Blind Resources info
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
  it's official, no one likes JFW 7.1!

it's official, no one likes JFW 7.1!

In the last month or so it seams like everyone and their Momma has come out with some type of press release or something saying that they can't support JFW 7.1!

Well, I could have told you that it is the worst version of JFW i have worked with since 4.0, but, the folks at freedom need to listen to these programmers that won't support the product, since they sure don't listen to their customers.

For one thing, if you want to use the most recent version of itunes, you can't use 7.1, 6.1 or 5.1. Only 5, 6, 6.2 or 7.0 are supported, here is the reason as found on the blind iPod mailing list:

T&T Consultancy Ltd are proud to announce that a major update to our Accessible iTunes Interface will be available as from 23 October 2006. This will provide visually impaired users with access to the recently released iTunes version 7 software from Apple.

Now to JAWS. Most of the last few days has been spent carrying out exhaustive tests with and without the scripts using different versions of jaws on different machines. What we can say as a result is that iTunes 7 and our interface will be compatible with jaws 5.0, 6.0, 6.20 and 7.0, not 5.10, 6.10 and disappointingly 7.10.

When we started this iTunes project, (I think about 18 months ago), we had a problem with jaws 5.10 in that using the jaws cursor was not reliable enough within the iTunes application. Most crucially, routing jaws to PC was not reliable enough, because jaws thinks that there is additional highlighted information on the screen other than what is selected and, in addition, informs you of characters which simply do not exist.

Well the problem is back big time in 7.10. I have given Freedom Scientific lots of detailed information about this problem. But because of the inaccessibility generally of iTunes (which has considerably worsened in 7.0 especially with the new Nano functionality), we have to use the jaws cursor to do a lot of the work, and if that's not working reliably then we may as well stop. We cannot support something which is not reliable.

All the jaws versions I have listed in this message which we do support are working in the way we would expect.

In summary, we are not letting this hold up production of the scripts. The reality is now that if you buy a new iPod, you have to use iTunes 7. I also understand that Rockbox no longer supports the new range of iPods, and so we have to have something which works as good as we can get it.

If that isn't enough, scripts for the latest version of Sound Forge, 8. something, doesn't work with JFW 7.1. To quote The Snow Man, maker of the Sound Forge scripts, JFW 7.1 is a real POS!!! I can tell you from much experience that 7.1 sucks with Outlook and Sonar 5! Well, maybe it will get better next version, what can I say I am the eternal optimist!

 
BlindResources.info is a website administered by Joey Stuckey of Macon, Georgia U.S.A. The purpose of this site is to provide blind computer users with important information, product reviews, resources and real-world results with regard to software usage for the blind as well as script implementation and usage for Jaws For Windows plus any other information pertinent to the blind computer user. Visit our website for more info. www.blindresources.info

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