Thoughts on the Jaws 8.0.2173 release
- From: "Rick Harmon" <rharmon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:33:04 -0400
Here are my thoughts on the Jaws 8.0.2173 release. These messages are posts
from my Blog.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Jaws 8.0 final releases
My thoughts on the release of Jaws 8.0.2173 on Thursday June 21, 2007:
The 5th and final release for Jaws 8.0 was released on Thursday of this week.
It was also the actual first non beta release of Jaws 8 for Windows Vista.
I was please to see that build 2173 fixed some of the problems that I and
others were reporting with Outlook Express. If you listened to a message in OE
and then pressed the delete key to move on to the next message without first
stopping speech Jaws would usually stop speaking and you would have to minimize
everything to get Jaws to start speaking again. This first appeared for me in
build 2107. I also noticed that when you tried to reply or forward messages
sometimes that Jaws encountered problems and I usually had to close the message
and try again in order to make Jaws happy again. I also noticed that some
HTML messages wouldn't read properly and you would have to close and re open
them in order to read them As you can imagine, this is very annoying. So I'm
happy to say that at least for me the problem is greatly but not totally
resolved.
Others on the mailing lists are still reporting the virtual buffer issue in
Adobe, IE 7 and OE and Outlook with HTML buffers appearing empty when they
actually have information in the buffer. I haven't encountered the problem yet
here with the current build but I haven't been on the web much the last
couple of days. I really was hoping that Freedom Scientific would have nailed
the problem down, but instead I've heard that FS won't have the problems
resolved until Jaws 9 releases in September or October of this year. So that is
very disappointing that we'll have to use another SMA in hopes of the virtual
buffer bug being finally vanquished for good.
So with great hopes I installed the update on Vista as I was excited to try
Jaws out on Vista finally as a full non beta release.
Unfortunately after installing the update I found that much hasn't change
between beta 2 released on April 26th and the final release. I did see the clock
on the side bar was now updating properly as it didn't do this in beta 2 of
Jaws 8. However the other things that I tested in the 20 minutes or so that
I used Jaws and Vista were no better and in one case maybe worse than with beta
2.
First in the volume control Jaws still doesn't correctly announce the slider
status when the cursor lands on it. If the actual control is at 90 percent,
Jaws reports it to be at 10 percent. If you arrow up or down the correct level
is announced. If you up or down arrow rapidly Jaws will spell out the volume
letter by letter. I find this to be very annoying and I found out that Serotek
System Access did not exhibit the same problems at all.
I then moved on to Windows Mail. This is where things really got ugly for me. I
tried to open and read emails, but as I opened several of them the say
all didn't work and I couldn't arrow through the message either without closing
and re opening the message. The delete before stopping speech problem still
exists in Vista even though it's fixed in the XP side. Also every time I
pressed Insert PGDn to get the number of messages read and un read I noticed the
following problem. It would say something like 4 messages un reads. I have
absolutely no idea as to why this is happening. I didn't notice any of the
problems
with Windows Mail with either Window Eyes or System Access. Both handled the
messages properly and read the status bar correctly. Another problem I found
in Windows Mail with Jaws was when you sometimes spell check a message and try
to re read the message, it will only read the first couple of lines. I then
had no choice but to send the message without being able to read it in it's
entirety.
I Also noticed a dialog message requesting a read receipt wasn't able to be
read with Jaws automatically or by pressing Insert and the b key. I had to
use the Jaws cursor to read the dialog fully.
At this point I gave up and was extremely disappointed and frustrated. It's my
opinion at this time that Both System Access and Window Eyes work far better
with Vista than Jaws currently does.
Tonight I wiped Jaws off the Vista system completely so that I could determine
if Jaws installed cleanly on the system would work better. I noticed several
things that concerned me as I was removing Jaws from the system.
First of all Jaws was not running when I un installed it. I used System Access
to do everything so that Jaws would not be running and possibly cause anything
to not be removed from the PC. Well to my surprise after telling Jaws to be
completely uninstalled along with shared components and user settings I still
found Freedom Scientific files and folders on the PC that I still had to remove
manually. Even more shocking to me was the fact that when I ran Reg Edit
I found many parts from Freedom Scientific still in the registry. This is
really a poor method that FS is using to uninstall their products off the system
in order to cleanly re install the product. And definitely goes against
Microsoft guidelines that say programs should remove all registry entries when
their programs are uninstalled from the system.
So that is now all complete and I'm ready to re install Jaws on the Vista
machine totally clean. This should remove any doubts of whether not my bad
experience
was in any way related to Jaws beta copies being on the system prior to
installing the final build.
I'll have more news for you about this later this weekend.
Monday, June 25, 2007
More thoughts on the Jaws 8 final release
More comments on the final release of Jaws 8.0 and Vista:
Ok as I stated in an earlier post I completely cleared Jaws 8.0 off of my Vista
machine. This included all FS products, the sentinel system rainbow drivers,
the real speak voices, all files, folders and registry settings for Freedom
Scientific from the machine so I could without any doubts say the newly
installed
version of Jaws on the machine wouldn't in any way be effected by earlier beta
releases of the program.
I do not know why we are constantly told to use a full download release file
for Jaws when they have implemented an update system. I use the update system
as that is what it's there for. But everytime I have a problem I'm told to
uninstall Jaws and use a download from the website instead. If the update system
isn't going to do the job then fix it or scrap it. As it stands now it's not
all that useful in my opinion.
Here are some observations about what happened for me after re installing Jaws
8 on the machine. I pretty much retraced my steps that I commented on in
an earlier post about the release of Jaws 8 final for Vista as well as trying
some additional things with the reinstalled version of Jaws. This included
using Windows Mail for several hours, checking the volume controls dialog and
doing other things with Vista including using the Windows Update and going
through control panel where I made some system setting changes which I'll talk
about shortly. I also used the Windows DVD maker program with Jaws and tried
out navigating of different lists in Vista that I had difficulties using with
the betas of Jaws 8 for Vista.
First the volume sliders in the system volume control dialog continue to work
incorrectly as I stated in my earlier post and I've verified this with several
other users. Hopefully this will be fixed in the release of Jaws 9.0 later this
year. Window Eyes and System access both had no problems reading the controls
correctly and neither spelled out the reading letter by letter if I arrowed up
and down rapidly on the slider as Jaws did.
I tried out the DVD maker because I commented that SAToGO worked better than
Jaws 8 did and I needed to re verify this and found that the final jaws 8
release for Vista does work very well with the DVD maker program as in the
betas it tended not to be accessible in all areas.
I continued to have difficulties navigating many different lists in Vista such
as the auto play dialog and the available updates list in windows update
as well as other lists. I continually have problems arrowing up and down
through the lists. I get ding sounds often and when I get the ding sounds the
list isn't read correctly at that point. You have to arrow up and down some
lists many times before you can get to all the items in the list and this is
very aggravating to me. Window Eyes and System Access didn't have problems in
the same lists.
Most of my time using Vista yesterday was to test how Windows mail and Jaws
worked together as I had many problems using the program with Jaws as I stated
in my earlier post. First I didn't have the problem of Jaws not automatically
reading dialog boxes as I stated in my earlier post and hopefully that will
be the case across the entire OS. I only was able to verify that dialog boxes
in Windows Mail read automatically and were able to be read entirely using
Insert + B keys. I had no instances of it not reading any of them this time. I
had also stated that I had difficulties in getting messages to read when
opening them, I did not have the problems this time. I did however continue to
have problems reading messages when pressing delete while reading one message
to go to another one in the list. Jaws would often stop speaking and I'd have
to close the message and re open it to get it to read correctly. In order
to get this not to happen I had to stop speech completely first then press the
delete key to go to the next message in the list. This problem was also
happening in OE and XP on build 2107 but has been mostly fixed in build 2173
but not entirely. For some reason this problem has not been fixed with Vista
and Windows Mail. I also had problems where some messages would not read
correctly when arrowing up or down through them. I had to close the message and
re open it in order to get it to read properly. I also encountered the same
problems when doing forwards and replies where Jaws refused to speak and I'd
have to close the message and start over. Another note when I did a spell check
on some messages and then tried to read through them they would not read
at all or only read a line or two. I was forced to send the message at that
point without being able to re read the message after the spell check. This
occurred randomly and not each time I did the spell check. The final note on
Windows Mail is about the status bar being read. I stated in my earlier post
that Jaws would not read my status bar correctly in windows mail. Well I found
out that if I use the Vista basic color display setting with Jaws the problem
occurs, but when I switch the setting to Windows standard the problem goes
away. Clearly Jaws should be able to use the Vista basic display setting and
not have to be forced into using the windows standard display setting in my
opinion. My biggest complaint so far when being forced to use the windows
standard
setting is that I loose the option to Alt Tab to my desktop when multiple
programs are running as you can do when you use the Vista basic setting.
Also after installing Jaws on the machine I noticed some strange behavior out
of Jaws until I closed it and reloaded it. I couldn't get Jaws to read or
tab through any of the run dialog boxes that come up when you go to install a
program. I was forced to do a Alt + R to go forward to the program installation.
Once I restarted Jaws the problem went away and I'm not sure why this happened.
UAC was turned off for this testing because in beta 2 of Jaws 8 for Vista I had
too many problems with Jaws not speaking at all when the UAC dialog box
came up and I'd have to Alt + A or Alt + C blindly to get UAC happy and for
Jaws to speak again. I will turn UAC back on later and see if this problem
has been fixed or not.
I've also noticed the virtule buffer issue still on this build both in XP and
Vista. I was using Audible to download some books and was downloading the
second part of the book when I refreshed the page I could not read it anymore.
Switching to the Jaws cursor showed that the page was up on the screen.
I really don't understand why this problem has not been fixed, in my opinion
it's a huge bug and causes problems a lot while surfing the internet as well
as using Adobe reader, Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows mail. FS said the
problem should be fixed but clearly it's not as I've encountered the problem
and many on the mailing lists are still reporting it also.
I hope to do much more testing today and tomorrow and put up a podcast
demonstrating some of the problems I'm running into with Jaws and Vista.
I welcome any comments from everyone as to how Jaws 8 and Vista is working for
you. Good or Bad, we all need to know about the problems. This is so FS
can know about them and get them corrected as soon as possible.
I'm still disappointed that Jaws for me doesn't work nearly as well with Vista
as either Window Eyes or System Access do. I had great hopes that FS would
catch up with everyone else when they released the Jaws 8 final for Vista. But
in my opinion this clearly isn't the case. I hope that when Jaws 9 comes
out later this year it works much better with Vista than it does at this time.
Using Jaws, Window Eyes and System Access with Vista has been interesting as
while using each reader with Vista I hear information being displayed to me
differently. Jaws tends to give me the least amount of information and it's a
toss up between System Access and Window Eyes as to which provides more
information
to me as each does better than the other dependant on what program or dialog
you are in at the time. Clearly all three readers are interpreting the
information
coming from Vista differently. I'm not sure which one is the most accurate but
Jaws appears to me at this time to be providing the more minimal amount
of information back to the user than the other two readers. It will be
interesting to play more with Vista to determine which reader is displaying the
information back to the user the most accurately.
Rick Harmon
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http://www.blind-geek-zone.net
and my web Blog at:
http://blind-geek-zone.blogspot.com/
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