2018-07-04 21:21:41

Better yet, get a firefox nightly and nvda beta build. Best combination you could ask for.

2018-07-04 21:30:46 (edited by Orko 2018-07-04 21:38:54)

Unfortunately, I don't like either of those browsers. In fact the only non Microsoft browser I ever liked was Netscape, but that was before Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer 4. Netscape went south after version 4.7.

@TheGreatCarver

The problem is that there was never anything that needed clearing up by you or your opinions.

2018-07-04 21:34:14 (edited by flackers 2018-07-04 21:51:58)

The thing is though, today, practical things like paying my customs charge and getting my parcel delivered was more important to me than  avoiding potential security threats. As I said in my earlier post, even though I want to use them, the latest versions of chrome and firefox combined with the latest versions of jaws and NVDA wouldnt allow me to do that. I'll use whatever works, it being up-to-date is irrelevant if it doesn't, and today IE succeeded where the others failed. And that's the bottom line. There are plenty of areas where IE doesn't work and the others do, but today's issue just shows that I can't abandon IE just yet, so I still have to use multiple browsers, which is annoying.

2018-07-04 21:44:46 (edited by flackers 2018-07-04 22:51:56)

By the way, the other day I downloaded a browser from Yandex.com, who I use for my email account. I just checked, and like IE, it also works for accessing the listbox that doesn't work in chrome or FF. And youtube is fine too. Can't use the jaws sentence commands in edit fields though, so it must be soemthing to do with the way that script works. It's looking like the best alternative to IE at the moment. They call it yandex browser, but based on the available extensions, I think it's a version of Opera. Though if you click about, it says Yandex Browser is based on Blink, Chromium, Opera Turbo and other software

2018-07-04 23:07:25

To those people who are not a fan of Chrome's bookmark menu, you can use the address bar autocomplete to get the same result as first letter navigation. This used to not be very screen reader friendly because either JAWS or NVDA would just read out the addresses of pages as they appeared. Well with the recent versions of chrome after you type in the first few letters of the name of a bookmark and down arrow you should just be able to read down the list of suggestions with your screen reader reading out the titles as well as where the site is coming from as this will also pop up things from your history. While you're in the address bar you can also search on any sites that support browser searching that you visited before (this site is one of them!) To do this, just start typing an address of a site you want to search, like youtube.com or audiogames.net. Eventually you should hear "press tab to search X". Press tab, type in what you want to search for and after you press enter you should land in the search results page.

HTH!

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2018-07-04 23:25:28

Opera was based on or used the Blink engine until they switched to the Chromium engine, so it is either based on Opera, or simply uses the same engine they once did.

I'm of the same mind you are, I'd like something more up to date and secure, but I have to consider what works first, and that is the primary reason why I keep coming back to Internet Explorer, quite simply it works more often than the others do, or the others fail more often than Internet Explorer does.

And with all of its settings, you can certainly make Internet Explorer a lot more secure than Microsoft's default settings do. For one, I completely disable Active X, nobody even uses that old technology any more so it isn't needed, and is one of Internet Explorer's bigger security holes.

The next thing I do is change the security level setting for intranet and trusted sites to match the security level I use for the internet zone, that way if a site manages to hijack its way into either of those two zones, it won't gain any privileges. I don't use those features so I'm not losing anything either.

2018-07-04 23:27:54

Orko wrote:

Opera was based on or used the Blink engine until they switched to the Chromium engine, so it is either based on Opera, or simply uses the same engine they once did.

I'm of the same mind you are, I'd like something more up to date and secure, but I have to consider what works first, and that is the primary reason why I keep coming back to Internet Explorer, quite simply it works more often than the others do, or the others fail more often than Internet Explorer does.

And with all of its settings, you can certainly make Internet Explorer a lot more secure than Microsoft's default settings do. For one, I completely disable Active X, nobody even uses that old technology any more so it isn't needed, and is one of Internet Explorer's bigger security holes.

The next thing I do is change the security level setting for intranet and trusted sites to match the security level I use for the internet zone, that way if a site manages to hijack its way into either of those two zones, it won't gain any privileges. I don't use those features so I'm not losing anything either.

Good; you're smart enough to do that. Others, however...

The Beast continued its studies with renewed Focus, building great Reference works and contemplating new Realities. The Beast brought forth its followers and acolytes to create a renewed smaller form of itself and, through Mischievous means, sent it out across the world.
from The Book of Mozilla, 6:27

2018-07-04 23:54:47

@Pitermach interesting tip about the address bar. I've used alt k to search and c&p'd addresses into the bar, but I didn't know you could also use it for history and bookmarks, that might be handy for some things, especially those bookmarks I have numbered for easy menu access.

I do agree with Orko and Flacus regarding security. There is a huge paranoia about the security bogeyman, a paranoyer which most often just serves major software developers who can essentially frighten people into buying the next expensive piece of software, or moving onto whatever platform the developer is pushing in order to potentially sell them newer systems.

This isn't of course to say security  is nothing to  worry about, just that  personally need a bit more insentive to change from something I'm comfortable using than a bare set of nebulous superlatives.

For me, moving from internet explorer was very much a question of Ie simply not working as well with many newer websites and games such as rebuild the universe, universal paperclips and space company, not to mention several blogs, and realizing that I needed a better alternative.

last year there was the odd site that chrome wouldn't run with directly such as goodreads, but I haven't seen any of those since January, indeed I suspect the issue there was more a Nvda problem than a chrome problem, whether this simply means I've been more lucky in my web browsing than some people I don't know.

either way I'd personally recommend chrome  at this point for speed, compatibility and convenience reasons, and at least smooth working with nvda, but hay others mileage may vary, and I certainly still do have Ie on this machine, albeit I've only had to fire it up when I need macromedia flash (and apparently chrome will be fixing that soon too).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-05 00:28:45

I think it's interesting that as long as Chrome has been available that Adobe hasn't seen fit to write a flash player plug in or add on for it. Though they do have a stand alone player for browsers that don't support plug ins or add ons. In fact, isn't that what you have to use to get flash in Firefox?

2018-07-05 00:41:33

Chrome doesn't support flash out of the box because flash is on its way out. Even Youtube now suggests you use HTML5 instead if you can.

2018-07-05 01:12:17

Down arrowing after typing the name of a bookmark also works in Yandex/Opera too. Navigating the menu to access bookmarks in Opera wasn't the smoothest, so thanks a bunch, that really helped speed things up.

2018-07-05 01:56:45

This is getting on my nerves now. I've found another problem with the newer browsers and youtube. I think the comments section not appearing has more to do with them coming via google plus and not loading straight away, so you have to wait a bit before you can arrow down to them. But another problem I've just found is that when you click the view replies button below a comment, it changes to hide replies, but the replies themselves aren't actually being displayed. The fact that all three browsers, chrome, FF, and opera,  have the same problem makes me think it's more a google plus issue again. Maybe these replies are appearing somewhere other than below the comment like they do in IE, I don't know. Just wish you could find a single browser that works, like you used to be able to do.

2018-07-05 03:45:44

I thought Chrome had its own built-in Flash plugin that was supposed to be sandboxed. The first thing I do after installing Chrome is disable Flash support entirely in the settings. Flash is inaccessible and a security risk. I can't wait until it's discontinued in 2020.

Grab my Adventure at C: stages Right here.

2018-07-05 04:38:09

Chris wrote:

I thought Chrome had its own built-in Flash plugin that was supposed to be sandboxed. The first thing I do after installing Chrome is disable Flash support entirely in the settings. Flash is inaccessible and a security risk. I can't wait until it's discontinued in 2020.

Yes, Chrome has Flash built in, and yes, it is sandboxed.

The Beast continued its studies with renewed Focus, building great Reference works and contemplating new Realities. The Beast brought forth its followers and acolytes to create a renewed smaller form of itself and, through Mischievous means, sent it out across the world.
from The Book of Mozilla, 6:27

2018-07-05 10:33:40

I haven't experienced the issue with YouTube replies not appearing, but I can definitely agree that comments taking ages to load because they have to scroll into view is frustrating. This particular issue is a problem with the modern web in general, a lot of sites now dynamically load sections in as they scroll to a particular point. The facebook news feed is another example of this where if you quickly go by heading half the time you'll just not get any further posts until you read passed the comments.

The reason this works differently in IE is probably because screen readers access that browser very differently to chrome or Firefox. In IE SR's read the page by literally just examining the HTML code directly and interpreting it in their own ways. THis can sometimes cause some major differences between how different screen readers read out certain webpages, VS how they display visually. With Chrome and Firefox, this happens a lot less, as the majority of the information is given to the screen reader by the browser, which requires less hooking into the OS.

I suppose IE might still work OK if you browse mainly less demanding, more basic websites. For what I do, it's ancient Javascript engine last updated in 2009 just doesn't cut it, making modern sites like gmail unbearably slow, and because it doesn't have a good extension system I can't block ads. And modern ads tend to open a ton of popups or start autoplaying videos or run a lot of javascript which kinda goes back to the issue I mentioned above.

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2018-07-05 11:03:20

I've not experienced much by way of this comment problem myself. They do scroll like that on tor.com, but I usually just go down to the "post reply" section and heading back a little to read the last few replies, and you don't get the same  in blogs which is where I do a lot of commenting.
So whether its a specific facebook thing I don't know exactly.

I have noticed a dynamic loading business going on in amazon's suggestions, but since I don't use amazon's suggestions that's not really a major issue for me big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-05 12:42:39

@pitermach

Could it be your settings and not Internet Explorer? Although I mostly use Thunderbird for my email, I do, on occasion, have to access my GMail through Internet Explorer and it is never slow for me.

2018-07-05 16:58:31 (edited by flackers 2018-07-05 17:58:43)

I finally worked out how to view replies in youtube using these newer browsers. I'm having to click view replies, then up arrow to a show more button, then press that, then up arrow through the replies which are displayed above where the hide replies button now is. But oddly, pressing hide replies doesn't hide them again, and there's no show less button. . In IE, you just click view replies, and they appear below. . The other thing is, something very strange happened earlier today. Suddenly all three browsers, yandex, chrome, and firefox, all started displaying youtube videos  page including the comments section the way IE displays them. That is to say, below the video description and above the next up section, so I didn't have to move right to the bottom of the page and wait for the comments to load before I could arrow down any further. But it was temporary and all three browsers have now reverted to the scrolling view, where you have the video play controls at the top, then the next up section, then the like buttons and video description, then finally the comments at the bottom if they ever bother to load. Either someone's fucking with me, or the universe itself is having a laugh at my expense. I mean, how do you explain all three up-to-date browsers displaying youtube the old way I prefer just for a short time as if to take the piss and say you could have it this way if you wanted it. Very weird behaviour. All I can think is that it might have been something to do with the way jaws loads pages into the virtual buffer. Fuck knows. All this stuff's way beyond my limited understanding.

2018-07-05 19:47:32

@Orko Maybe if I restrict some of the security settings it might work better. But that's still not magically going to make IE work with some of the other sites which require stuff like web audio to work correctly so why bother when I have 2 perfectly good backup browsers? big_smile

@flackers YouTube is getting more frustrating to use in general, not just on the web. The iOS app has been regressing in accessibility as well and don't even get me started on how it's like to try to keep up with chat during a livestream.

By the way in regards to the sentense reading keys not working unde chrome in JAWS I'd definitely report that as a bug to VFO, especially considering that they are expecting most people to migrate to Chrome when IE is completely abandoned, at least that's what Erik Damery said either in a blog post or FSCast a while ago.

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2018-07-05 20:44:30 (edited by flackers 2018-07-05 20:45:36)

I've reported a few issues over the years, but they never fix any of them, so it just feels like I might as well shout it down the toilet for all the good it does.

2018-07-05 21:35:26

@pitermach

No point, especially if you are happy with the browsers you are using, I was just wondering why our experiences should be so different.

2018-07-06 10:20:59

To anyone who's having youtube problems I'd recommend Yourtube, the accessible version found here instead. This displays comments, though how well I'm not sure since I've never really bothered with the youtube comment system too much, it also has each video stopped until you start it playing which is handy.

I did notice the other day I was looking up a menu for a local restaurant, and the scrolling was rather wonky with chrome, but all I had to do was wait a little on each line before reading the description of each item to get it to work correctly.

I wonder if it would be worth reporting the dynamic scrolling issue to the Nvaccess team to see if they can do anything about it?

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-06 10:44:36

Yourtube only shows the last 20 comments, and the next/previous pages when looking at a channel are busted. Searching and playing work great though.

2018-07-06 11:02:49

@Dark I don't think NVAccess can do much to improve the situation at this point. A while ago this problem was much worse and many sites had a tendency to bump NVDA's focus up through the page as stuff scrolled, but it looks like either Google or NVAccess got a grip on it.
I heard something about a new property in Aria to indicate to screen readers when you enter an auto scrolling section of a page, but I'm not sure if this is something that's already implemented or just being thought about adding to the specs. Guessing it's the latter.

<Insert passage from "The Book Of Chrome" here>

2018-07-06 11:33:52 (edited by flackers 2018-07-06 15:10:19)

The comments section isn't what it used to be, but it's still a draw for me. It had a reputation for being full of the worst kind of ignorant and bigoted crap on the net, but that's what made it so entertaining. Youtube used to be much more of a community and a collective, but Google fucked that aspect over good and proper when it bought it, and even though the comments section survived, it didn't come out unscathed. I accept that's the way things are in a free market, but I don't always have to like it. Capitalism certainly has its perks, but there is a point where it starts to eat its own stomach. and Youtube has entered that phase. something I find ironic is that I used to really love how youtube had these nerds who'd take a subject and deliver just the good stuff without any need to pad it out to an hour like you'd get with mainstream TV. But now thanks to the way Google prioritises videos, you have these two minute videos that aren't just fat-free, but are completely lacking in any substance whatsoever, like the video equivalent of the worst sort of junk food.