Important announcement on Joseph Lee's add-ons: please upgrade to NVDA 2022.2 ASAP, support policy changes
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Hello everyone, Hope you are enjoying NVDA 2022.2. But even then, let us not forget that we are in the midst of a pandemic, conflicts abound, and things are uncertain at this moment. The following notice applies to people using Add-on Updater and Windows App Essentials as this amounts to a major add-on support policy notice: As folks may know, throughout July I have worked on Project Meteor, a project to rewrite vast parts of Add-on Updater which became part of version 22.08. But that wasn’t the only thing in my mind: I kept coming back to the question of how to support people using soon to be unsupported Windows releases, and I keep hearing rumors about changes to Windows development plan from Microsoft. Adding to the mix is latest changes to NVDA source code, specifically preparations being made for NVDA 2022.3 beta. After assessing the situation and analyzing recent add-on support plans I made, I decided that consistency is better than complicating things for users. Therefore, I announce three major changes to support policy for Add-on Updater and Windows App Essentials: one for Add-on Updater, two for Windows App Essentials. First, both add-ons will require NVDA 2022.2 this September. Typically I support up to two past NVDA stable releases, more so for Windows App Essentials. However, given that important parts of Windows App Essentials are now part of NVDA (as of 2022.2), I believe that it makes sense to standardize around 2022.2, both for consistency and to reduce maintenance burden. Therefore, instead of 2022.1, Windows App Essentials will ask you to use 2022.2 starting from September (likely with 22.09). Second, after considering maintenance burden and complexity, I’m scrapping Add-on Updater Nightlight altogether. Nightlight, meant to provide minimal service on Windows 7 and 8.1, consist of two parts: turning off automatic updates, and disallowing development add-on releases. This means apart from features requiring Windows 10 and 11, folks using old Windows releases will be able to continue to check for add-on updates and can instruct NVDA to do so automatically and/or update to development builds. But please remember: once Microsoft ends support for Windows 7 and 8.1 (the latter for everyone in January 2023), you are on your own – I will not provide new features specific to old Windows releases from January 2023 onwards, so consider this a feature freeze announcement for Windows 7 and 8.1. Third, regarding Windows App Essentials, a prominent tech press cited by other sources indicate that Microsoft might be changing Windows development schedule. Details are uncertain, but if this is correct, it can bring a major change to Windows as a Service (WaaS) concept. If this change does become real, it can lead to a situation where it becomes possible to add changes to a Windows 11 feature update just prior for it being discontinued for consumers (unlikely but possible), and changes will be more frequent. For Windows App Essentials, this means it becomes harder to plan when to drop a feature update (tentative plan is to end support for Windows 10 November 2021 Update and Windows 11 original release in March and July 2023, respectively, a few months prior to end of consumer support), making my life a bit harder as well. Therefore for sake of consistency and to respond to rumored changes to Windows development schedule, as well as to prepare the way for someone to maintain this add-on if I do end maintenance for it, I’m changing feature update support duration so it aligns with consumer support duration (18 months for Windows 10, two years for Windows 11); for example, with this policy change, end of support for Windows 10 November 2021 Update will be June 2023 instead of March 2023; as always, development snapshots will ask you to upgrade to newer feature updates a few months prior. While this change takes effect with upcoming 22H2 feature updates, I’ll apply this policy change to 21H2 releases for consistency. The only exception is the very last feature update for Windows 10 which will be supported until end of 2025 (officially until October 2025 but a grace period will be added) provided that I’m still maintaining the add-on by then. The key takeaway is this: for users of Joseph Lee’s add-ons, please upgrade to NVDA 2022.2 no later than end of August 2022, preferably as soon as possible (by the way, add-ons compatible with NVDA 2022.1 are also compatible with 2022.2, and some add-ons might be using features from 2022.2 for various things). For folks using Windows App Essentials development builds, NVDA 2022.2 requirement will take effect with the second snapshot of August (next week). Thank you. Cheers, Joseph |
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Brian's Mail list account
Microsoft don't make this stuff at all easy do they!
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I think a lot more people than they think keep using older versions merely because every time they upgrade days or even weeks are taken to get to know how to configure them and use the changed features. This is not only in the blind community either I have to say. Brian -- bglists@... Sent via blueyonder.(Virgin media) Please address personal E-mail to:- briang1@..., putting 'Brian Gaff' in the display name field. ----- Original Message -----
From: "Joseph Lee" <joseph.lee22590@...> To: <nvda@nvda.groups.io> Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2022 8:36 PM Subject: [nvda] Important announcement on Joseph Lee's add-ons: please upgrade to NVDA 2022.2 ASAP, support policy changes Hello everyone, Hope you are enjoying NVDA 2022.2. But even then, let us not forget that we are in the midst of a pandemic, conflicts abound, and things are uncertain at this moment. The following notice applies to people using Add-on Updater and Windows App Essentials as this amounts to a major add-on support policy notice: As folks may know, throughout July I have worked on Project Meteor, a project to rewrite vast parts of Add-on Updater which became part of version 22.08. But that wasn't the only thing in my mind: I kept coming back to the question of how to support people using soon to be unsupported Windows releases, and I keep hearing rumors about changes to Windows development plan from Microsoft. Adding to the mix is latest changes to NVDA source code, specifically preparations being made for NVDA 2022.3 beta. After assessing the situation and analyzing recent add-on support plans I made, I decided that consistency is better than complicating things for users. Therefore, I announce three major changes to support policy for Add-on Updater and Windows App Essentials: one for Add-on Updater, two for Windows App Essentials. First, both add-ons will require NVDA 2022.2 this September. Typically I support up to two past NVDA stable releases, more so for Windows App Essentials. However, given that important parts of Windows App Essentials are now part of NVDA (as of 2022.2), I believe that it makes sense to standardize around 2022.2, both for consistency and to reduce maintenance burden. Therefore, instead of 2022.1, Windows App Essentials will ask you to use 2022.2 starting from September (likely with 22.09). Second, after considering maintenance burden and complexity, I'm scrapping Add-on Updater Nightlight altogether. Nightlight, meant to provide minimal service on Windows 7 and 8.1, consist of two parts: turning off automatic updates, and disallowing development add-on releases. This means apart from features requiring Windows 10 and 11, folks using old Windows releases will be able to continue to check for add-on updates and can instruct NVDA to do so automatically and/or update to development builds. But please remember: once Microsoft ends support for Windows 7 and 8.1 (the latter for everyone in January 2023), you are on your own - I will not provide new features specific to old Windows releases from January 2023 onwards, so consider this a feature freeze announcement for Windows 7 and 8.1. Third, regarding Windows App Essentials, a prominent tech press cited by other sources indicate that Microsoft might be changing Windows development schedule. Details are uncertain, but if this is correct, it can bring a major change to Windows as a Service (WaaS) concept. If this change does become real, it can lead to a situation where it becomes possible to add changes to a Windows 11 feature update just prior for it being discontinued for consumers (unlikely but possible), and changes will be more frequent. For Windows App Essentials, this means it becomes harder to plan when to drop a feature update (tentative plan is to end support for Windows 10 November 2021 Update and Windows 11 original release in March and July 2023, respectively, a few months prior to end of consumer support), making my life a bit harder as well. Therefore for sake of consistency and to respond to rumored changes to Windows development schedule, as well as to prepare the way for someone to maintain this add-on if I do end maintenance for it, I'm changing feature update support duration so it aligns with consumer support duration (18 months for Windows 10, two years for Windows 11); for example, with this policy change, end of support for Windows 10 November 2021 Update will be June 2023 instead of March 2023; as always, development snapshots will ask you to upgrade to newer feature updates a few months prior. While this change takes effect with upcoming 22H2 feature updates, I'll apply this policy change to 21H2 releases for consistency. The only exception is the very last feature update for Windows 10 which will be supported until end of 2025 (officially until October 2025 but a grace period will be added) provided that I'm still maintaining the add-on by then. The key takeaway is this: for users of Joseph Lee's add-ons, please upgrade to NVDA 2022.2 no later than end of August 2022, preferably as soon as possible (by the way, add-ons compatible with NVDA 2022.1 are also compatible with 2022.2, and some add-ons might be using features from 2022.2 for various things). For folks using Windows App Essentials development builds, NVDA 2022.2 requirement will take effect with the second snapshot of August (next week). Thank you. Cheers, Joseph |
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I upgrade where I can and always try the latest version.
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However I agree with your frustration. Case in point I had to do some servicing on windows 11 on a new lenovo that one of my aunts had. It came with office trial which I promptly killed. This wouldn't be a problem but the licence I obtained didn't work due to it being 1 time or something weird from the grey area store I got it but I was able to find another locally so it was eventually fine. However the dreaded unknown issue happened. Not a problem, I thought, reinstall office later, run com registration. That did fix it once but it didn't stay. Reinstalling nvda and then new adobe reader usually fixes this for a bit and it did a couple times but it never stuck. The only thing that had an issue with ccleaner as just about everything else I used worked and I had to use narator and nvda in combination. I'd usually reformat and reload at this point because well I had the software but it wasn't my computer and I couldn't justify doing it for 1 system program that would hardly get used and it did work for the most part. I could have gone via ms support but experience shhowed me that support for me has been 9 times out of 10 a waste of time with potential dammage long the lines and it appears from some quarters it got worse. I have family saying windows 11 is a big problem and I must agree. I see no reason to upgrade to 11 at least not now and at least while win10 still works. Plus I never saw any performance hikes on the new ryzen unit I had been using. In contrast the latest amd drivers and windows updates have actually pushed performance on this 2nd gen higher so there is that. Where I can I update but heck I am a bit of a hacker geek that way. Of course I do have a lot of mods here but even so, I really don't want to go through the process of reinstalling because every time these days you reload its never the same and it takes way to much time these days. I used to have the time but these days I can barely find enough and at others well I have more than enough but I really don't want to be spending it on my desk. As for older stuff working yeah, there are plenty of things that are non critical that I barely update because I don't need to. So I see the reason why some don't. My dad has office 2016 which has no more updates, it appears but he still uses it and it works. He is retired and well I don't see any real advantage to updating his office especially because his key is legal and works well enough. The documents he has are his own and he doesn't recieve attachments to do with anything in word. To be honest if it wasn't for a load of older word documents which I should probably convert at some point so I can go to something else like jarte it wouldn't be any stretch for me bar the daisy converter for word which I hardly use to not use office except I like the interface. Its a hold over from my old days but to be honest when I finally need another computer or a rebuild I will probably switch to something else, maybe who knows. I technically do have a legal office xp which I own which with the right engine upgrades will probably handle the newer formats so well who knows. I don't need it for much bar reading documents from dolphin for their test team and my other work I rarely if ever actually use it as intended. My aunt has another office which I got but she only has outlook for attachments that need it and its almost never used. I have not thought about a 365 sub but I must admit the family pack does have its attraction. On 29/07/2022 12:02 am, Brian's Mail list account via groups.io wrote:
Microsoft don't make this stuff at all easy do they! |
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Hi all, IMPORTANT: shortly after August 18, 2022 at 00:00 UTC (5 PM Pacific on August 17, 2022), Add-on Updater will not offer updates to itself and Windows App Essentials if you are not running NVDA 2022.2. This is in preparation for requiring the aforementioned NVDA release from the next stable versions of these add-ons (late August). Cheers, Joseph |
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On Thu, Jul 28, 2022 at 04:19 PM, Shaun Everiss wrote:
My dad has office 2016 which has no more updates, it appears but he still uses it and it works.- Which is incorrect, at least if you use "updates" broadly. There will be no additional features added to Office 2016, there haven't been for several years now, but it continues to receive security and other patch updates and will up through 2025. I think the 2025 date applies to Office 2019, too, but I've posted before that if you need to determine when any given Microsoft product might go out of support or what it's current state of support is, see: Microsoft Software Lifecycle Search Page -- Brian - Windows 10, 64-Bit, Version 21H2, Build 19044 The difference between a top-flight creative man and the hack is his ability to express powerful meanings indirectly. ~ Vance Packard |
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