2017-11-11 19:25:47

turtlepower17 wrote:

Nah. Who actually needs the system tray list anyway? You can just hit Windows b, which is not a screen reader specific shortcut, and scroll through the available icons. Also, at least you can pick and choose which features you want in NVDA to a point. Many of the add-ons, which add features which you say should only be available in JAWS, can be installed separately. For example, I want nothing to do with Research It. That is a stupid feature which should not be included in JAWS by default, not least because its various components break constantly. If the developers at NV Access shoved that feature into NVDA without consent from its user base, you bet your ass there would be a huge backlash, and rightfully so. But if somebody created an add-on which provided that functionality, some people would love it, some would hate it, and most would be indifferent. That's the nature of add-ons, and why they're great, because functionality that really should be optional, is left up to the user to decide whether it's necessary for their particular needs or not. OCR is a great example, actually, because while it's included by default now for those who are using Windows 10, there's also nothing stopping people from using the original OCR add-on. Try stripping the OCR components, which take up tons more space, I might add, from JAWS. Have fun with that.

just because its part of the damn screen reader, it don't mean you have to use it. lol.

2017-11-11 19:30:23

Chris wrote:

I've never experienced these problems. I'd suggest reporting the issue to NV Access.

na I'm sure they would rather spend their time ripping off of jaws even more instead of fixing an unfixable screen reader.

2017-11-11 20:36:27

@52, can you prove that NVDA is unfixable? Considering that the problems reported on this topic are mostly hard to reproduce problems that happen very rarely, can you blame NVACcess for not being able to fix them if they can't even reproduce them in the first place? I could go on and on about JAWS's bloated features and what makes NVDA better, but it's quite obvious you won't listen. Perhaps you'll listen when FS increases their SMA upgrade price to $400.00.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2017-11-11 21:43:34

All you NVDA lovers forgot that jaws has scripts, witch basically work the same as addons.

I am the blind jedi, I use the force to see. I am the only blind jedi.

2017-11-11 22:49:56

@BlindJedi, sort of. But with JAWS your limited to a very small subset of features, and only get access to what FS wants you to have access to. With NVDA you have access to the entire Python standard library, which is a huge assortment of libraries and grants you a lot of possibilities that FS doesn't allow you to do. So, either way, NVDA wins on all counts. It's had mouse support since it's inception; it was the first screen reader to have fully functional touch support; it was one of the first, if not the first, screen readers to support windows 10, and was also, again, one of the first, if not the first, to add Microsoft edge support as an experimental feature.And it also has windows 10 OCR. Ever noticed that when NVDA gets a new feature, JAWS suddenly and conveniently so happens to gain that feature within the next release? It clearly looks like it's Freedom Science Fiction trying to copy off of NVDA rather than the other way around. Let's talk mouse support, for instance. Before... oh, what was it, JAWS 17? JAWS didn't -- and couldn't -- read the mouse at all. It was as if it didn't exist. You could only move the mouse with a cursor that FS had to invent themselves, a waste of time, IMHO. Then lets look at NVDA. NVDA has been able to read the mouse, with both TTS and audio positional indicators, since version 0.5 in 2006. Furthermore, NVDA has had no need for some flimsy and unstable video interception driver that was only removed because Microsoft forced FS to with windows 8. I guarantee you that if they hadn't done that, JAWS would be still using that today. NVDA also works with several other apps that JAWS does not, including all QT apps (Mumble, TeamSpeak, the standard TeamTalk client -- not classic, but the normal client, and more); it works in safe mode with no difficulties... and has been able to do that for ages now... and in previous versions, before FS removed the intercept driver, JAWS wouldn't even function in safe mode. It would start, but then it would just sit there. You couldn't navigate, you couldn't interact with shit. But NVDA can, and has always, been able to function completely in safe mode. And don't get mestarted on JAWS tandem. Yes, you can control remote computers, but have you ever wondered whether FS can spy on you while you do that? Of course they can. They can watch you -- hell, they might even be collecting private data that they have no right to collect, but they do it anyway. Go back to NVDA... hey, look! Go check out https://github.com/NVDARemote/NVDARemote -- you can set up your own, private NVDA remote server that you, and you alone, have total control over! The source is available too! So, tell me... besides the layered keys, which NVDA has no use for, what makes JAWS better than NVDA, when NVDA is so much obviously better, with it's punctuation/symbol pronunciation dictionary, input gestures modification system, windows 10 OCR, three separate speech dictionaries with regular expression support, it's python console, speech viewer, log viewer... now that's one hell of a fine screen reader. And let's not forget that you can create portable copies and don't have to reactive the damn thing every time you connect it to a new computer. You don't have to ask someone to install any software for you, you don't need to keep asking FS for license key resets, you just plug NVDA's USB drive into your computer, run nvda.exe and boom -- your ready to go! You can even take your add-ons with you if you want!

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2017-11-12 00:10:03

At least NV Access is aware of the issue that sparked this topic now. I saw it being discussed on the NVDA email list today.

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

2017-11-12 19:15:44

turtlepower17 wrote:

At least NV Access is aware of the issue that sparked this topic now. I saw it being discussed on the NVDA email list today.

so when will they bring better web browsing into the discussions?

2017-11-12 20:02:04

Yeah, jaws still beets NVDA for web browsing. And, if you wanna get really technical, voiceover on mac is the best for web browsing, hands down. Oh and also, at least the freedom scientific server for jaws tandem is encrypted, anybody can get into nvdaremote.com. Once I was waiting for a friend to connect and do something to my computer like install some crap, but before he connected my computer started navigating to internet explorer and opening like somebody was trying to use my computer. With jaws tandem mode its more sicure.

I am the blind jedi, I use the force to see. I am the only blind jedi.

2017-11-12 21:03:10

@BlindJedi, how do you know it's encrypted? See, the problem with encryption is that anyone with the public and private keypair can decrypt the stream. Plus, decryption is quite pointless in the first place, and is why NVDA remote is not encrypted. Even if you encrypt the connection, that doesn't stop anyone from gaining access to your computer if the figure out the key. The fact that someone managed to gain access to your computer while you were waiting for someone else to access yours is not NVDA remotes fault, nor was it NVDA's fault. It was strictly your fault because you deliberately used an insecure key. You know the phrase, 'always use secure passwords'? It certainly doesn't go that way, but the same concept applies here. When you set an NVDA key, your setting a password that, if deliberately left simple, is guessable. If you set it to something strong, the likelihood of that ever happening is nil. And if someone still manages to guess your NvDA remote key even after you've set it to strong, that's still not NVDA's fault nor NVDA Remote's fault; someone out there just seriously hates you. If that is the case, then even JAWS Tandem won't protect you.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2017-11-12 22:39:01

Exactly. Also, if you use private servers, you can decrease the likelihood of this happening to practically zero. I get that not everyone has the technical know-how or resources to do that, but really, complaining about something that's easily solvable and blaming it on NVDA doesn't help your case.

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

2017-11-12 23:23:05

Actually yeah the key thing does make sence, and come to think of i I think i set the key to something like nvda123 or something stupid like that

I am the blind jedi, I use the force to see. I am the only blind jedi.

2017-11-13 05:03:52

@BlindJedi, yes, there you go. That, there, is exactly a password that is 'very weak'. NIST's latest password policy, SP 800-63-3, which is specifically for passwords (but technically does apply here), can be summarized as follows:

  • Do not attempt to enforce password policies that are not user friendly -- that is, policies that don't really increase security at all. (i.e. some practices that used to be known as "best practices" are more painful to implement and don't really do much to increase security.)

  • Your password should be a minimum of 8 characters with a possible limit of 64 characters. The excuse of "sorry, that password is too long" is no longer valid. (Increasing this is a good idea though!)

  • All applications should accept any ASCII and Unicode characters, including spaces and emojis.

  • Your password should not be able to be findable in a dictionary. Passwords like thisismypassword, change me, yankees, etc. are all very bad ideas.

Of course, there are some don'ts, i.e. no composition rules (don't force the user into a specific set of requirements), don't use password hints (seriously), use KBA (ask questions that only you would know to verify someone), and don't *** ever *** set expiration dates without reason.
Of course, some people think that these rules are a bit ridiculous and are unnecessary... but then I like to pass them the challenge: "Please go look at https://github.com/danielmiessler/SecLi … /Passwords and see if your passwords in there. If it is, change it until you've got something that's definitely not in there. And when I say 'find', I mean search every single list." You wouldn't believe some of the most common passwords -- 123456 is a good one, followed by a few others.
I'm not saying that you absolutely must follow these rules. I'm just posting these so that next time you make an NVDA remote key or a password, keep them in mind. (the article where I found these rules is at https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/0 … -to-know.)
Just a thought, hope it helps.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2017-11-14 07:44:47

I've started to have a couple of issues with NVDA navigation recently, shall I post these here since it seems to be the current complaint thread?

2017-11-15 00:24:19

Hi
Okay, this topic got a lot of posts that I only saw now. Sorry about that.
If someone has indeed written on github about this it would be amazing - I'm not all that familiar with it. I've gotten so much backlash over the years from this comparison in explorer windows that this was my last resort. I love NVDA, love that it's free, but when it hampers my productivity to literally a standstill because I can't use a simple windows explorer window to get around that's when I take issue.

Something something something insert canine related comment here

2017-11-15 03:42:30

Hello
My FireFox update today.
Now it is completely unusable with my copy of NVDA. I was forced to use google chrome even though it is not perfectly accessible.
Is their a way to fix this without downgrading firefox.

2017-11-15 07:48:21

Hi.


I found this article, you might want to check it out.


https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ca … ew-firefox


You could try downloading an older version of the browser.

Here's a link explaining how to do that.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/in … of-firefox

Firefox is working fine for me. I'm using the latest version of NVDA and windows version 1703

I'm gone for real :)

2017-11-15 08:07:13

I use SeaMonkey. You should use that instead -- it's a fork of firefox.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2017-11-15 08:55:53 (edited by musicalman 2017-11-15 09:05:30)

Hi all,
I will ignore the NVDA VS Jaws flaming and get strait to the point of this post.
I've found a few things that make the Explorer issue happen consistently. These all have to do with audio editing which is what I do a lot of the time, but you don't need to know audio software to reproduce.
Firstly, download Gold Wave if you don't have it already. This is simply to reproduce the issue; Gold Wave itself is largely irrelevant, it's just the program I use that seems to make it most apparent. The demo will suffice, no need to have a full version.

Open Gold Wave, and close the manual document if it opens.
Now in the Gold Wave window, press control N to make a new file. Tab to the initial file length box and type 01:00:00 (this will generate an hour of silence). I'll explain why later. Everything else can be left where it is, so tab to OK or hit enter, and you should hear Gold Wave Untitled 1. At this point, alt tabbing should work properly, and if you try to browse folders with Explorer, you should hear things read as you arrow through them.

Now let's make Gold Wave busy, as that is when the issue happens. There are probably several ways to do this, but what I did was press alt T to get into the tools menu, then E for expression evaluator. Complicated stuff here, but no need to worry about it. Tab to the presets grouping, which should be a tree view. Select the noise group, then expand that and pick a preset (I used white noise). Next you want to hit OK, but before you do, read the rest of this post because it describes precisely my issue and how you can check to see if you can reproduce it.

When you hit OK in the expression evaluator, it will start generating the white noise, a process which will keep Gold Wave busy. On my system it takes about 25 seconds to fill that hour file with noise. Not terribly long, but while it's processing, my Explorer issues flare up. Even if you are in the processing evaluation dialog and set the priority to pause, they will still happen, leading me to believe that my initial theories on this being triggered by heavy system load are disproven.

To recap on what exact issues I'm having: When I use alt tab, I only hear the name of one keypress. For instance I might press alt tab and hear my web browser on this thread, but if I continue holding alt and hitting tab, nothing else will be spoken. But the list does cycle, because I can still release the keys and switch between applications normally, they just aren't spoken.

Furthermore if I go to any location in explorer, nothing is spoken when I press the arrows. The focus does move though, as I can hit enter and launch the item I am on. I use Classic Shell though, and strangely its start menu speaks, as well as the desktop when I hit windows M to go there. If I hit cancel in that processing evaluation dialog, the issues stop happening when the dialog closes.

While the dialog is open, I've found that killing explorer.exe makes alt tabbing speak. But then I have no desktop or start menu which I really do like to have. If I relaunch Explorer.exe, things seem to work fine even if that processing evaluation dialog is still around. But if I close the dialog and reinstantiate it by going back in expression evaluator and starting the process again, the issue will often happen again as before.

This does not just happen with Gold Wave's expression evaluator, it can happen while saving a file, or doing any sort of processing to it. And as I said earlier it is not confined to Gold Wave either. It does often happen while the computer is doing something, just Gold Wave makes it more apparent. I've seen it happen with Team Talk, Reaper, Youtube-Dl-GUI, and occasionally it would just happen randomly for a couple minutes.

I really don't know what info would be useful. Display settings? Windows version? Hardware specs? NVDA logs? Meh. I can, if requested, restart NVDA to clear the log, do the thing in Gold Wave I just detailed, reproduce my issue, and then keep that log around for more knowledgeable people to peruse. It sounds like a good idea, I just hope the logs would provide useful info, and if there are any settings in NVDA I should tweak that would either help fix this, or make it easier to track down. I also thought of posting this to the NVDA mailing list but I'm not on there, and don't want to subscribe to a list that has tons of traffic. If it's a forum I'd be more apt to do it, but I think it's a mailing list. If people think it'll help though, I'd be happy to do it regardless.

What do you guys think?

Make more of less, that way you won't make less of more!
If you like what you're reading, please give a thumbs-up.

2017-11-15 09:06:24

Hi.


@raygrote.
I'd highly recommend writing to the NVDA team.


With all that info, perhaps they can do something about it.


Here is the contact page.


https://www.nvaccess.org/contact/

I'm gone for real :)

2017-11-15 10:59:51

Brad, thanks for that. Just e-mailed NVAccess directly with pretty much all the information in my last post, as well as an attached log. The log did have four interesting lines in it, once I set NVDA to output debug+warning. We'll see what happens. I will be posting back in this thread if I hear anything.

Make more of less, that way you won't make less of more!
If you like what you're reading, please give a thumbs-up.

2017-11-15 13:45:15 (edited by the_ruler_of_dark_forces 2017-11-15 16:53:56)

@Raygrote: I'm having exactly the same issue! I do not use classic shell.

2017-11-15 15:08:46

@raygrote
This is exactly how you go about it! I'd bet that the issue will be fixed in NVDA soon, maybe not in the next release, but in the first 2018 release. I can testify that NV Access does listen, as I have created tickets and had my issues solved and placed in releases in the past.

2017-11-15 17:16:56 (edited by musicalman 2017-11-15 17:20:51)

I've discovered that some programs are more apt to do this than others. An old version of Gold Wave I sometimes use, for instance, doesn't have the issue. There are also other apps I use which may or may not make my system act up depending on what they're doing, and I can't fully explain or predict this, but I'm starting to wonder if it's at least partially an x64 vs x86 compatibility issue. NVDA is a 32 bit program trying to interface with 64 bit components on an x64 system, and I wonder if that is causing more hassle.

A friend of mine looked into it a bit and, after some investigation, he can reproduce the problem too, and was able to give me more detailed logs than I sent to NV Access which point to NVDA's interfacing with UIA. I wish I had known these things before I sent that e-mail, but ah well. If they get back to me and request more information I will supply those logs.

Make more of less, that way you won't make less of more!
If you like what you're reading, please give a thumbs-up.

2017-11-15 17:27:45 (edited by Ethin 2017-11-15 19:00:22)

See, the problem with NVAccess is the fact that they are totally unwilling to create a 64-bit build of NVDA, siting the stupid (and mostly illogical) reason that "it will break usability for old computers and portability" or something like that. The obvious solution was then to just release two versions -- 32 and 64-bit, or release a universal binary with both a 32-bit and 64-bit version installed alongside each other like most Linux distributions are doing. But of course, they won't do that. I honestly don't get why their refusing -- it makes absolutely no sense. There aren't that very many super old computers that are stuck on 32-bit any more, and most times when you create a portable copy your only going to be using 64-bit machines anyway. Releasing a 64-bit version would also solve this problem, among many, many others. So I think we need to force them to release one, or start releasing them ourselves. It shouldn't take anyone long to build a 64-bit build of NVDA shortly after the actual release, considering the long period between releases. I'd be happy to do it myself, if you guys want -- I've got enough resources to build the hole thing, though I'll probably do it in the next update to keep in synche with them, or do it as close as I can.
Edit: building it on 64-bit only seems to be quite literally impossible. This is absolutely infuriating and the reasons for not providing a 64-bit build of it are extremely lame and pathetic reasons that are just... I have no word to describe how idiotic they are other than to say it sounds like half the people giving the reasons have no idea what they're even talking about. The only thread that even discusses this is this one (http://nabble.nvda-project.org/NVDA-64- … 41427.html). Jesus... and the obvious solution is to build an installer that installs the appropriate NVDA build based on your architecture. "The installer is too large" my ass.

"On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!]: 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out ?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question."    — Charles Babbage.
My Github

2017-11-15 19:46:15

At Raygrote. The issue you're having with windows explorer's contents not being read by NVDA is the same one I have, but mine happens almost all the time. I've started getting into the habit of pressing f2 on things in order to tell what file or folder I'm on.

At Ethin. Finally, someone else who knows about SeaMonkey!