hi Alex! welcome to the wonderful world of Mac! I'm sure you'll love it once you get everything figured out. I'll try to answer as many of your questions as I can and hopefully the other listers will chime in on the rest.
2. html content areas. I don't believe the single key navigation wraps. if you're on the last form field on the page it will just leave you there and say no more elements found. however, if you press shift+f, for example, it'll take you to the form field above it. It is best to use the left and right arrow keys when browsing websites if you're not looking for any particular element. Yu mentioned finding an article and getting past all the social networking frame and stuff at the beginning. when you find the heading that contains the article, use the right arrow key to get past all the other stuff. on Mac, the left and right arrow keys are equal to using the up and down arrows to navigate through a website. you can also use VO find with VO f if you know the first few words of the article. but left and right arrows navigate through the page similar to how you do on windows. 3. the finder can be a tricky thing at first. In Lion, and you would be using Lion since you mentioned single key navigation, the finder defaults to all files. This is a view where it shows you all your files. I haven't wrapped my head around how to use it yet so I changed my finder back to how it was in Snow Leopard. You can do this by: A. go to the finder and open a new finder window by pressing cmd+n B. go to finder preferences by pressing cmd+comma. C. right arrow over until you hear: new finder windows show… D. right arrow over again and you will probably hear all files pop up button. E. VO space on the pop up button to open it. F. VO down arrow until you hear your name. this is your home folder. G. VO space when you find your name and this will close the pop up button and change the selection from all files to your home folder. H. close finder preferences with cmd+w. I. close the finder with cmd+w J. open the finder again with cmd+n. it will probably default to showing as icon view. To be safe, change the view to column view with cmd+3. VO will say "as columns checked." It looks way more complicated written out than it actually is. trust me. Your home folder is where your desktop, documents, downloads folder etc are stored. When you have it set to column view, it's similar to how it was in windows explorer, at least I found it was. If you want your documents for example, all you have to do is interact with the file browser VO+shift+down arrow and VO down arrow til you hear documents. use VO right arrow to open documents and VO down arrow to look through its contents. VO left arrow closes it and takes you back to your home folder. I found this the easiest way to browse the finder. Apart from the file browser, there is a side bar in the finder. You can get to it by VO left arrowing when you're not interacting with the file browser. The side bar is where you can see other computers on your network, other drives you have hooked up to your computer etc. Spotlight is a universal find feature. If you're not sure where exactly a file is stored on your computer, you can search for it in spotlight. Finder is where everything is stored and organized and spotlight is a quick way of finding things if you're not sure where they are. 4. the left hand menu bar or second layer menu bar is like the system tray in windows, yes. you activate it by pressing VO m twice quickly and then VO arrowing through its contents. 5. VO should start when your system starts as long as you don't turn it off before shutting down. If it doesn't I'd say maybe wait five minutes? just a really basic estimate though. But as long as you keep it on when you shut your computer down, it should come on when your computer starts up. 6. Voiceover can read the time and day by using the keyboard commander. You mentioned it already, maybe go into voiceover preferences/general and make sure "allow voiceover to be controlled by Apple scripts" is checked? strange that it would be using the system voice. 7. from the dock, or launcher as you called it, downloads, documents and applications don't open as they normally would. To open downloads for example, use VO+shift+m to bring up the contextual menu. VO down arrow until you hear "open downloads." VO space on open downloads. You will be then placed in a new finder window with downloads selected. interact with the file browser and VO right arrow to open the folder. documents and applications are also opened from the dock this way. Further down in your list of questions you asked about using the contextual menu and removing things from the dock. I'll cover those right now since we're on the topic of the contextual menu. Like I mentioned before, you bring it up with VO+shift+m . Let's pretend you wanted to remove iPhoto from your dock. go to the contextual menu. The first item you will hear will be "options sub menu." VO right arrow to open the options submenu and there you'll find "remove from dock" among other things. The contextual menu works similar to how it does in windows. You can use it to find out information about a file, burn it to CD, duplicate, make alias etc. 8. the desktop is where you land when your computer boots. On it you will see macintosh HD which is your main drive, as well as any other drives, CD's or DMG files you have open. You can use VO right and left arrow to go through items on your desktop. cmd+delete deletes them and cmd+e ejects drives or DMG files. The person in the podcast mentioned having his home folder open on his desktop. sometimes the terms desktop and finder are confused…he probably meant having his home folder open in a new finder window which I described above. 9. When you're in safari and not interacting with an HTML content area, VO left arrow. You will probably hear apple.com button. news button. youtube button. These are bookmarks that Apple has built into Safari. As you begin to add your own bookmarks, the default ones will be replaced with your own. If you want to add a bookmark, press cmd+d when you're on the page you want to add and an add bookmark dialog will come up. I choose to add all of mine to the bookmarks bar cuz I like that. I'm not sure about adding them to folders. You can also get to your bookmarks by going to the menu bar in Safari with VO+m and right arrowing over until you hear "bookmarks menu." You switch between windows with in an application with cmd+accent, the one right beside the 1. If you have two windows open in Safari, for example, you can quickly switch between them with this command. It works in all other applications too. If you have two documents open in text edit you can switch between them the same way. 10. downloading and running programs is a bit different to how it is on windows. Most programs come as .dmg files which are like virtual discs containing the program. Since they're like virtual drives, they will appear on your desktop. A. locate the .dmg file on your desktop for example skype.dmg. B. open the .dmg file with cmd+o. C. interact with the browser. D. VO down arrow until you hear, for example skype.app. or if you don't have show extensions turned on it will say skype selected application. E. copy the application to the clipboard with cmd+c F. open the applications folder on your dock and paste the .app file in. G. close all finder windows by pressing cmd+w until you get back to your desktop and once again locate the .dmg file. press cmd+e to eject it and get it off your desktop. I used the example of skype but that's how you install most programs. The program is now in your applications folder. You can add it to your dock by A. go to your applications folder and open the program with cmd+o B. when the program is open, bring up your dock vo d. C. locate the program on your dock, it will say running next to it and will probably be near the beginning. D. bring up the contextual menu, find the options submenu and inside there will be "keep in dock." 13. You should just need the magic trackpad. You can perform mouse click commands with VO. 15. VO m brings up the menu bar. the apple menu is the first item on it. You can use your right and left arrows to go through the menubar options and up and down arrows to open them just as you would in windows. 17. VO right and left arrow kind of act as control tab and control shift tab when there are tabs available. use VO left and right arrow to explore the screen and when you encounter a tab, use VO space to select it. You can then use VO left and right arrows to continue exploring the screen and you will see the items in that tab. If you want to switch between running programs like alt tab on windows, use cmd+tab. I hope I at least answered some of your questions! feel free to get with me on skype if that would be easier, my username is canadian_diva . happy mac-ing!! :) peace and positivity Jessica and Goldina follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/canadian_diva On 2011-08-18, at 7:10 AM, Alex Hall wrote: > Hello all, > I was on here a few months ago asking some basic questions about vo. > Now, I am proud to say, I have a Mac Mini sitting on the desk all > shiny and new from Best Buy as of two nights ago. I can get around > the basics, like system or vo settings, and I can do things like > checking for updates, but beyond that I am stuck. Here, in no > particular order, is my list of questions. Rest assured, more will be > coming! > > 1. It seems that dialogs have access keys (on Windows, one might > press alt-a to activate the "add" button, for instance), since I found > that pressing s within the shutdown dialog will make the computer > sleep. However, vo will not read these keys, if they exist at all, so > I never know what letter will activate a button. I have found the > option to use cmd+letter to move to elements starting with that > letter, but that is not the same thing since developers can assign any > letter to be the access key. > > 2. I have trouble with html content (web pages, the App Store, and so > on). I can get around by arrowing from one element to another or by > using the rotor, but I cannot figure out the following: > a. I have enabled single-key navigation on webpages, but nothing > wraps. For instance, if I am below a search edit which is the page's > only input field and I press f, I am told "text field not found" > instead of being taken to the field above me (at the top of the page). > b. How can I just read the page? With jaws on Windows, I can arrow up > and down on the page to read it like a document, which is great if I > don't know what the page looks like or do not have a destination in > mind. Arrowing in vo, though, seems impossible. Am I to read pages > element by element only? If I go to a heading which is, say, an > article title, how can I just arrow down to see what the article is, > instead of reading the page from my current position? This is useful > if there is a by line, a social network sharing frame, or other > content after the heading but before the article. > > 3. How do I use the Finder? I have no idea what it is doing, and only > found a file I was looking for by accident. Should I use Spotlight > instead? What is the difference? Is there a third-party file and > folder manager that people recommend? > > 4. From what I can gather, the left-hand menu is kind of like the > system tray in Windows, with network information, sound, bluetooth, > and the like. How do I access it? > > 5. When the mac starts, vo does not. I have to hit cmd-f5 to run it > each time, and I am not sure how long to wait (I think I could wait a > lot less time than I am). How can I fix this? I am running a usb > keyboard, no mouse, and no monitor at the moment. > > 6. Can vo announce the time and date like most other screen readers? > This is not a big deal to me, but it would be nice sometimes. I have > enabled the keyboard commander, but the speech used is not my vo > speech, but rather the system speech, and there is quite a delay > between the keypress and the speaking. > > 7. Why is it that, when I go into the launcher and try to open my > downloads folder, nothing happens? It should have two files in it, so > I know it is not empty. I am pressing enter, space, vo-space, the up > and down arrows (quick nav is on), but nothing happens. > > 8. Nothing ever goes onto the desktop. I am not sure how to use it > or what good it is, since everything goes to the dock/launcher. I was > listening to a podcast last night, and the host had somehow set things > up so that his desktop had his home folder opened on it. How do I > manage my desktop, and how is it different from the dock? > > 9. Safari: aside from the html questions, how do I do things like > view bookmarks, sort bookmarks into folders, view open tabs, switch > between tabs, and so on? Will vo work with Firefox? Might I be better > off using that over Safari? > > 10. How do I get to things I download so I can open them? I have so > far downloaded two programs, but I am not sure how to run either one > of them. I think I ran one, but I'm not sure, and now I can't get the > other to work at all. > > 11. Is there a way to read daisy, for free, using Alex? I know > Bookshare has a program, but I don't want the voices it comes with, I > just want to use Alex to read bookshare and other content. > > 12. I see that there are some scripts in the keyboard commander. How > do I view these scripts or assign my own? I am not asking for > programming help, but rather for help on how to view the contents with > a mac or tell vo where to find scripts I may make in the future. > > 13. I am thinking about a trackpad of some kind (this is, after all, > a mini, not a laptop). Would there be any advantage to the Magic > Mouse over the Magic Trackpad? As I understand it, they are the same > except that the mouse lets you click. Is that of any help in vo, or > should I just go for the trackpad? > > 14. Maybe macs don't work this way, but how do I bring up the context > menu for an item? For instance, I was trying to figure out how to > remove icons from the dock, and I thought that if I could just > right-click the icon I could select the option to remove it. How does > one right-click, or does that even do the same thing as it does in > Windows? Do items have contextual menus at all? > > 15. How can I quickly access more menus? The tutorial talked about > vo-m to get to the menu bar, but that only brings me to the Apple > menu. Is there a way to jump directly to edit, view, and the others? > > 16. I installed Ventrillo, but it just kept saying "busy" when I > tried to activate any of its buttons. I couldn't shut down because > Ventrillo wouldn't quit, and the force quit keystroke the mac told me > to use just resulted in vo saying "busy" over and over again. > Finally, for the second time today (the first while installing) I had > to do a hard shutdown. How often does something like this happen, and > how do you resolve it? > > 17. How do I quickly switch tabs? In the vo utility, for example, is > there a keystroke like Windows' ctrl-tab to move from category to > category, or at least from tab to tab inside a category? It seems very > slow to have to keep tabbing until I wrap back to the tab selection. > > Thanks in advance for any help, and sory there are so many questions! > So far, this is quite a shock, having been a Windows man for all the > years I have used a computer. I am hoping that, in the two weeks > before I can no longer bring it back to Best Buy, I come to love the > Mac... Time will tell, I suppose, but I am rather frustrated at the > moment with my near inability to use the internet or app store, among > other things. That said, I recently discovered the full customization > and power available with commanders and activities, all much easier > and (seemingly) more powerful than jaws or nvda. I also love the > activity monitor - much easier to use than the resource monitor in > Windows, especially the processes tab. > > > -- > Have a great day, > Alex (msg sent from GMail website) > mehg...@gmail.com; http://www.facebook.com/mehgcap > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
