Hi Mike, Mike wrote: > Is there a way to create what Apple refers to Stacks, I think which > are folders, on the doc, using VO? > For the sighted side, all I think you do is move the mouse over the > folder and hold down the mouse until a menu appears. > Don't know if you do something similar using VO.
If you use the Automator workflow from Tim Kilburn's VoiceOver downloads page to put items in the dock, by default the folders placed in the dock will display as stacks if you're running Leopard. I actually prefer to change this behavior in the case of folders with more than a few items or embedded folders because if you set your display mode to folder instead of stack you can navigate much faster. In Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), this other behavior (called hierarchical menus) is automatically supported when you use that workflow. Since your question is about Stacks, the rest of this post will describe how this works in Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), but I'll also mention why this can be a great option to use to You can check the display options of a folder in the dock by using the contextual menu (VO-Shift-M) or Command-Down Arrow or, if you have routed your mouse cursor to your VoiceOver cursor (VO-Command-F5) or have these cursors tracking (set in VO Utility's Navigation options), with Control-Click. For example, to check the downloads folder in your dock, use either VO-D or Control-F3 to navigate to the dock. Then use Fn-Down Arrow to move to the area of the dock that stores files and folders. By default you will have your Documents and Downloads folders in the dock. Use your arrow keys to navigate to a folder you want to check. Bring up the menu with VO-Shift-M (or alternatively with Command-Down Arrow, or else Control-Click, if your mouse cursor is at this location; right-clicking on a two-button mouse has the same effect). VO-Down Arrow to read the display setup for the folder. For your Downloads folder this will be: Sort by "Date Added", Display as "Stack", and View Content as "Fan" with these options checked. If you get the Automator workflow from Tim's site: http://homepage.mac.com/kilburns/voiceover/downloads.html and use it to put a folder in to the dock, the contextual menu (VO- Shift-M) might be set to Sort by "Name", Display as "Stack", and View Content as "Automatic". If you change this to Display as "Folder" and View Content as "List", then when you press return you'll hear "menu" and get a hierarchical menu you can navigate with your arrow keys and by pressing the first few letters of the item names, similar to the way you navigate menus and their submenus in the menu bar. You need to change these option by option: when in the context menu navigate (e.g. VO-Down Arrow) to the new setting you want, such as "Folder" under the "Display as" options, and press return. Use VO-Shift-M, Command-Down Arrow, or Control-click again to view the context menu and verify that "Folder" rather than "Stack" is the checked item. Then navigate (VO-Down Arrow) to select "List" under the "View Content" options and press return. You can't change multiple checked items in the context menu simultaneously, at least not with VoiceOver. Once you have change this to "Display as List" and View as "List" (or "Automatic"), when you navigate to these folders, just press return (or VO-Space, or, if you've routed your mouse cursor to this folder with VO-Command-F5 then Option-click will work). You'll be placed in the hierarchical menu. You'll find you can arrow down quickly through the list. If you placed your Podcasts folder from iTunes into the dock this way, you'll find you can quickly navigate the subscription folders with the up and down arrow keys and initial letters, and use right arrow to enter folders, then use the up and down arrow keys to navigate the individual episodes. To move down into a subfolder use right arrow. To move up a level, use left arrow. You do not have to worry about whether the podcast folders are expanded or not in iTunes. You also don't have to worry about whether new episodes will appear here -- the aliasing in the shell script for the Automator workflow takes care of that. (This will not be true if you use the bare additemtodock software instead of the Automator workflow at Tim's web site). If you navigate to a selection in a music file this way, when you press return, that file will start playing in iTunes. You can still also use the "Open in Finder" option in the menu. Typing "o p" quickly will take you there. Command-Down arrow (or up arrow) and up arrow will also take you to that option (so will Command-Click if your mouse cursor is routed to your VoiceOver Cursor). This option is useful not just for playing podcasts, but can be convenient if you also want to use such a folder to synchronize with your Victor Reader Stream. You can separately keep files of the pocast subscription files for the VoiceOver Getting Started User Guides for Leopard or Tiger in such a folder, for easy access while you're learning the system. Subscribe to these at the iTunes Store by accessing the following URLs and using the item chooser menu (VO-I) to look for the "Subscribe" button. http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=289530738 (VoiceOver Getting Started for Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard podcasts) http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=275302338 (VoiceOver Getting Started podcasts for v10.4 Tiger) Hierarchical menus can be useful for any organizational folders you want to access via fast navigation from the Dock. HTH Cheers, Esther --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. 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