Hi Graham and Ian and all, I'd like to back up what Graham said with some more thoughts. In the past (up to Office 2003, ie before the ribbon) with Word and many other Microsoft programmes it was really very easy to teach new users the basics so they could be working on their own quite quickly. As most things were accessible through the menu bar you only had to teach someone a few things for them to be able to do a lot, EG: Alt to get to the menu bar, then right-left arrows to move through each item (File, Edit etc) and then up/down arrows to move through the options in the drop down menus. This way the user didn't actually have to memorise any shortcut keys, and it was clear and easy and logical. They could learn more shortcuts for faster access (eg Control s for save) as they went along, and this was easy to do as the shortcut was listed on the menu item. The new ribbon system has completely changed this whole way of working and removed the ease and simplicity. I know that many many people absolutely hate the ribbon, not just Jaws users, but huge numbers of sighted users too. Yes, I'm sure that it is possible to learn it, and I'm sure there are many people who think it's great, but different people work and learn in different ways and it seems me that the old programmes could cater for these different people. They had icons for the mouse users, and menus for keyboard users or those that prefer to see things in lists rather than pictures and diagrams scattered around the screen. This has now changed and it seems to me that everyone is being forced into one way of working. Graham says that Windows 8 will be even more different, so I fear that it will bring many more problems and complaints. Belinda -----Original Message----- From: Graham Page Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 2:09 PM To: jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [jaws-uk] Re: Problems with newer programmes eg Win7, Office 2010, WLM etc Hello Ian. I think there is plenty of evidence out there that key strokes are far from intuitive. There are menny examples but let's take a commonly used one. To access the current message in Outlook 2007 in a browser, you press alt h followed by x then v. Alt h takes you to messages. No h anywhere in messages. X then takes you to actions, no x in actions, though V for view in browser works. The point is that short cut keys have become rather unintuitive. Then when using ribbons, once you get to the lower ribbon, the controls are a mess of buttons, split buttons, check boxes and drop down lists. I know FS has produced the virtual ribbon but that is a rather screenreader specific thing. I would be very interested to hear how you would go about directing a new computer user to use the ribbon. I have found that in general the only way is to teach short cut keys for those functions that are most used such as f7 for spell check, control n for new message or control o for opening a new document but this is not really ideal and it does not give the new user a full picture. Regards Graham -----Original Message----- From: jaws-uk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jaws-uk-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Iain Lackie Sent: 18 April 2012 13:23 To: jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [jaws-uk] Re: Problems with newer programmes eg Win7, Office 2010, WLM etc I'm still not encountering problems with Windows Live Mail and JAWS. With any change, there is a learning curve. I wonder if people aren't willing to take sufficient time to learn. Freedom Scientific have obviusly taken the difficulties people were having with the ribbon as they have introduced to JAWS the Virtual Ribbon view. It is my belief that there is a lot of expression of the view that certain programs don't work as well with JAWS which is expressed at second hand and is not in fact the case. I expect that having expressed this view, lots of flak will come flying my way. Iain -----Original Message----- From: Belinda P Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 12:25 PM To: jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [jaws-uk] Re: Problems with newer programmes eg Win7, Office 2010, WLM etc This message follows on from the jaws and WLM discussion really, but is a wider subject than just about WLM. I am not a Jaws user myself (I teach people to use it, hence being on this list), but I do like to use the keyboard a lot, rather than the mouse as I find it so much quicker to do most things. What I feel is that older programmes worked so much better with the keyboard than newer programs. Windows XP, Office 2003, Outlook Express for example, these all worked really well using the keyboard, and were quite easy to teach to Jaws users. Now though - with Vista, Windows 7, Office 2007/10, Windows Live Mail etc - it has become a lot harder to use the keyboard with these programmes, and therefore a lot harder to teach. And what I notice is that people say there are problems with Jaws working with these programmes (at least at first, until Freedom Scientific sort it out). So isn't it a problem with the way the programmes are written and designed, rather than with Jaws? Shouldn't we be feeding back to Microsoft about the way these programmes are written these days? I hope I'm making some sense, I'm finding it a bit hard to put this into words. What do people think? Belinda -----Original Message----- From: Husna Begum Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 11:07 PM To: jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [jaws-uk] Re: jaws and wlm - or Thunderbird but what i want to know is how comes jaws doesn't support wlm etc fully, it's been out for 3 years or something. the support should not be still patchy after all this time. Husna -----Original Message----- From: David Bailes Sent: Tuesday, April 17, 2012 10:28 AM To: jaws-uk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [jaws-uk] Re: jaws and wlm - or Thunderbird Hi Belinda, Mozilla thunderbird is an alternative to windows live mail. Unfortunately, both programs have accessiblity problems, and problems with Jaws support. David. original message: What about Mozilla Thunderbird? Is that an alternative to Windows Live Mail? 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