2018-07-30 01:58:06

only thing we need now is a key to close chats. before. i could go in to a chat, type what iw anted and press alt 1 to go back to recent. seems that ms fixed that or something because it no longer works

2018-07-30 23:12:44

This petition will have a better chance of reaching Microsoft. Please sign this for Eliza. We really need your help. It would mean a lot to us if you fight for what you all know is right.
https://chn.ge/2Kb9FPd

2018-07-30 23:29:03

Yeah, what do bored people do in their free time? Create petitions.

2018-07-31 02:28:41

First off @127 have you tried skype 8, its actually not that bad. I actually kind of like it better than skype classic. I do not like the UWP app, but the electron app isn't bad at all. I got to grips rather quick with it.

Also, please get yourself some help. Maybe people don't know what you're going through so they can't reach in, in which case you'll have to reach out, but please get yourself some help, you desperately need it.

Facts with Tom MacDonald, Adam Calhoun, and Dax
End racism
End division
Become united

2018-07-31 03:48:51

So I am totally not against Skype 8 as can be seen in this topic, but man performance is really a huge difference in classic skype vs skype 8. I don't know, but navigating huge group chats or huge list of recent conversations is just so much faster in a desktop list rather than a web app. If they can fix that, skype 8 gets 10 out of 10 for me, for now however that is a slight annoyance.

2018-07-31 11:54:28

So I tryed skype 8 and I kinda like it. My only problem, whenever i’m looking through messages and go to type a message, when I go back to the messages it sort of jumps me to a much earlier point in the messages, does anyone know how to fix this?

2018-07-31 13:46:09

Well if you have lots of unread messages, then it will focus you on the first unread message. There is a button called go to last message which will scoll you back to the bottom.

2018-07-31 17:40:56

Funny, how some people find new skype interface to be perfectly acceptible and still others get totally mad at it. I'm one of the mad ones.

2018-07-31 19:51:38

The interface isn't that different.. Its similar to skype in phones.. I have gotten used to it..

2018-07-31 21:19:55

Like really, i get people that are mad about it, some people get used to changes harder than others. But, how is that going to help you? I can see if somebody goes and says hey, I need split window so I cannot switch to new skype, that is a perfectly valid reason. However, neither Microsoft, nor this forum can know and help you with your issues if you do not point them out. It's really easy to use an app for 5 minutes and say hey this sucks, but if you try to use it for a longer time then you will eventually start getting used to various interface elements and might have some questions about it, in which case by all means post them here and I will personally try to help you, but this oh my god Skype sucks isn't going to change anything except make it harder for people to get useful info out of this topic.

2018-08-01 01:49:37

Oh sorry, my point wasn't really to start any complaining or flaming, but just to bring out this polarised situation and I just stated on which side I am and that's about it. Not being a smartphone user myself, I untill now have managed to stay away from interfaces like that. So yeah, at the moment there are no factual questions as I'm just trying to wrap my head around this whole mess and yes, it's probably worth stating, that I simply don't happen to be a kind of persone, who copes with sutch big  and sudden changes all that well. While it's completely possible, but can happen only at my set speed/tempo and not forced on by others. Hopefully that explains my bitterness in sutch situations somewhat. Let's still stay positive and hope for the better sutch as updates, if not from Microsoft, but also from screen reader developers.

2018-08-01 02:03:42

Doug Lee's Skype 8 JAWS scripts page includes some tips for using Skype 8 with his scripts. I don't know how much of that applies to NVDA, but the bit about native shortcuts should still apply. The things that definitely won't apply to NVDA are the command sequences.

2018-08-01 06:44:43

Right, I'm used to the new interface now, and it won't make me stop using it by any means, but I do sorely miss split window view, and I think the process for answering a call is unacceptable. It doesn't ring for nearly enough time for you to get to the window and answer the call. Also, even if I do get there, pressing control shift p initiates an outgoing call rather than answering it, and that's not cool. What is the logic behind that shortcut, anyway? P for pick up call, I guess? But it took me quite awhile, a couple of weeks, to even draw that conclusion. For some reason, the alt page up and alt page down shortcuts made much more sense to me, even if they weren't exactly the most intuitive either, but I pictured it as, I'm raising my phone up to my ear to answer it, and lowering it to end the call. Thus the page up and page down. I don't know if anyone else thought of it that way, but the p key is just awkward to me, even if it's supposed to mean pick up according to Microsoft.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-08-01 15:03:50

I guess the autofocus thing will eventually be fixed to make that easier. For now, there is an easier way to do it and it's not that slow. This assumes you have your system tray set to display all icons. When your Skype starts ringing, press windows plus b to go to the system tray. Press S to focus the Skype icon, and enter to focus onto the Skype window. From there, you can tab a few times until you reach the answer button, or maybe use that ctrl shift p shortcut if it works, but I didn't personally test that. It's still not as quick as alt page up or down, but it's just a workaround for now.

2018-08-01 21:00:58

Yeah, that will have to do for now. But I do hope they fix the auto focus issue soon. I saw on an email list where some people were saying they get around the issue by pinning Skype to their taskbar, and then using a keyboard shortcut to bring it into focus. It's a neat trick, but not something I'd do, I don't like things being pinned to my taskbar.

The glass is neither half empty nor half full. It's just holding half the amount it can potentially hold.

2018-08-01 22:06:03

Personally I do not have things on my taskbar either, but yeah I guess that works too.

2018-08-01 22:23:05 (edited by Genroa 2018-08-01 22:24:24)

Someone at the beginning of the topic asked why non-blind people didn't have any problem with the new Skype app even though the UI was crap. As a non blind person, I can tell you the answer : almost everyone left Skype and avoid it at all costs. People moved from Skype, TeamSpeak and Mumble to Discord long time ago, and no one plans to return. Skype is now mostly used by companies with the Enterprise edition, for its integration with Outlook. There is no reason at all to stay on Skype. Video, distant control and audio is shitty and consumes a lot of bandwidth, file sharing is a real mess, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Oh, and Android discord app is almost perfect compared to the shitty Skype app, and consumes like half less. So yeah, no one really wants Skype to live, it will probably only stay as a UWP integrated to Windows, like Internet Explorer used to be.

2018-08-02 00:24:52

Skype has been most useful to me as an IM client as I rarely ever voice chat. Before Skype, I used Windows Liv Messenger. Tried AIM a few times when it was still around and found it to be a pretty resource hogging program. I don't use TeamTalk because I think it's ridiculous that I have to connect to a specific chat server and then go into a private channel to IM someone one-on-one. I can't use all these smartphone apps because I don't use a smartphone, and I don't want to use their bloated web based Electron apps or have to keep a browser open on PC either.

2018-08-02 05:23:57

I went looking for aim and yahoo messenger the other day. they used to be pretty screen reader friendly. turns out aim was closed down in 2015 and yahoo messenger bit the dust on july 17th this year.

Who's that trip trapping over My bridge? Come find out.

2018-08-02 10:25:03

For an alternative to Skype (especially if ya loved MSN Messenger,) check out
https://escargot.log1p.xyz/
, and for Android users see:
https://wink.messengergeek.com/t/beta-2 … pport/2216

You can message me via
[email protected]

NB. There is no way to use the Escargot servers via iOS, just wanted to let yall know that.

2018-08-02 10:51:27

Yahoo was decent until they redesigned it and were bought out by Verizon. They had a godawful interface, and the web version sucked majorly. I mean, it used to be slimline and light, then they took outout voice/video calls, took out a bunch of shit and made it more app like. I gave up on it after that.

AIM...the web version, was pretty good honestly, never liked the program

Warning: Grumpy post above
Also on Linux natively

2018-08-02 16:28:22 (edited by x0 2018-08-02 16:31:18)

I just came into this topic and I didn't read it all so, excuse me if I missed something. I'm here to talk about the app itself. If you wanna talk about resource hogs skype classic was actually eating more and more for me, apparently multiwindow has something to do with this. I upgraded. I would like multiwindow or osmething like tabs, yes, but given the decrease in usage in skype I can deal without it. Hotkeys are being put in, and MSFTEnable is taking feedback. One issue I have that I reported is that when you press applications on the tray icon, the arrows don't seem to work, according to the NVDA log I am focused on the menu itself, not inside it. Obj nav can find the items but that seems a bit hackish. If you run your screen reader in forms/focus mode and keep it there, my NVDA actually doesn't change automatically by the cursor, the app is rather usable, I'll admit there's a clutter of buttons when you're shift tabbing back into a chat window but you just go really fast until you pass them, there's like 6. There may be ways to hide them in the future. I don't use skype for voice chatting, but there are some pretty active groups I'm a member of. On the voicechat front it will auto gain your system microphone even if you tell it not to and it cranks it up to 100 by default, then once it realizes that's the fuck too loud it'll duck you down to 30... And keep in mind these changes are reflected in the sound control panel. SO yeah that's a bitch. Classic was doing that for me too, though. Think it's a win10 thing. Message editing and hitting applications on messages and/or conversations works, the manage group dialog could be a bit less cluttered but I can handle. With NVDA at least, movement is rather responsive, it hickups a bit when you open a conversation and you have to wrap the document to get to it, but hey at least you can wrap, that is shift tab past the beginning to go to the end, where the chat window is. It still says skype preview document! So overall, yes the new app could definitely be improved, but so could the old one. It's not absolutely terrible, I tried the UWP version and it was worse, a lot more sluggish to move around in it and harder to find what I want.
So to everybody suggesting alternatives for skype or what have you, it hasn't lost everything yet. I didn't agree with the electron version either when I heard about it, I thought it was gonna be big and slow. It really is somewhat efficient. Could be better, but could be a lot worse. Could be that skype web thing! This is better than that.

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An anomaly in the matrix. An error in existence. A being who cannot get inside the goddamn box! A.K.A. Me.

2018-08-04 10:57:43

Genroa wrote:

Someone at the beginning of the topic asked why non-blind people didn't have any problem with the new Skype app even though the UI was crap. As a non blind person, I can tell you the answer : almost everyone left Skype and avoid it at all costs. People moved from Skype, TeamSpeak and Mumble to Discord long time ago, and no one plans to return. Skype is now mostly used by companies with the Enterprise edition, for its integration with Outlook. There is no reason at all to stay on Skype. Video, distant control and audio is shitty and consumes a lot of bandwidth, file sharing is a real mess, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Oh, and Android discord app is almost perfect compared to the shitty Skype app, and consumes like half less. So yeah, no one really wants Skype to live, it will probably only stay as a UWP integrated to Windows, like Internet Explorer used to be.

Well written and on point. The only Skype I have on my system at this point is Skype for Business (formerly "link.") I used to keep Skype personal around because I had ONE friend on there, but we switched to using Signal and now I have no need for Skype. So, yeah, Skype is dying because everything's moving to mobile and (even on desktop) much better applications.

2018-08-04 15:31:36

unfortunately everything's moving to mobile and against desktop, the desktop users at best have a web interface that's a laggy piece of shit with accessibility problems up the ass, or at worst can't even create an account on a desktop platform. Though I don't think we've quite gotten to that point yet. And in regards to discord, that's a whole other nightmare in and of itself, they're still working on that but somebody is actually trying!

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An anomaly in the matrix. An error in existence. A being who cannot get inside the goddamn box! A.K.A. Me.

2018-08-05 01:29:22

@127 that petition will never get anywhere and it doesn't need to either. The 100 signatures you aim for is like a drop in the ocean of what Skype's userbase is. ELectron Skype's usability is fine, a bit clunky but oh well, such is life.
And as a footnote feel free to stop impersonating famous people, it got old the first time anybody ever saw you do it.