Did you by any chance have track mouse with focus turned on, you can
turn it off by going to mouse/other and tabbing through the dialog.
This item should be off by default.
Also in the Windows enhance app try turning off the option that deals
with routing the mouse to tool tips.
Press control-backslash, then press alt-a, up arrow to windows enhance
select toasts and tool tips then uncheck automatically route mouse to
toasts and tool tips.
?
On 5/8/2014 7:53 PM, RicksPlace wrote:
Hi Aaron, Tech Staff and all you Guys and Gals:
I would like to know if GW needs any of the below features, except sound
of course, to provide programibility to their app or their main code block.
Also, if they have tested any of them or any that I have missed to
improve WE stability and performance with W 8.1, perhaps with IE 11 also.
WE became so bad after a time it became pretty much useless and I
uninstalled it.
Narrator is running stable without the jumping around and triggering
Context Menu s automatically when navigating with arrow keys and tabs.
When In some object WE would seemingly stop speaking and the title bar
would read, usually, the item I was moving to or into but the summary
bar would have an active Context Menu listed, does this sound right?
Sometimes it just stopped, no title bar, no summary bar, no text on
screen I could hear - seemingly nothing sometimes a few minutes
sometimes I just ReBooted.
But now that WE is uninstalled and since Narrator is running well, very
stable, it had to be something with WindowEyes and I will try to see if
I can make it more stable and performant.
I dont know what blew WE out of the water all I had was Windows
Essentials, perhaps the bloody Mcafee Security carp they loaded on my
machine trashed WE - dont know ant that is slated for removal in favor
of MS Defender along this path.
Could you comment on the below items and let me know if I missed anything?
Here are some things I will be looking at and likely trying out over the
next few days to try and improve WE performance and stability with w 8.1:
Some of these I had turned off in Visual Studio to make WindowEyes more
stable and responsive so I am guessing they will help make WE more
stable with W 8.1 - just a guess until I try them out.
If you have any comments on any of them Please let me know before I muck
something up!
One thing, I know there are active corners in w 8.1 where just passing
mouse or focus will trigger User Interface events and I am going to try
and find how to turn them off unless WE needs them left active for some
reason - this is aa question for Aaron or one of the GW Tech guys.
Here are all the things I will look at over the next few days to see if
I can help WE out.
Item 1)Customize System Properties to Disable Shadows and Animations
By default Windows shows many eye candy effects such as animations,
shadow effects,
etc to enhance user interface. You can turn off these kind of effects to
speed up
system performance.
A. Press "Win+R" keys together to open RUN dialog box. Now type sysdm.cpl
and press Enter. It'll open System Properties window.
B. Now go to "Advanced" tab and click on "Settings" button present in
"Performance"
section.
It'll open a new window.
C. Now uncheck following options:
Animate controls and elements inside windows
Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing
Animations in the taskbar
Fade or slide menus into view
Fade or slide ToolTips into view
Fade out menu items after clicking
Save taskbar thumbnail previews
Show shadows under mouse pointer
Show shadows under windows
Show translucent selection rectangle
Slide open combo boxes
Smooth-scroll list boxes
Disable_Windows_8_Start_Screen_Animation.png
4. Apply the changes and close the window.
Item 2: Change Folder Options to Disable Unnecessary Features
You can disable a few features of Windows Explorer such as tooltips, etc
to improve
Explorer functionality:
A. Open My Computer and click on "View" tab present in the Ribbon. Now
click on "Options
" button present at the end to open Folder Options window.
B. Go to "View" tab and uncheck following options:
Display file size information in folder tips
Hide empty drives in the Computer folder
Hide extensions for known file types
Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color
Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items
Customize_Windows_8_Folder_Options.png
C. Apply changes and close the window.
Item 3: Disallow Unnecessary Windows Services to Start Automatically
There are many built-in services in Windows which automatically start
with Windows
and always run in background even if the system doesn't need them. You
can disallow
many unnecessary services to start automatically with Windows to improve
system performance.
Check out following tutorial to learn which services you should disable
in Windows
8:
Windows 8 Services Configuration Guide
Item 4: Disable Unnecessary Programs from Windows Startup
Many 3rd party software add their entries in Windows startup list so
that they can
automatically run as soon as Windows starts. Many of those startup items
are unnecessary
and can be removed from startup list to speedup Windows.
Follow these simple steps to disable unwanted startup items in Windows 8:
A.
In previous Windows versions the startup items list was present in
system configuration
manager which can be accessed using msconfig command. But Microsoft has
moved the
startup items list in Windows 8. Now it can be accessed using Task Manager.
Right-click on Taskbar and select "Task Manager
" option. Alternatively, you can directly open Task Manager by pressing "
Ctrl+Shift+Esc" keys together.
B. Now go to "Startup" tab and here you can click on the unwanted item
and click
on "Disable
" button to remove it from startup.
Customize_Windows_8_Startup_Items.png
Now the disabled program will no longer run whenever you start Windows.
It'll only
run if you launch it manually.
Item 5: Remove Sound Notifications of System Events
[RtNote: I may see if I can change the current sound settings there to
have nicer sounds for specific events.]
By default Windows plays sounds for various system events such as error
messages,
device connect, device disconnect, command success, battery status, UAC
prompt, etc.
Sometimes many of these sound notifications might cause a little bit
slowness in
your system. If you have a slow computer system, you can disable some or
all sound
notifications in Windows 8 to speedup your computer system:
A. Open Control Panel and click on Sound icon. Alternatively, you can
directly open
it using
mmsys.cpl command.
B. Once you open Sound window, go to "Sounds
" tab. Here you can click on desired program event which you want to
disable and
then select "
(None)" from "Sounds" drop-down list.
Customize_Windows_8_Sound_Scheme.png
If you want to disable all sound notifications, select "No Sounds" from
"Sound Scheme"
drop-down box.
C. Apply the changes and close the window.
Item 6Boot to desktop
[RtNote: did it following Marks' Podcast instructions, doesnt work on
boot up, works sometimes when closing a screen or window or whatever
these bloody things might be called]
right-click the Taskbar > Properties > Navigation tab.
Under Start screen (bottom pane), tick the first option that says, “
When I sign in or close all apps on a screen, go to the desktop instead
of Start
”. Then click on OK or Apply.
Item 7: Disable Charms
[RtNote Is this needed by WindowEyes internally and what about other
corners or active roll-over type thingys?]
Charms in Windows 8.1 aim to speed up access to menus. But if you find
yourself inadvertently
activating the menu with your mouse, it’s possible to disable it.
Go to Taskbar > Properties > Navigation
and untick the “When I point to the upper-right corner, show the charms.”
Item 7: ) Turn off notifications to minimise distractions
If you want to get work done without being distracted by notifications
Windows 8.1
has got you covered.
Go to PC Settings > Search & apps
and then make sure the Quiet Hours switch is on. You can then choose
which times
you want to be left in peace.
Item 8: Search locally and on the internet
The search function in Windows 8.1 searches files on your device and
also for answers
on internet
simultaneously.
When you enter a term, the local files will appear as normally, but
swiping to the
left will bring up other web pages Bing has trawled through. This also
shows up files
on SkyDrive too.
Item 9: Get SkyDrive under control
SkyDrive is baked into Windows 8.1. Files stored here are listed
alongside other
categories, such as downloads and documents. Whilst cloud storage is a
boon to those
who use files across multiple machines, you may not want all you fires
in the cloud.
To ensure that Windows 8.1 isn’t storing stuff in the cloud without your
permission,
go to PC Settings
. Here there are settings for the cloud storage tool that will determine
whether
it is enabled by default as well as how specific content types are handled.
SkyDrive also tries to save space on the hard drive by using what it
dubs “Smart
Files”. This is a great feature as long as you have an internet
connection, but useless
when you don’t. To make sure that all SkyDrive files are accessible when
you need
them go to
Windows Explorer > right click SkyDrive > select Make Available Offline
. This will download all files stored in the cloud and save them locally.
Item 10: Ditch Command Prompt and go for PowerShell
[RtNote: This is a whole other animal than dos and alien to most WE
users - is the wave of MS future though for scripting me thinks.]
In Windows 8.1 right clicking on the Windows icon in the taskbar brings
up a list
of power user commands.
[RtNote, since I dont hear that icon is it possible the mouse or focus
is hitting it and causing some inadvertent event to fire mucking up
focus, mouse or UI?]
For those of you that need to carry out more intensive, complex tasks
using DOS-style
commands you can replace CMD with Windows PowerShell.
To do this go to
Navigation Properties > Tick the box marked Replace Command Prompt with
Windows PowerShell
in the menu when I right-click the lower-left corner
.
Item 11: Show all apps instead of live tiles
[RtNote: dont know about this one but perhaps put all apps in start
screen then will work with the WindowEyes TreeView UI of the Start
Screen? just a wild thought at the moment
and I dont know why WE didnt add a TreView of the Apps Screen like the
one for the Start Screen.
If you want to retain the Modern UI start screen but want to change the
layout, it’s
possible to display all apps.
To make this more productive in use, it is best to tick all of the last
four boxes
in the Taskbar and Navigation Properties dialogue box.
When you click on the Start button you will see all your desktop
applications first
on the list (Modern UI apps appear at the end). Of course you can still
go back to
the live tiles by clicking the little arrow at the bottom to go back to
that view,
but why would you?
Final Note:
There is a Start Button list in w 8.1 and what about putting apps or
programs in there?
Would that be easier to setup as folders and files with some type of
Tree Structure for GW?
And what about that Apps list combo box where it has a selection of
things like sort orders, is that for the Apps Screen and how do we get
to the Start Button and Apps ComboBox on a regular basis, I didnt get
them until just before WindowEyes became pretty much completely
nonresponsive.
That is all I have so far.
EndOfFile:
Rick USA
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