Category: Geeks r Us
For a while now, I have been trying to use window eyes, being a jaws user for a decade now.
However, I find myself having to go back to a jaws demo to do the simplist of things, such as reading dialog boxes that the jaws cursor can do so readily, but I can't seem to find a "jaws cursor" equivalence.
How do you window eyes user do that?
e.g.
right click a file, click properties, and being able to hear the size, type, date, etc.
Right click my computer eyecon, click properties and hearing those attributes.
Or when a dialog box pops up and there is an ok and cancel button, but window eyes won't read the msg automatically. Or that you have missed what window eyes said and you wanna have it repeat.
I have set the keyboard over to jaws layout, however, I can't seem to make it use the capslock as the insert key.
I found a .doc file explaining the transitioning from jaws to window eyes, but that is quite inadequate.
If someone can please explain how these can be done, much appreciated.
Window Eyes, like all good software, comes with a manual. This is not a smart answer, but I say this because if you are switching it would be a great idea to pretend you are a bran new user of a program and forget all you ever learned to do with another program. I'd start from scratch, reading the manual and using the examples to teach me how to use the program. You have only a few basic questions now, but as you use it more I am sure you will find more things to ask, and that are different, so starting from scratch would be best.
Interesting, I did not see any simple way of doing this in my short search, the online manual is here
https://www.gwmicro.com/window-eyes/manual/html/index.html?section8_16.htm
This section deals specifically with reading commands of the mouse cursor, which I presume to be the same as the Jaws cursor, or equivalent, so this might be the solution to your question.
Either way I'd be interested to see what you find out. I am still a Jaws user and do not see an immediate switch, except to System Access or NVDA, but I'd still like to know more about WE.
ins-r does not work, I hoped it would do something, but all it did was shut off window eyes lol
I tried both the focus window and the mouse window. I tried routing both cursors over to the dialog box, and nothing happens when I move the arrow cursor. As you know, all you need to do on jaws is turn on the jaws cursor and rute it to where you want it and you cna view that screen with the arrows. Heck you can even route to any hidden screens that alt tab won't find.
In the browsing mode on internet explorer or firefox, the links and such makes sense, but there is no keystroke for jumping through edit boxes, to edit boxes, combo boxes to combo boxes, and paragraph to paragraph text. The letter c jumps through what is called control boxes, but that is not the same at all. As anything can be labled a control box, e.g. edit box, buttons, combo boxes. shrug
While I understand that gwmicro does not have the responsibility to make jaws users feel comfortable with window eyes. But on the same token, freedom scientific does own a huge share of the market and doing so will make transitioning to window eyes so much easier, thus translates in to more sales for them. Yes, window eyes does have a supposed jaws keyboard layout equivalence, but its like throwing a drowning person a life preserver 3 inches shy of their outstretched fingertips.
There are some things you can do with the jaws keyboard layout, but tons you can not.
This thread is not meant to bash jaws, but to bring to light how much different WE is to jfw and how a jfw users can find such differences so vast.
I will take a day out ot study the manual and hopes that I will have something positive to report.
P.s. I am typing this using jaws lol.
I agree with the poster 2. I don't mean to be a smartmouth, but, you do need to read the manual to understand some concepts of Window-Eyes. I have been a WE user and when I tried to learn JAWS so that I could teach it, I felt the way you do now. Having said that, there are some things that JAWS is better at, e.g., having dedicated letters for buttons, checkboxes, edit boxes, etc, whereas it's C for all controls in WE, I still think that WE is far better screen reader than JAWS. But that's just my opinion. With WE, you don't need to worry about turning on WE cursor or any of those crazy steps you need to do with JAWS. The mouse cursor is already on and so use your numpad keys to move the pointer where you want it to go. To read the dialog box, ctrl-shift-w. What were you trying to do by pressing insert-r? To hear the file properties, alt-f, then r, then ctrl-shift-w to read the whole thing or numpad-7 to move the mouse cursor to the top-left, then numpad-2 to move down line by line. If you've been a JAWS user, why are you transitioning anyway? Just curious.
What I found the most difficult/frustrating about testing Window Eyes, was how much they have their own keys for doing stuff, and you hve to do it through your screen reader .. rather than having your screen reader help you but you use the Windows way of doing everything.
As an example. If you open a mail item in Outlook Express, in Windows you can tab through the fields, sender, date, subject, to etc. But in Window Eyes, the only way I could find to do this was to us alt 1 for sender, alt-2 for date etc .. which are invented Window Eyes key strokes.
I feel a screen reader is supposed to read you the information and allow you to use as Windows natural way of interacting with the programs as possible, not to invent special key strokes.
But, I admit, I only tested WE shortly for a report and both here, and in my evulation in the report, I pointed out I had little time and was not nearly familiar enough with WE to give a good judgement on it.
I'llhave to sit down with a demo copy and the manual I found and spend a day or two testing it out to understand it better.
Hey B, I'm puzzled by your experience with outlook express using WE. I use outlook at work and I can tab through different fields. In fact, you can't even use alt-1 through alt-7 commands unless you're in a details view. I'm wondering if the installation of WE was done incorrectly, perhaps? I dout that there is that much difference between the outlook and outlook express.
See, there in lies the issue. What will take jaws 2 steps, takes WE a few more.
I only use the laptop layout anymore and all I have to do in jaws is capslock p to turn on jaws cursor, capslock left bracket, which is right of the p to route and then use the arrows to go about. I don't have a numpad on laptops and hate using the numpads on the desktop. As a fast typer, moving over to the numpad takes away so much time, especially when its something quick and trivial. At least it should be.
I have since changed it back to w.e keyboard layout and will spend tomorrow learning it myself.
You know, it always behaved a bit oddly. I installed Window Eyes 7.1 from a CD on a Windows XP SP3, clean build, no other software (we had a test lab), and it crashed numerous times during the process, only gve me the alt- options for Outlook Express, tabbing didn't work, and it just did not impress me at all. I tried to get support from their European support staff but, sadly, they seemed very disinterested.
I want to try it again but latest version on Windows 7.
I've tried Window-Eyes too, and I've had the same problems. It crashes frequently, and there's a huge lag. When I first tried it, I was using an old computer with not much RAM, so I assumed that was the problem. But the problem persisted even after I tried it on my new computer, which has plenty of RAM.
My first install of We on my windows 7 32 bit enterprise version with jaws 11 already installed resulted in a system32 error in GWMVID.dll and an error in the video hooks, which was a bit surprising given the way video is handled within Vista/7. So, I've never tried running it again on this particular system as I don't have time to really trouble shoot it now. I do have a copy of WE on my XP system, and I use it to demonstrate for evaluations to insure clients pick the software they prefer. I find that We definitly has it's strengths, and I probably break it out 25% of the time to do things, especially when it's necessary to use Remote access, even though I do have the remote feature for jaws, I find with We, it seems to work more responsive. also, my biggest complaint with We is even after working with it for a few years, I hate the mouse pointers and find the way that jaws handles the different currsors vastly superior. Sort of off the subject this is my biggest complaint with products like NVDA and system access, just not intuitive when needing to access non-standard windows controls, dialogues, or graphics.
Just my opinion for what it's worth.
If I were installing a new screen reader I'd nstall it fresh and get rid of Jaws or whatever I was using, and I mean completely. That way just like in the poster before you can get an untroubled experience. I'm a Jaws user, so can't say, but that manual should guide you, and a fresh install should work as it works if I'm making sense, and if it's just not for you get back to what works. You never answered the question to why you switched anyway if Jaws was doing the job for you? On this site I have read meany users say they like it and have a couple friends that use it. Everyone has different needs though, so.
Well, the purchaser had a contract with window eyes and not with freedom scientific. So if I wanted a screen reader that would work with win7 64bit, I had to use w.e. I can not afford the $280 at the moment to get a SMA for jaws in order to procure 11 64bit.
The quick answer was, it was free? :P
To poster 11. Ideally, you'd want to have window-eyes installed before jaws to insure order of successful installation. Kind of like installing zoomtext before you install jaws.
B, what can I say. Sorry you had a bad experience with the european support staff. Here in the U.S. though, I think that GWMicro support staff are great. Now I'm sounding as though I work for them or something.
I've never had problems with Window-Eyes like what you detailed here. I think your problem is that the number pad is designated as the controller for the mouse cursor. Problem is that the Laptop Layout with WE doesn't actually take into account that laptops don't feature a Number Pad. So you have to go in and manually reconfigure the keys in the Window-Eyes Hotkey menu.
I've been a win-eyes user for nearly a decade now. I have only dabbled with jfw and system access.
For a while there, when finances were low, I flipped back and forth between demos for both jfw and win-eyes.
In the last couple years, I have been using the laptop layout and customized a few keys. I absolutely love the layout now. It took me some time to get use to navigating with the mouse using the laptop layout, but now I find it easy peasy.
Ask away, I'll try to help out where ever I can!
To post 14, I've done litterally dozens of installs of WE on Systems with jaws already present, and I've never experienced what I did when I installed we on my windows 7 system. Ideally, when installing applications that affect the video chain, it's screen readers, then screen readers with magnification, and then magnification only. If only this really worked eh!.
BigDogDaddy! How true. If only things worked the way they're supposed to
Well now we are speaking computers aren't we? If it doesn't work the way expected it is redo time. Lol. I think in this case I'd start fresh, than find someone like Poka Dots to help me make changes to see what I came out with. She's been at it 10, so.
While the system of navigation with WE is different, it is in some cases better. I have found support for skype to work better with WE than JFW. The only thing it doesn't do is the alt 1 through 0 for the chat lines. The other thing I wish GW-Micro would improve upon is the lack of shortcut keys that give a user access to the many possible html tags on a page. Finally, I have found that the preview pain in OE did not read anything, and I was forced to press enter on the message to read it. Overall though, each system has it's advantages and disadvantages.
I just personally feel that WE far outstrips JFW, and I was a JFW user through and through for almost ten years by the time I discovered and switched to Window-Eyes. Oh I don't doubt that I could have found a solution to the problem that made me switch from JFW, but it would undoubtedly have required me to change a setting in JFW or Adobe Acrobat or possibly even install some kind of script file. Not really acceptable when one considers the fact that I tried the same application with a freshly-installed demo of Window Eyes 6.0 (this was what we were on at the time), and it worked flawlessly. In case anyone's curious the issue in question was that while JAWS would read the PDF document, it did so in a way that was, to put it mildly, highly inconvenient. It would read each line of the document as a single word, so that the only way to make any sense out of it was to arrow through it character by character. Not a good thing considering these were assignments for college. Another thing was the undeniable fact that Window-Eyes has far better Sapi support than JAWS. That of course meant that if I got tired of Eloquence, which in all honesty I only use because of the fact that it has the fastest response time of any synthesizer I've used, I could get a break from it by switching to a voice like, say Neospeech Paul or Kate. Try using either of these voices in JFW and it crashes the speech engine. And then there's the fact that GW Micro offers a means, although it is somewhat time-expensive, for the average Joe Schmoe to purchase his or her own copy of WE on time payments and allows youto use the program unrestricted during that period. Suggest that to FS and you're likely to get laughed at and ripped a new one.