Hi.
I'm probably stirring up a dead horse at this point, seeing I'm late to
the thread, but another nice thing about the task manager, in 7 and 8,
and 8.1, is you can hold down the windows key and hit the number
corresponding to how many icons from the left on the task bar the item
you want is, and it will,
A. If the application isn't already running launch it
B. if it is already running bring it to the foreground.
I make heavy use of this feature to shorten the alt+tab process down to
one key press to bounce between Monkey Term and Thunderbird as needed,
or flip right over to the chicken nugget window assuming I have it not
hidden. I use windows+1 to open internet explorer for instance. how can
you beat that? Windows+e opens up the explorer window, and in 8.1 the
explorer window, on top of showing your list of drives, lists network
drives in a separate category that you can close if you want so you
don't have to see them all the time, and it lists important user folders
like documents, downloads and such as that right there in the window you
get when you hit windows+e. Again, how can you beat that? In windows 7 I
would go to start menu and type downloads and hit enter to open my
downloads folder. Now I hit windows+e and type dow, just do without the
w goes to documents, and hit enter and there I am in my downloads folder.
In windows XP I used to use the connect to menu in the start menu to
work my way to the wireless networks dialogue box. When I switched to
windows 7 a few years ago I became rather upset because I couldn't find
an easy way to get to the networks list. I knew how to get there but it
was convoluted and not nearly as simple to get to as XP. It took me a
few months no kidding to figure out that there is an icon on the system
tray that shows what network you are connected to or not connected if
none. You can hit enter on that and it brings up a list of wireless
networks and dialup and cellular device connections, pluus lists
ethernet connections, right there just like that. So that discovery was
one of the things that really started selling 7 to me since going
through the system tray like that really feels actually a lot easier
than xp's way of doing it. usually I know what network I am connected to
also so if I'm on my satelite connection I just hit windows+b, type sat
and hit enter really quick so the balloon thing doesn't pop up and get
me stuck in there (XP does this too so don't go there especially with
the little problem where it would decide you wanted to be on a
particular item and every time you tried to arrow away it'd put you back
on the item you were already on, ug) and down arrow to the connection I
want and hit enter twice, first time it puts me on the connect button,
or if it was already connected it focuses a disconnect button. I hit
enter the second time and it just connects. What's more, 7 connects to
WiFi networks a lot faster than XP. I usually had to wait around 10 to
15 seconds on XP machines to connect to networks, 7 does it in around 3
seconds on average. Not only that, but 8.1 has two sliders above all the
networks by which you can turn networks off. There's an airplane mode
switch you go to that and you can left or right arrow between off (left)
and on (right). If on none of your wireless networks will work unless
you explicitly enable them, Wifi has it's own on off switch just below
airplane in there which you can use to do this. Windows 8.1 gave us back
the ability to say that the desktop environment is what we want by
default. it also provides us the ability to make the start screen by
default always show all apps instead of live tiles. I tried the all apps
thing out originally, but I put it back to live tiles because I like to
be able to read the weather so easily. I admit while I'm on this subject
though that last time I messed with the built in windows 8.1 weather app
I couldn't figure out how to change the location. Only reason it works
good for me now is my computer figured out (with my permission) where I
am and set it up for me. So many people just totally trash the new start
screen. I sort of like it, wouldn't mind a more linear way to navigate
it if I desired, but on the whole it's kind of nifty. But while I say
that, I don't use it very often. I put shortcuts to stuff I use most on
the desktop, and that's working ok. There's no problem with hitting
windows+m , typing top and hitting enter to launch topspeed.
One thing my friends have really been upset about windows 8.1 over is
the new task manager. While I would have to agree that the new task
manager really is pretty sluggish compared to the original version of it
that we love from windows 7 and the even earlier version from XP, it
always puts you on the processes tab. We generally need the details tab
though if we want to adjust apps using a similar screen layout to that
of old. Since you always land on the processes tab now when you open
task manager (assuming you have disabled it's simplified mode) we hit
ctrl+shift+escape, and shift+ctrl+tab twice and no doubt about it we're
on the details tab, assuming the computer is running ok. I like this
because time and again I would forget and leave my windows 7 task
manager on something like the applications tab, instead of the then what
we used processes tab, and so if jaws crashed and I was litterally
flying blind trying to fix it, I would run into issues trying to close
all the jaws related processes manually while intending to restart jaws
fresh. Now I know as long as the task manager actually opens in the
first place when I issue the keystroke I'm safely in the processes tab
and I know where to go from there. It's different, seems more
inconvenient, but it does have it's upsides.
Yes, alt+f4 on the desktop works to bring up the shut down dialogue box
where you can pick what you want the computer to do sleep, hibernate
etc. But windows 8.1 gave us a new toy (not sure if this is in 8.
Windows+x gives you a list of different things you might want to do like
visit programs and features, adjust power options, launch the mobility
center and a lot more. Well there's a shutdown and sign out sub menu in
there too. Since you can use first letter navigation in the windows+x
menu, and since the hot letter for shut down and sign out is u, sound
familiar XP users? you can hit windows+x, u and unfortunately that lands
you right in the shutdown menu where you can sign out, power off
restart, hibernate, sleep and blahblahblah.
So you see all these nifty little things I've found just go to show
that this is pretty different than what we used to use, but it's really
not worse, in many cases it's a big improvement, sometimes it's even a
serious accessibility improvement, though not as often as I wish. I do
have some issues with jaws making use of windows 8.1's new display
hooking method by which screen readers retrieve text. Sometimes for
instance in the Skype desktop app it decides to not say anything when
you hit insert+t to see which conference you're focused on, it just
says, title is, type in text documents. And if you hit alt+tab it says
the name of the conference you're in, but doesn't take focus away from
it. It's like somehow we're not actually properly focusing the chat.
There is a workaround of course, just close that conversation out with
your escape key and then reopen it. Note that this is using Skype's
compact view I have no idea if this applies to default view. This
doesn't happen very often and it's not really any worse than the issue I
had often back in the XP days where lines of text weren't represented
rightly in editors like notepad. You'd be on a different line than it
said you were on, and it would read the wrong thing. A fix for that btw
is to highlight the line you're on, hit home,, then press shift+end then
of course use an arrow key after your screen reader finishes reading
what you highlighted just so if you hit a letter or backspace or
something you won't delete that line you just used highlighting to read.
My computer is a Lenovo Yoga 2 pro. It has a touch screen. I've messed
with it some. I found that I really can move around the windows
environment with it to some degree, but we need improvements in that
area. It works in a pinch though. The biggest complaint I have is just
with JAWS, JAWS doesn't seem to support touch typing on the on screen
keyboard. Narrator does, though and I tried it out. I have a weird issue
where when I bring up the on screen keyboard (you do it manually in
windows), it seems to hide a lot of the app I'm typing in, so I can't
see what I've typed or read the latest chats in Skype for instance until
I get rid of the keyboard which is a two step process. We're getting
there, let's hope 9 makes it better and let's also hope the next jaws
update fixes more of the little problems I have. I know that Skype title
issue I just mentioned is a jaws problem by the way because I've tried
other screen readers just when it happened to me with jaws, jaws
exhibits the behavior, I get rid of jaws, switch to NVDA, works fine.
close NVDA switch back to jaws, it's still messed up. Close and open
that chat again in Skype, problem solved for jaws too.
Cheers, Sent with Thunderbird 24.2.0 portable
---
Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org
If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org.
You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at
http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org.
All messages are archived and can be searched and read at
http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org.
If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list,
please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
