Thanks so much Carolyn Esther and everyone else who posted suggestions!
Your posts enabled me to solve my problem and finally understand what Kevin
was trying to communicate, though I still have a couple questions.
Under voiceOver Utilities -> navigation -> the "automatically interact
when using tab key" option is checked (default setting). Still, when I
started Mail I was pointing to the table of mailboxes. Without interacting,
my arrow keys appeared to traverse my folders. I then pressed tabbed and
would always highlight the message that was last in focus during my previous
mail session. I was unable to move more than a few messages up or down.
When I highlight my in-box and use either VO+rightArrow twice or VO+J to get
to my list of messages, both the option+arrow and VO+shift+home/end keys
work exactly as everyone described. I'm curious why the tab key interacts
with the elements in both the VoiceOver utility and system preferences
dialogs? Is there a VO configuration active for the Mail app that I've not
found? I know I have a lot to learn, but is this app following a different
convention?
My second question is whether there is any documentation of the mac wide
keyboard short cuts such as control-F2 and option-DownArrow? Before posting
I looked through every option in the menu as well as Mail help and couldn't
find a solution.
Thanks again to everyone. Time to start playing with mail on the Mac!!Geoff
----- Original Message -----
From: "Esther" <mori...@mac.com>
To: <macvisionaries@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, August 16, 2010 1:38 PM
Subject: Navigating the Mail Messages Table [was Re: Navigating to the top
or bottom of a table.]
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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