I can help managing your add-ons, except on the current
translation method...
I haven't yet figured how to deal with it...
I can't promiss I will act immediatly in all times, but I will
try to do it as soon as possible...
Happy
new year, everyone!
I present new features and improvements to
my add-ons. This is a pretty long email, so I marked sections
as level 1 and level 2 headings for ease of navigation. Any
feedback and suggestions are welcome!
BrowserNav v2.2
· Website:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-browser-nav/
·
Download: https://github.com/mltony/nvda-browser-nav/releases/latest/download/browsernav.nvda-addon
The most exciting new
feature is support of bookmarks. You can now configure
bookmarks and this simplifies navigation around websites that
you frequently use. Bookmarks can be configured either for a
specific URL or for the entire domain. Bookmark itself can be
configured either as matching text on the page, or a regular
expression. There are many more options to customize
bookmarks, please refer to github page for a full list of
options.
There are four types of bookmarks in
BrowserNav:
QuickJump bookmarks
Once they are configured, you can find and
jump to them by pressing either J or Shift+J in browse mode.
BrowserNav comes with default configuration that you can use
as an example of configuring bookmarks, and that example
includes some QuickJump bookmarks for amazon.com: you can jump
to “5 items in cart”, “Your Orders”, “4.5 out of 5 stars” –
these are just examples of information that I often need to
find on Amazon pages while shopping, but you can of course
configure your own bookmarks.
SkipClutter bookmarks
These are not really bookmarks, but rather
you can configure BrowserNav to skip certain text while
navigating either by paragraph (with Control+Up/Down) or by
line (with Up/Down). Most common example of this is skipping
blank lines – and this one is included in the default
configuration. Other examples can include skipping timestamps
or frequently repeated elements on the webpage (think of
repeating buttons on Facebook website: Reply, React, Like, …).
SkipClutter mode can be turned off temporarily when you do
want to access those elements by pressing / or Control+/.
QuickClick bookmarks
These are similar to QuickJump
bookmarks, but instead of jumping to bookmark, you can click
buttons or links without moving your cursor. For example, on
youtube.com you might want to have an easy way to play/pause
video. In fact this QuickClick bookmark is included in the
default configuration for reference. So, you just need to
press Alt+J to click all QuickClick bookmarks on the page.
Another example of where I find QuickClick especially useful
is expanding collapsed elements of the page, e.g. on Facebook
you might want to automatically expand links “See more”, “View
5 more comments”, etc.
Hierarchical bookmarks
Many websites (e.g., reddit, hacker news)
show user comments as a tree where each successive level of
reply is indented more and more to the right. Hierarchical
bookmarks is the most convenient way to browse such comment
trees for screenreader users. BrowserNav can announce the
level of current comment, or alternatively, you can jump to
next/previous comment of a given level, similar to built-in
function of jumping to heading of given level. You just need
to capture some element of a comment in a bookmark (such as
upvote or downvote buttons) and BrowserNav will automatically
compute levels based on horizontal offset of each match. I
have included sample configuration for hacker news and old
reddit. You can try it yourself once you have BrowserNav v2.2
installed:
· Old
reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/rt91z6/exchange_2019_antimalware_bad_update/
·
Hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29756714
Keystrokes:
·
Alt+` or Alt+Shift+`: jump to
next/previous comment and announce its level.
·
Alt+1 or Alt+Shift+1: jumpt to
next/previous comment at level 1.
·
Alt+2 or Alt+Shift+2: jumpt to
next/previous comment at level 2.
·
Alt+number or Alt+Shift+number: jumpt
to next/previous comment at corresponding level.
Please note that in both
reddit and hacker news the bookmark also matches the original
post. As a result, on reddit original post corresponds to
level 2, so all the comments have levels 1,3,4,5 …. Skipping
level 2.
Configuring websites and bookmarks
Press NVDA+J to open
BrowserNav popup menu. Here you can configure websites and
bookmarks. For ease of use I added options to create a new
entry for current website, and create a new bookmark from
current paragraph.
All websites and bookmarks
can also be configured via NVDA > Preferences > Settings
dialog.
Website options
There are a few options that can be
configured on per website level:
· Block
focus events: some websites misuse focus events: e.g. they
focus some elements when trying to scroll, thus making the
website hard or impossible to use for screenreader users. You
can disable handling of focus events for such websites. In
this case focus events will be ignored and your cursor will
not jump around.
·
Block live region announcements.
Similarly, some websites misuse live regions. BrowserNav
allows to selectively block them.
· Auto
QuickClick. Once you configured QuickClick bookmarks on
a website, you can tell BrowserNav to click those
bookmarks automatically when website is fully loaded.
Performance improvements
Vertical navigation (via NVDA+Alt+Up/Down
commands) now works much faster in Chromium-based browsers and
Firefox.
Recap of other BrowserNav functions
· Vertical
navigation: allows to find objects on a web page that are
directly underneath by pressing NVDA+Alt+Down/Up.
·
Navigation by font size: allows to
find text written in the same font size or font style.
· More
QuickNav commands: jump to next menu(Z), tab(Y), dialog(P),
etc.
Notes
· I
am aware of Placemarkers add-on existence. BrowserNav
bookmarks is however different in many ways: more flexible
website definition, more flexible bookmark definition, more
functionality around different types of bookmarks. I know NVDA
community is typically wary of add-ons that are similar in
functionality, but I didn’t have any intention to compete
against PlaceMarkers. The function of regular expression
search was in BrowserNav since many years ago and developing
proper bookmarks was a natural extension of it. It would also
be totally impractical for me to upgrade Placemarkers add-on,
since the changes that I implemented would require rewriting
probably 90% of Placemarkers, so this is not justified.
· I
can split off bookmarks into a separate add-on if there is
enough interest. As long as community doesn’t mind given
concerns of being too similar to Placemarks add-on.
Tony’s Enhancements v1.13
· Website:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-tonys-enhancements
·
Download: https://github.com/mltony/nvda-tonys-enhancements/releases/latest/download/tonysEnhancements.nvda-addon
This add-on is a hodgepodge
of different NVDA improvements and this time I added a few
interesting ones.
Sound split
Triggered by pressing NVDA+Alt+S you can
enable sound split: when using stereo headphones this would
make all NVDA sounds to go to right channel, while all
application sounds will go to left channel (or vice versa).
This could be handy if you have to attend long and boring
meetings over VC. Additionally you can adjust NVDA volume and
applications volume separately via
NVDA+Control+PageUp/PageDown and NVDA+Alt+PageUp/PageDown
keystrokes.
Copying tables
Many people on NVDA mailing list complained
that there was no good way in NVDA to copy a table from a
webpage. Now there is a way! Press NVDA+Alt+T while on a table
and you’ll be presented with a few options: you can either
copy the whole table, or current row or column. The table will
be copied with preserving formatting information about its
cells, so that you can paste it into Microsoft Word or any
other rich text editor, and it will still appear as a table.
Experimental mouse click and mouse scroll scripts
I noticed that existing NVDA mouse click
scripts don’t always work. In particular I found cases when
NVDA+NumPadDivide keystroke doesn’t bring mouse cursor over
the link that I would like to click. These scripts are my
attempt to solve this. The feature is experimental, in the
sense that there are still cases where it doesn’t work as
expected. Yet it already can be very useful in some cases, so
I decided to still include it in the release. Keystrokes:
· NVDA+NumPadDivide/NumPadMultiply:
moves mouse pointer to current object, clicks left/right mouse
button, then moves mouse pointer back to where it was.
Additionally it tries to check if there are any other windows
on the way (e.g. topmost windows) and tries to get them out of
the way.
·
Alt+NumPadPlus/NumPadMinus: Move
mouse pointer over current object and scroll up/down. This can
be useful to load more content in infinite scroll websites.
· Alt+NumPadDelete:
move mouse pointer to top left corner of the screen. This can
be useful for websites that make excessive use of mouse hover
information to show popup windows.
Recap of other functions of Tony’s enhancements
· Enhanced
table navigation commands, such as jump to first/last
row/column.
·
Automatic language switching based on
Unicode character set.
·
QuickSearch – similar to BrowserNav
QuickJump bookmark, but works in text editors.
·
Dynamic keystrokes: allows to
configure announcing current line after certain keystrokes.
·
Showing and hiding any application
windows.
·
Detecting insert/overwrite mode in
text editors to prevent accidentally overwriting text.
· Adjusting
system priority of NVDA process for better responsiveness.
Bluetooth Audio v1.4
· Website:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-bluetooth-audio
·
Download: https://github.com/mltony/nvda-bluetooth-audio/releases/latest/download/bluetoothaudio.nvda-addon
Bluetooth audio fixes
quality of audio by playing either silence or soft white noise
as long as NVDA is active. Many Bluetooth headphones and
speakers enter standby mode after a few seconds of inactivity.
Then when NVDA speaks next utterance, the first word or two
might be lost. Bluetooth Audio prevents these devices from
entering standby mode by keeping audio stream open and
constantly playing some sound. In fact, Bluetooth audio has
been reported to improve audio quality on other types of audio
devices: RF wireless headphones and even some wired speakers.
It can also get rid of crackling noise on some devices.
The previous version of
Bluetooth Audio could only play silence. As a result, it was
hard to tell whether it is working or not. In fact, it seems
that it wasn’t working, or at least not always working – one
of NVDA updates in 2020 seems to have broken it, and even I
didn’t catch it. To avoid this in the future I added an option
to play soft white noise instead of silence, so that you can
hear when Bluetooth audio is working. Another feature I added
is dynamically changing output device when NVDA configuration
changes – previously that required a restart.
IndentNav v1.13
· Website:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-indent-nav/
·
Download: https://github.com/mltony/nvda-indent-nav/releases/latest/download/IndentNav.nvda-addon
IndentNav is primarily
designed for software developers, and it allows better
navigation around indented source code files in text editors.
This new version works much faster, especially in VSCode. Here
are some keystrokes to try (please read github page for a
complete list):
·
NVDA+Alt+Up/Down: jump to
next/previous line with the same indentation level within
current block.
·
NVDA+Alt+Left/Right: jump to
parent/first child line, where parent and child are defined as
line with lesser/greater indentation level.
·
NVDA+Control+I: select current block
(e.g. function).
· NVDA+V:
indent-paste, that is paste with adjusting indentation level
of clipboard content to match current line.
Phonetic punctuation v1.6
· Website:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-phonetic-punctuation/
· Download:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-phonetic-punctuation/releases/latest/download/phoneticPunctuation.nvda-addon
Phonetic punctuation allows to replace
punctuation marks with auditory icons (earcons). In general,
it allows to replace any regular expression configured
substring with an auditory icon, which can be great for
getting rid of timestamps and other frequently repeated
fragments. It also allows to change prosody parameters for
parts of speech, but only a few synthesizers support this.
This new version allows to adjust volume of each individual
auditory icon and has several bugfixes.
WordNav v1.7
· Website:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-word-nav/
·
Download: https://github.com/mltony/nvda-word-nav/releases/latest/download/wordNav.nvda-addon
WordNav provides more
advanced scripts to navigate by word. It replaces built in
Control+Left/Right keystrokes with custom scripts. It makes
behavior of these keystrokes consistent across all
applications and adds multiple options on its behavior.
In this last version I spent
quite some time to work around Google Chrome bug in its IAccessible implementation,
but in the end I made it to work correctly in Chrome.
SentenceNav v2.12
· Website:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-sentence-nav/
·
Download: https://github.com/mltony/nvda-sentence-nav/releases/latest/download/SentenceNav.nvda-addon
SentenceNav allows to
navigate by sentence via Alt+Up/Down keystrokes. This new
version includes some bugfixes.
TextNav v1.6
· Website:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/
·
Download: https://github.com/mltony/nvda-text-nav/releases/latest/download/textnav.nvda-addon
TextNav allows you to find
the beginning of article, that is readable text written in
complete sentences, on any webpage. You can automatically skip
most of the clutter, such as menus, images, metadata and ads
on webpages. Works by pressing Alt+Shift+Down/Up keys. This
latest version only updates compatibility flag.
Console toolkit v1.2
· Website:
https://github.com/mltony/nvda-console-toolkit/
·
Download: https://github.com/mltony/nvda-console-toolkit/releases/latest/download/consoleToolkit.nvda-addon
This add-on provides some
additional features for console application, such as Windows
command prompt and Windows Terminal. This new version adds
better support for Putty. Here are some features:
·
Control+V can now be used for
pasting.
·
Speech becomes more real-time in a
console that actively prints new messages.
· You
can edit current command by pressing NVDA+e in an accessible
window.
Notes
· Versions
have not been updated on the official NVDA add-ons website
yet. I sent a pull request, and it is subject to approval by
NVAccess. Until then, feel free to download latest versions
using links I provided above.
·
All the add-ons were tested with NVDA
alpha build 24399. Some compatibility issues have been fixed,
however, it is still possible that something will change and
compatibility will break again by the time NVDA 2022 is
released. The author however has very limited time to work on
add-ons, in fact the only time of year when I have time to
maintain my add-ons is the winter break around Christmas and
New Year. So, I release my add-ons as is. I might try to find
some time to fix compatibility mid-year, but I cannot commit
to it. Which brings me to my second point:
·
Volunteers needed. I currently have 9
add-ons and they require some maintenance and as my life gets
more and more busy every year, I am struggling to find time
for that, while users ask for compatibility, translations,
etc. I don’t want to let my users down. So, I’m looking for
someone who is familiar with add-on development process to
help me with that. Please contact me off-list if you’re
interested. Typical maintenance tasks are: dealing with
compatibility flags and releases, dealing with translations,
optionally fixing bugs.
·
Best regards
--Tony
