Ok, the confusion is easily remedied, the fact is that the start menu, and desk top are two different places on your computer, so if you wish to have short cuts which do things, accessing them easily would probably be from the desk top, and in order to access the installations, that would be the start menu under programs, or the start menu itself. Short cuts are just little tiny data files which tell the operating system to do such and such, so if you have one short cut on the desktop for jfw9 and another in the start menu under programs for jfw9, only one of them will work which has a hot key which you then cannot assign the same hot key to the other. I don't know if you can assign two separate short cuts to the same program two different hot keys, but I suppose you could if you were inclined, :) but the theory as I understand it is that the order which the short cuts are scanned is sometimes the confusion too, does the start menu get scanned first when you press X hot key, or the desk top? :) The start menu is a place to assign hot keys when the desk top seems to always go away after assignment, that's been my experience, because that generally means that either the hot key was assigned for something else that got deleted and is no longer valid, or another program is using that same hot key from the start menu. I have had clients who, after installing a new version of jfw, would assign a hot key to it, only to have one of their old versions come up when they use that hot key, and then complain about X problem which did not get resolved, when all it was is a continuing problem of which version of JFW was active. :) Funny, eh? Not to the end user I assure you, just that I had to go and demonstrate to them which jfw was active when X problem continued to occur when if they were running their newer version, that problem would be either different, or fixed altogether. I hope this helps someone. Curtis Delzer ----- Original Message ----- From: "Yardbird" <yardbird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 5:02 PM Subject: Re: The old Jaws hotkey issue, again Richard, thanks for the explicit instructions about how to find the launch item for each version on the Start menu, and how to open its properties, but I'm familiar with that sort of thing, so it wasn't a hassle at all. But I'll ask you what I just asked Chris Mullins in another reply a moment ago: I'm surprised, although not at all displeased,to see Rick confirming what I just suspected for the first time as I fixed up my hotkeys a few minutes ago. Which is that if you just set this stuff on the Start menu, that's all you need to do. I mean, you can still bring up the properties dialogue for the icon of the same application, and it will still provide that very tab with its edit fields, but 1. that field will be blank although you've entered something into it in the other properties tab on the Start menu, and 2. I'm starting to think it's a redundancy and in fact a needlessly confusing one. Leading you (or me, at least, until a few minutes ago) to infer that you had two properties tabs you had to deal with for each application represented by an icon, and that you had to input the same stuff in both locations. Well, I guess not. Can you speak to this? I think I'm going to simply stop fooling around with icons altogether,I mean adjusting them in this way. When I install an application and am asked if I want it on the start menu and want an icon , too, I'll continue to say yes to both, but if I want to assign a hotkey, I won't even bother touching the icon's properties. Do you know if the start menu launch item's properties take precedence in case of a conflict with the properties details of the icon? Wow. This is definitely not "intuitive" stuff. Not that it's rocket science or brain surgery, as they say, but that isn't what I mean. It's just confusing because of a system design that can be bewildering to an end user. Like me, is that I mean. :-) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rick Justice" <ricjustice@xxxxxxxxx> To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 1:58 PM Subject: Re: The old Jaws hotkey issue, again Hi Rich, That is the way I always assign my hotkeys for Jaws, and have never had a problem. I don't quite understand the difference, but I have never assigned a hotkey from the desktop icon. Richard Justice www.blind-computing.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard sherman" <squirman@xxxxxxxxxx> To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 7:24 PM Subject: Re: The old Jaws hotkey issue, again Hi Yardbird, I have two suggestions for you. Option 1 is to manually find your problem: 1. go to start/programs/jaws x (where x represents every version of jaws that is installed). 2. Press the right arrow key once. Arrow down or up until you find jaws. 3. Press the applications key. 4. Find properties with the arrow keys and press enter (or use the R key). Alt + enter does not work here. 5. Tab until you are focused on the shortcut key field and see if it matches what you have for desktop icons. Suggestion 2 is to download a program, called hotkey, to help you: 1. go to the jfw lite programs page found at http://www.jfwlite.com/programs.html 2. Press jaws key + f7 to open the links list. 3. Press the H key a few times until you hear Hotkey. 4. Press alt + m to put focus on the 3 links there concerning the program hotkey. 5. Download the program. It does not install but just uses a simple .exe file. 6. read the hotkey helpful hint link to use the program. 7. Read the results and compare to see if your hotkeys are set properly. HTH rich ----- Original Message ----- From: Yardbird Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 10:37 PM the topic of how to successfully set a hotkey for launching Jaws has come up repeatedly over the past year, as Versions 8, and now 9, seem to be troublesome for a lot of users in this respect. Well, I was doing okay with version 8 for a while after finally getting a hotkey assignment to stick (I forget how, exactly), but now I've installed Version 9 and it's even stranger than before. First of all, let me make it clear that I basically know how to do this. At least I know how to do it for any other application that's represented by an icon on my desktop. Select the icon, press the context menu key (right side of spacebar, to left of Control key) and choose properties. Tab, and you're in the edit field for establishing a hotkey. You don't even have to bother pressing control and alt, because that's the standard combination and Jaws will insert that for you. All you have to do is press the letter key you'd like to use. Then you hear Jaws read the edit box, and it'll say something like Control Alt J. Which is what you wanted. You tab down to OK, press Enter, and there you go. Well, since Jaws 8, everyone's had to do all sorts of acrobatics to use this feature. Advice floats around like urban myths. Use this letter but not that letter. It's okay to tab away from the field, but don't tab back to it or what you entered will disappear. Or don't tab at all, just press Enter. If you tab further into the dialogue, it will delete your entry. And so forth. Now, none of that ought to be necessary, of course, and it didn't used to be. Until Jaws 8. But whatever. Now it's really interesting. I actually managed to set Control Insert J for my new Jaws 9, and changed my hotkey for Jaws 8 to Control Alt K, just in case I need to use it. And both settings stayed set, which I thought was a good sign. But now, if I exit Jaws 9 to see if restarting it will stop a bad behavior (don't ask) and then press Control Alt J, what comes up but, yep, Jaws 8. I went to the Desktop and rechecked. yes, everything is still set just as I set it. But it's working the wrong way. Ah, here's a thought, just for the heck of it. Let me exit Jaws 9, then hotkey Control Alt key and see if it actually *also* brings up Jaws 8 or, maybe, launches Jaws 9, so that it's all backward. Hang on.. Nope. Control Alt K brings up Jaws 7, which is what it used to do before I changed everything around. And if I go into the properties for the Jaws 7 icon, it says it has no hot key, just as I'd think it would. Nonetheless, it's as if Jaws 7 is still K, Jaws 8 is still J, and Jaws 9 has no hotkey. none of which is what properties say. Has anyone been through this, or anything like it? I've tried this repeatedly but can't get these hotkeys to behave correctly. Out of ideas. thanks. -- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- JFW related links: JFW homepage: http://www.freedomscientific.com/ Scripting mailing list: http://lists.the-jdh.com/listinfo.cgi/scriptography-the-jdh.com JFW List instructions: To post a message to the list, send it to jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a message to jfw-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line. Archives located at: //www.freelists.org/archives/jfw If you have any concerns about the list, post received from the list, or the way the list is being run, do not post them to the list. Rather contact the list owner at jfw-admins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx