Hi Geoff,
First of all, Mary's description of VO Shift Home and and VO Shift End
should work for you as Fn VO Shift Left Arrow and Fn VO Shift Right
Arrow, where "Home" is Fn Left Arrow and "End" is Fn Right Arrow" on a
laptop keyboard. Without the Shift key you move to the top or bottom
of the visible area (e.g., the number of messages that are currently
displayed in your messages table, which is a lot fewer than all the
contents of your Inbox). When the Shift key is added you move to the
top or bottom of the area, scrolling if necessary.
However, for the Mail Messages table there's a lot simpler way to move
to the beginning or end of the table: simply hold down Option+Up Arrow
or Down Arrow keys and wait a bit. This keyboard shortcut works
independent of VoiceOver, and is very fast. Further, if you want to
move to the previous or next message in the thread, pressing the
Option key and tapping either the Up Arrow or Down Arrow key will move
you through to previous or next message in the thread -- whether or
not you have your messages set up to displayed in threaded view.
Again, this works independently of VoiceOver. The order you get also
depends on whether your messages are sorted in ascending or descending
order. To change this order, after interacting (VO Shift Down Arrow)
with the messages table, navigate (VO Right Arrow) to the "Date
Received" column and sort (VO Shift Backslash, where the "Backslash"
key is located at the right edge of the keyboard, above the "Return"
key and below the "Delete" key on an English input keyboard). Note
that on non-English language keyboards these keys are used for
accents, and you need to press VO H twice to bring up the Commands
menu to choose the option to "Sort Column", and that this option will
only be present if you have first interacted with the table, since
available commands are context sensitive. Each sort (VO Shift
Backslash) switches the entries being sorted between ascending and
descending order.
For reference, here's how the Appendix in the VoiceOver Getting
Started Guide defines these keys under the Navigation section, with
the function listed first, and the keyboard shortcut listed second,
first listing the commands for the "visible" area:
"Move to the top of the visible area, such as the window or text area,
where the VoiceOver cursor is located
VO-Home
On a portable computer, press Fn-VO-Left Arrow"
"Move to the bottom of the visible area, such as the window or text
area, where the VoiceOver cursor is located
VO-End
On a portable computer, press Fn-VO-Right Arrow"
And the counterpart commands with scrolling:
"Move to the top of the area, such as the window or text area, where
the VoiceOver cursor is located, scrolling if necessary
VO-Shift-Home
On a portable computer, press Fn-VO-Shift-Left Arrow"
"Move to the bottom of the area, such as the window or text area,
where the VoiceOver cursor is located, scrolling if necessary
VO-Shift-End
On a portable computer, press Fn-VO-Shift Right Arrow"
At least part of the confusion of what results you get depends on
whether you interacted with the table first. The Mac-wide commands
(that are not specific to VoiceOver) work even if you don't first
interact with the table.
Also, this is minor preference, but I find it easier to navigate to
Finder, use Command-Shift-A to go to an application, press the first
few letters in the name, and then open the application with Command-
Down arrow. Commonly used applications are found in the Dock, and most
people eventually customize what they want placed there, so for
applications and utilities that you frequently use, it can be faster
to navigate to the Dock to open your apps. Again, this can either be
done with VoiceOver specific commands like VO-D, or through the Mac
keyboard shortcuts, like Control-F3, just as navigating to the menu
bar can be done with VO-M or with the Mac shortcut of Control-F2. And
navigation through the items can be either through typing the first
letters of the name of the app or menu, or by using the (right and
left) arrow keys, or both. In fact, you can customize and change the
order in which apps appear in the dock by pressing Option-Left arrow
or Right arrow on any given app to move its position to the left or
right. And you can also launch these apps by pressing the space bar.
Of course, if you don't know where to find an app, you can simply
press Command-Space to launch Spotlight and type in the name or first
few letters of the name of the app, and then launch it that way when
your press return. That will find apps that you downloaded, for
example, but didn't move to the Apps folder. All of these latter
keystrokes and combinations are Mac-wide, and not VoiceOver specific,
BTW.
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On Aug 16, 2010, Mary Otten wrote:
Hi Geoff,
What works for me is to hit vo shift home to go to the top and vo
shift end to go to the bottom. I'm using a full keyboard that
actually has home and end keys, so I don't know what funky key combo
you'll use to do that on a notebook that lacks a home and end key.
But I just did this in my email messages table that has several
hundreds of messages in it and it worked like a champ.
mary
Mary Otten
motte...@gmail.com
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