2018-07-06 15:22:16

I don't have any real problems with youtube because I'm just not that into it. I've never had any interest in the comments section, to me that was just youtube trying to be a social network, which I have no interest in either. The only thing I use youtube for is to find a particular music video, then download and and convert it to MP3 to add to my music library.

2018-07-06 16:19:38

I don't think youtube was trying to be a social network in its original incarnation. A certain section of the user base just made it one out of the desire to have a community of like-minded people. It was only when Google came along, that they made that more difficult to do because they were hell-bent on transplanting the users to their failing Google Plus social networking site where they could better monitor everything everyone said and did for their own evil ends. This is why I have a chip on my shoulder about Google and their don't be evil tagline. They remind me of when Lisa Simpson helped Mr Burns run a business, and she said, you don't need to be evil, and Burns replied, it's that kind of radical thinking I've been missing. Like only a total sociopath would think not being evil was a novel idea.

2018-07-06 23:11:07

For me i've never bothered with the  comments or social aspects of youtube but I admit, I'm not a social network sort of person.

I use it for looking up songs and music, or for following a few interesting people who do videos on interesting subjects, though I admit I don't usually have the patience to  trawl through lots of crap to find those, indeed I tend to read more  blogs and reviews than watch  more youtube videos,  likely because I have less  patience to sit through  an idiots  opinionated, ill thought  out rant than I do to half read their opinionated, ill thought out blog/bookreview/article  before  I move on to  something else, then again, as someone who writes book reviews and  articles myself that side of things  tends to focus more of my attention than youtube vids anyway.

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.)

2018-07-08 16:58:20 (edited by flackers 2018-07-08 18:04:48)

I've settled on Opera. Its settings are much more user-friendly than the yandex version, and the built-in VPN is a nice bonus that will hopefully save me 40 quid a year to private internet access. everything seems to work pretty well, pages load much faster, and the built in ad blocker and vpn perks have sealed the deal. so at last it's bye bye IE.

2018-07-08 19:35:49

If you don't mind my asking, how do you find Opera's handling of bookmarks as compared to Internet Explorer?

2018-07-08 20:22:05

I don't have a ton of bookmarks, so have no need for folders and such. All I was doing in IE was giving them really short names and then typing that into the address bar. Can't quite do that in opera, but thanks to the earlier tip, I'm typing the name, then arrowing down to it. So I suppose I'm not truly using the bookmarks feature. It's good enough for what I need.

2018-07-11 05:19:59

I just had two experiences today that I haven't yet decided whether the problem is Internet Explorer or JAWS or both, or the web site itself.

This one might actually not be Internet Explorer's or JAWS' fault, but Amazon's. I went to place an order today, but the item I wanted to order was defaulting to a monthly subscription where every month Amazon would automatically create an order for me and shipme the itme whether I wanted it or not, but I didn't want that and wanted to just do a one time order, I'd navigate to the radio button for one time order and try hitting enter, space bar, or  munpad slash for a left mouse click, but nothing would check the radio button, I also tried passing keys through, and using object navigation, still no result. So I switched to NVDA to see if that would work, and the web site still stubbornly ignored me. I ended up calling their accessibility support line to get their help in placing the order.

The second problem was with the post office's web site, I wanted to sign up for informed delivery, but again the web site seemed to just ignore me no matter what I did, again I switched to NVDA, and initially thought it wasn't going to work either, but then on a whim I hit the space bar on what seemed to be just text, no mention that it was a link or anything else that might be active, and it expanded into what I needed to start and complete the sign up process.

So, this just might be the kind of thing that finally convinces me to abandon Internet Explorer for something else. I'm giving Opera a real close look. The built in ad blocker and VPN are very enticing. From what flackers has said I know it's accessible with NVDA, or at least that's what I think he is using, I hope it's also accessible with JAWS.

@flackers

If you wouldn't mind, since you already have it installed, would you look to see if there is a help file, and if so would you upload it for me? You can upload it here:

https://www.sendspace.com/dropbox/qn017u

Thanks!

2018-07-11 10:26:18 (edited by flackers 2018-07-11 10:29:03)

I'm primarily using jaws with opera and it seems okay, though slightly worryingly, if you open the script manager for opera, it's a blank document, so no specific stuff has been written for it like there is for IE, Chrome, and Firefox. Funnily enough, I've had the opposite where I've had to revert to IE a couple of times to accomplish something I couldn't with Opera. Can't remember what both of them were, but one was in paypal when I tried to cancel my pre approved payment to private internet access. There was a cancel button, but hitting space/enter/left clicking didn't appear to do anything. I got tired of looking around wondering where the next step had appeared, so tried IE. Hitting space on the cancel button in IE immediately caused the screen reader to read out are you sure, and there were yes and no type links below. Two seconds and it was done. This is one of the things I'm finding with up-to-date browsers. Some of the accessibility aspects have gone backwards and you need to spend some time trying to work out how to get the job done. It's usually just a matter of discovering the quirk. Like with the dropdown list on Royal Mail's site. In IE you fill in the first part of your address, then you can arrow down to the list box, hit enter on it, and arrow through the selection and enter on your address. But with all the others, this doesn't work, and you have to tab directly from the edit field where you type,then the list reads properly. As regards a help file, I don't know if this is what you meant, but pressing F1 in opera just takes you to the following address:
https://help.opera.com/en/latest/

2018-07-11 14:59:18 (edited by Orko 2018-07-11 15:06:39)

That just means that, so far, Freedom Scientific hasn't seen fit or any need to create scripts for it, and considering that of the available desktop browsers, Opera probably has the smallest user base, so unless some third party writes one, there will probably never be a script written for it.

What that means is that they use online help instead of compiling a help file that is distributed with the program. The two big advantages to that approach are that updating the online help, updates help for everybody, and prospective users, like me, can read all about the program before installing it.

2018-08-10 23:54:21

Is anyone using Edge? What do you think of it?

I just encountered two web sites that don't support IE11. The first still works, it just declares that if you encounter problems with the site and are using IE, that you are on your own because they no longer support its use.

The other doesn't say anything until after you've spent your money, then when you encounter problems, they tell you the web site is designed not to work with IE. Very deceptive to my mind, so I asked for a refund.

All of this tells me that I will need to make a choice soon as to which browser I want to switch to, I'll miss IE, but I'll enjoy a working internet even more.

2018-09-10 15:37:24

Here's an interesting trick, and it's surprising how well it works.

Since I have decided to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and to give Edge a try, one of the things I learned about Edge is that it has no support for 3rd party browser plug ins or add ons. So, to make Internet Explorer behave more like Edge, I went into it's advanced settings and turned off 3rd party plug in support.

It's surprising how much smoother, and better behaved, IE is when you do that, I should have done it years ago!

2018-09-21 01:06:44

Edge does have support for extensions, so not sure where does that come from. You open edge, choose settings and more and then choose extensions.