Category: Geeks r Us
I just got a mac book pro theother day and have a few questions on how to do serten things I am totly blind and us the voice over option all the time so knowing how to do it with voice over will be useful.
1: how to navigate through text in a web page As an example: reading the text part of a email message, reading the text of a online news article, reading online stories.
2. how to scroll through all the contents of a web page not just certain parts of it but the hole page at once but one lign at a time.
3. how to leave a program tool bar and how to avoid getting into them in the first place.
4. how to view a list of all installed software.
5. how to uninstall software.
6. how to run apple mail.
7. how to change the time and date.
thanks
Not sure about all the things, as I don't have a mac, but do the following to access programs.
Go to the finder and press command shift a. This gets you to the applications folder. To delete one, just delete it's ienry in the folder. To access apple mail, find it in the list and press command o to open. Also, if you haven't already, press control, option, command, f8 to access the voice over quick start.
you may also want to look in to the podcasts on blindCoolTech, www.blindcooltech.com for the mac related ones. they will help you a great deal
When using VoiceOver, press Command Option H, and it'll give you a list of help topics, including navigation commands for VoiceOver. It's really helpful.
I have a Macbook Pro too. The only strange thing is that I can't type on the box to edit my profile on here. :
Anyways, I hope that helped. :)
thanks everyone thats answered me so far its really helped alot so far. i really love the voiceover and all thats whyiswiched tomac but i used windows for solong now its a big change but im hopping to master the basic by no later then fridayof next week thatsmy gole. i can use all the programs allrightother then the web browser. i still having problems scrolling through email messagess in the email program and does anyoneknow how to remove a email acount?
No, as I nevr even succeeded in setting mine up :). It kept dinging and switching quick nav on and off, and never did what I wanted it to do.e
Yes, as rat said, Mike Arigo's podcasts on blind cool tech are very helpful.
This link will take you directly to the site.
To remove a program, you would press cmd-delete to send it to the trash. Also, to use a program that is on the dock, press vo-d, and then arrow around till you find what you want.
As for interacting with web pages, and stuff in general, when you hit the element that says "HTML content", press vo-shift-down arrow to interact with it. Then, continue with vo-right arrow to read down the page. You can als turn quick-nav on with pressing the left and right arrows together, then just use the right arrow to bring you through. Look at the voiceover manual. It has a lot more in the way of explanation, and it will help you lots and lots.
Yep. I love using safari. I've just got to get that mac, but it's a little out of the question right now.
It's a great browser. It doesn't have all the accessibility tweaks yet like IE has, but it's still a great alternative. Also, the speech on the Mac is so much more pleasant than that of the PC. I found a Daisy reader for the Mac which costs $119, but I'll gladly pay it to be rid of Eloquence, and the RealSpeak voices for reading books to me.
I also need to find a Spanish voice. I don't need quality. I don't need low space either. I just need to find a voice that can speak Spanish, preferably with a Latin American accent. I know about infovox IVox, but paying a hundred dollars for only one voice (of good quality that's true) isn't worth it. Any suggestions?
That command d for removing a program sounds so much better than going to the control panel in Windows to remove a program. lol
How do you eliminate data stored by the program? Under OS 9 and before you did use a control panel, rather what they called 'control panels' and remove the program, the application remover would ask if you wanted to remove associated data.
This would also clear it from the extensions list for Startup. I assume since it's Linux-based your Dock is just a set of linked aliases which pose no problems.
But maybe that key command takes the steps for you / removes data from the user store? What that means is all the preferences you may set in an app, or files the app saves to its own user data location, etc.
The mac was first to have a reliable Add/remove applications process which I described. Some of what you all newer fanboys write is funny, I must admit.
For most programs, you can just do cmd-delete, and everything's gone, but for some, you have to check the /libraries folders and make sure. You can get programs to remove everything, some are free, some paid, but usually, uninstalls are easy.
And because it's unix-based, no dll hell.
Sounds like the /libraries folders are what amounts to /usr/lib on raw Unix distros. Meaning you can see yours as a regular user, or everybody's by looking down the user list as an admin.
Thanks Jesse, makes a lot of sense to me.
The reason in Windows that you get turds left on your hard drive after an uninstall is the newer (relatively speaking) uninstallers know what was installed and only remove that data. Older ones used to dump it all, when users wanted to maintain their user data.
Anyway what you said makes a ton of sense from a technical perspective. I know I'll use it in future.
Well, there's a library folder at the root of the drive, as well as a /users/username/library folder for each user, and you are correct. If you are an admin, you can see them all, but most of the data you want to kill will be in the main library. there are also PList files with your user prefs in your user library folder, so both locations are good places to check.
Awesomeness. Thank you.
Probably the main library folder holds data and settings files that apply to all users think all users/Application Data on Winblows, and your private /user/library is where your individual preferences go.
So, being lazy here and not having read, how do you manage what Windows calls services, or Linux calls spoolers / daemons? On the old Mac, we used to have people control panels -> Extensions -> Startup extensions but obviously that's not there.
I have never been asked this by a Mac user, as their new ones don't appear to give what used to be System 11 or 'bomb' errors, what amounted to too many programs on startup.
If I understand the dock correctly, it starts nothing by itself, it's just a way for link aliases to cross-reference the app.
Thanks
You would be correct on your assumption of the dock, however, it also doubles as the Windows taskbar. The Windows 7 task bar can function like the dock in OSX, too, having aliases to programs, as well as showing the currently running program, and providing controls for it. You manage services from the accounts preference pane of System Preferences. There is also a place in the system folder where it keeps aliases to programs which start at logon, and removing these aliases will stop the starting of programs or services. For programs that require many services, an uninstaller is usually provided in the disk image.
The beauty of the Mac, as you said, is no DLL files, or registry keys. It's very cut and dry.
Thanks for your help.
It sure sounds like though they have obviously added a lot of higher-level interfaces - Coco Basic as the main development environment for one, the guts are still Unix which is so beautiful to administrate.
Yes. the guts are Unix, so a lot of the terminal should be familiar.