in my deliberations about possibly goingto Outlook,
well, to the MS Office suite, as you say, since the vba development
environment is available in any of the individual components of the
suite. I would certainly be interested in any further tutorials you
would produce, although I haven't heard all of those you have already
made in the 30 plus introductory set. I'm still wetting my feet in
writing apps. I'm trying to strike a balance between offering help with
the expertise I have, on the one hand, and learning more about
scripting, on the other. And, yes, Chip, I completely agree that we are
all certainly doing heavy-duty open-source work by helping each other
out whenever we do it.
We'll talk soon,
Rod
On 4/25/13 10:43 AM, Chip Orange wrote:
Enjoy Rod, and perhaps you'd like to publish your observations on the
GW-info list; many there I'm sure would find them interesting, and perhaps
you could save someone who is a little short of money, both money and
effort.
Yes, of course I have a lot of respect for the open source community as
well
(that's why we're all here I'd say).
One small advantage to buying the Office suite is that you could then use
the MS Word VBA development environment for writing WE VBScript apps.
Using
an app I've written called Office VBA and VBScript Editor, this
environment
is half way between VBScript done in Notepad, and VB.net done in Visual
Studio. It gives you Intelli-Sense, and type declarations for all of your
variables, functions, parameters, etc., along with syntax checking of all
your code, and an object browser and the ability to work with objects
from
third-party programs.
If there's any real interest here on the list from those who own MS Word
and
are VBScript developers, I'll update my tutorial I once did on this app
(because it has had a lot of features added since I created the audio
tutorial years ago).
(also, for anyone who is developing using the VBA of the Office suite, the
app also provides access to the Intelli-Sense feature of the VBA
environment
in any Office product).
Ttyl,
Chip
-----Original Message-----
From: Rod Hutton [mailto:rhst...@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2013 12:06 AM
To:gw-scripting@gwmicro.com
Subject: Re: E-mail client accessibility
Hi Chip,
This Outlook appears to be a very powerful tool for time-management, and
it's great that you can really access all its features. Honestly, I've
always wanted to own the complete MSOffice suite, simply to be in the
upgrade cycle, and be free of the worry about being able to migrate my
data as the years go by. However, I am developing more and more respect
for open source solutions, and I'm realizing that there is
cross-pollenization going on between all of the software players. This
is even true across platforms, i.e., Windows, Apple, Linux. Specifically
in Thunderbird, I had to install an add-on to enable me to import my
years of e-mail messages, which is why I mentioned to you that it's kind
of hobbiest, but at least it was doable. I figure it goes back to what
time and effort people are willing to give PC studies. This problem with
e-mail has even made me question how much I'm willing to put up with. I
expected Microsoft to offer a free e-mail client, and I put up with
years of disappointment because I figured I shouldn't have to pay for
what had been free in Windows XP, namely, Outlook Express. Funny thing
was, though, I trusted Microsoft more than the open source community,
even though both were offering free solutions. I see now that Mozilla is
just as good, and perhaps better. It was simply a change of attitude
that I needed.
I'll let you go for now, Chip. :)
TTYL,
Rod :)
On 4/24/13 8:56 PM, Chip Orange wrote:
Thanks for the T-bird info; I'll keep it around for anyone who doesn't
care
to spend the money for Outlook.
BTW, one option you have for the Outlook calendar is to have it show your
appointments in a list (just like a list of emails), and this is my
preferred way of doing things; I do know WE users who have it show in a
traditional calendar display, but the list works for me, and Outlook does
all the tricky stuff of telling you if you're trying to schedule a
conflict,
etc. Outlook will even tell you, given parameters such as what days of
week
and what time, and what people are involved, and how long, it will come
back
with a list of times when everyone can get together. In corporate
environments it will also keep track of conference rooms, projectors, and
other shared resources.
Anyway, glad you got what you want for email.
Ttyl,
Chip
-----Original Message-----
From: Rod Hutton [mailto:rhst...@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 12:57 AM
To:gw-scripting@gwmicro.com
Subject: Re: E-mail client accessibility
Hi Chip,
Thanks for your insight into Outlook, your preferring 2010 to the
current, and your idea to just get this app alone rather than the whole
Office suite.
Actually, I just went through the nasty rapids of installing and
configuring MozillaThunderbird, and I'm pretty cool with it. Just to let
you know, what is new to me about this app over Windows Live Mail is
it's numerous options of replying to messages, and things of this
nature. It really seems to be the hobbiest's choice in an e-mail app,
which I guess is open source in a nutshell. It's worth installing and
checking it out, if for no other reason than curiosity and knowledge
gain. What I love the most over WLM is it's traditional pull-down menu
system, both in the main app window as well as in the message window.
Configuring the e-mail is a cinch, once you trust the app to do the job
for you. I'm glad Outlook works for you and your wife; I would have to
see the calendar-type functions of Outlook for myself before I believe
it, but I know GW Micro has done a lot of work with it to make it
accessible. For me for now, I'm just happy to be able to write an e-mail
without having to use Notepad and do cut and paste. :)
Anyway, Chip, thanks again, and take care,
Rod :)
On 4/23/13 9:30 PM, Chip Orange wrote:
Hi again Rod,
Well, already answered most of this as I'm reading messages out of
order.
Any accessibility issues for Outlook 2010 have been dealt with by a GW
app
called Outlook Enhance, which I highly recommend (I'm not sure if it's
being
included with the WE distribution or not).
One point: I think you can buy Outlook alone, you don't have to buy an
Office suite I don't think; and, my own opinion, I'd buy 2010 if you
still
can (just because it probably has more of its issues worked-out with WE
than
2013 does yet). I don't know this however, so maybe you could check
with
GW
support to see what they think of 2013.
Hth,
Chip
From: Rod Hutton [mailto:rhst...@sympatico.ca]
Sent: Sunday, April 21, 2013 9:38 PM
To:gw-scripting@gwmicro.com
Subject: E-mail client accessibility
Hi Chip,
On an unrelated matter, I'm using Windows Live Mail for my e-mail client
(mainly, for the moment, because it's free). However, for literally
months,
I've had tracking issues in my message window and I'm about a step and
a
half away from getting some cash together to buy the MS Office Suite and
so
be able to use Outlook. I noticed you are using Outlook (from viewing
your
message details ), and I was wondering how you like it, and do
you
have any accessibility issues?
Also, anyone reading this: what's the best e-mail client from the point
of
view of accessibility? Bruce, I see you are using the reliable old
Outlook
Express, but, unfortunately, Windows 7 barred the use of it...too bad
for
me! :)
Thanks, Chip, and everyone,
Rod Smile
