Ctrl+Alt+Arrows worked since jaws 5 with IE6 and probably before, so that's not really a new feature.
But you are right to inform people that it exists, because many don't kno, and they are disapointed when having to navigate through a table. That's why I said, when you installed new AG forum version, that I loved the table presentation.

But this feature works well only if the table is well formed... most webmasters still don't pay attention to write correct HTML

Remind : you can also use Ctrl+Alt+Arrows in MS word tables.

Tables in Hal are equally unproblematic. By default Hal will red tables as a list going across each rown, so it's only necessary to press down arrow, ---- heck, you can even just hit document read and go through the hole thing.

So you'd get, ---- in a table showing item, price and quantity:

Random example object, £700, 31. Another pointless example, £2586, 10.

Hal uses pauses and tone to indicate in the same way.

You can also hop betwene table sells with dolphin key (capslock by default), and the arrows as well, and if you wish Hal can also tell you information about what number row and column your on and how many rows or columns the table has (it does some of this by default, but you can set a lot of it). I actually use this incredibly often whenever I play the lone wolf gamebooks from Project.aon and use the combat results table.

now there's! a site who understand that html tables can be useful for screen readers, ---- sinse that's how they adapted the original printed action chart.

As to general html stuff, I'm not sure bout jaws, but Hal has huge amounts of customization options for what it does and does not tell you. I usually have it set not to alert me about headings, --- sinse it's usually fairly obvious from the text what they are. Hal has methods to jump betwene them as necessary, but for mental purposes I just think of them as breaks in text.

This is not intended to start one of those really irritating "mine's better than yours" debates, ---- but from a lot of comments I've read about jaws, and the couple of occasions I've tried it, I have noticed that by default it tends to be a lot more automated than Hal, automatically displaying things in a useable way, rather than letting the user wander around the existing display.

Hal for instance defaults to use of the virtual focus on the internet, and it's up to the user to navigate around the pages, go into form fields etc.

it does sound that by default jaws only uses tab and arrow keys like a self-voicing game with a simple menue interface. Obviously, jaws is! highly customizable, and has very sufficient methods of navigation, but sometimes I do wonder if it's presentation with alll the automated options discourages people from trying things out and making full use of it?

As I said, this isn't intended as a cryticism, only an observation, ---- and it well might be wrong.

I have afterall been using Hal for a frighteningly long time.

Fair enough, I do admit I find the format changing on webpages by jaws to be a litle odd but it's as you say probably a question of familiarity.

Hal's virtual focus can be run in either auto, or none auto modes which do essentially what your describing, it's just that by default it will run automatically in html, where as with a program like the smugglers games it will default to bog standard vf, ---- which in many cases is more than up to the task.

I didn't actually realize the html formatting made a difference to what was literally detected, --- -I always assumed it only affected the way Hal handnled page layout, ---- I'll have to try using none auto vf to check the colours in Ce, --- luckily this is much easier to do in hal than it sounds in Jaws, because the vf's position is naturally as you said in the same place the auto vf is.

In fact, checking text colour and highlighting on this page I get two different answers with the foci, ---- I'll have to try Ce.