[Electronics-talk] What's new in NVDA

Thu Sep 4 19:47:22 UTC 2014

What's New in NVDA
2014.3
New Features
•The sounds played when NVDA starts and exits can be disabled via a new 
option in the General Settings dialog. (#834)
•Help for add-ons can be accessed from the Add-ons Manager for add-ons 
which support this. (#2694)
•Support for the Calendar in Microsoft Outlook 2007 and above (#2943) 
including:
◦Announcement of the current time when moving around with the arrow keys.
◦Indication if the selected time is within any appointments.
◦announcement of the selected appointment when pressing tab.
◦Smart filtering of the date so as to only announce the date if the new 
selected time or appointment is on a different day to the last.
•Enhanced support for the Inbox and other message lists in Microsoft 
Outlook 2010 and above (#3834) including:
◦The ability to silence column headers (from, subject, etc.) by turning 
off the Report Table row and column headers option in Document 
Formatting settings.
◦The ability to use table navigation commands (control + alt + arrows) 
to move through the individual columns.
•Microsoft word: If an inline image has no alternative text set, NVDA 
will instead report the title of the image if the author has provided 
one. (#4193)
•Microsoft Word: NVDA can now report paragraph indenting with the report 
formatting command (NVDA+f). It can also be reported automatically when 
the new Report Paragraph indenting option is enabled in Document 
Formatting settings. (#4165)
•Report automatically inserted text such as a new bullet, number or tab 
indent when pressing enter in editable documents and text fields. (#4185)
•Microsoft word: Pressing NVDA+alt+c will report the text of a comment 
if the cursor is within one. (#3528)
•Improved support for automatic column and row header reading in 
Microsoft Excel (#3568) including:
◦Support of Excel defined name ranges to identify header cells 
(compatible with Jaws screen reader) .
◦The set column header (NVDA+shift+c) and set row header (NVDA+shift+r) 
commands now store the settings in the worksheet so that they are 
available the next time the sheet is opened, and will be available to 
other screen readers that support the defined name range scheme.
◦These commands can also now be used multiple times per sheet to set 
different headers for different regions.
•Support for automatic column and row header reading in Microsoft Word 
(#3110) including:
◦Support of Microsoft Word bookmarks to identify header cells 
(compatible with Jaws screen reader). - set column header (NVDA+shift+c) 
and set row header (NVDA+shift+r) commands while on the first header 
cell in a table allow you to tell NVDA that these headers should be 
reported automatically. Settings are stored in the document so that they 
are available the next time the document is opened, and will be 
available to other screen readers that support the bookmark scheme.
•Microsoft Word: Report the distance from the left edge of the page when 
the tab key is pressed. (#1353)
•Microsoft Word: provide feedback in speech and braille for most 
available formatting shortcut keys (bold, italic, underline, alignment, 
outline level, superscript, subscript and font size). (#1353)
•Microsoft Excel: If the selected cell contains comments, they can be 
now reported by pressing NVDA+alt+c. (#2920)
•Microsoft Excel: Provide an NVDA-specific dialog to edit the comments 
on the currently selected cell when pressing Excel's shift+f2 command to 
enter comment editing mode. (#2920)
•Microsoft Excel: speech and braille feedback for many more selection 
movement shortcuts (#4211) including:
◦Vertical page movement (pageUp and pageDown);
◦Horizontal page movement (alt+pageUp and alt+pageDown);
◦Extend selection (the above keys with Shift added); and
◦Selecting the current region (control+shift+8).
•Microsoft Excel: The vertical and horizontal alignment for cells can 
now be reported with the report formatting command (NVDA+f). It can also 
be reported automatically if the Report alignment option in Document 
Formatting settings is enabled. (#4212)
•Microsoft Excel: The style of a cell can now be reported with the 
report formatting command (NVDA+f). It can also be reported 
automatically if the Report Style option in Document formatting settings 
is enabled. (#4213)
•Microsoft PowerPoint: when moving shapes around a slide with the arrow 
keys, the shape's current location is now reported (#4214) including:
◦The distance between the shape and each of the slide edges is reported.
◦If the shape covers or is covered by another shape, then the distance 
overlapped and the overlapped shape are reported.
◦To report this information at any time without moving a shape, press 
the report location command (NVDA+delete).
◦When selecting a shape, if it is covered by another shape, NVDA will 
report that it is obscured.
•The report location command (NVDA+delete) is more context specific in 
some situations. (#4219)
◦In standard edit fields and browse mode, the cursor position as a 
percentage through the content and its screen coordinates are reported.
◦On shapes in PowerPoint Presentations, position of the shape relative 
to the slide and other shapes is reported.
◦Pressing this command twice will produce the previous behaviour of 
reporting the location information for the entire control.
•New language: Catalan.
Changes
•Updated liblouis braille translator to 2.5.4. (#4103)
Bug Fixes
•In Google Chrome and Chrome-based browsers, certain chunks of text 
(such as those with emphasis) are no longer repeated when reporting the 
text of an alert or dialog. (#4066)
•In browse mode in Mozilla applications, pressing enter on a button, 
etc. no longer fails to activate it (or activates the wrong control) in 
certain cases such as the buttons at the top of Facebook. (#4106)
•Useless information is no longer announced when tabbing in iTunes. (#4128)
•In certain lists in iTunes such as the Music list, moving to the next 
item using object navigation now works correctly. (#4129)
•HTML elements considered headings because of WAI ARIA markup are now 
included in the Browse mode Elements list and quick navigation for 
Internet Explorer documents. (#4140)
•Following same-page links in recent versions of Internet Explorer now 
correctly moves to and reports the destination position in browse mode 
documents. (#4134)
•Microsoft Outlook 2010 and above: Overall access to secure dialogs such 
as the New profiles and mail setup dialogs has been improved. (#4090, 
#4091, #4095)
•Microsoft Outlook: Useless verbosity has been decreased in command 
toolbars when navigating through certain dialogs. (#4096, #3407)
•Microsoft word: Tabbing to a blank cell in a table no longer 
incorrectly announces exiting the table. (#4151)
•Microsoft Word: The first character past the end of a table (including 
a new blank line) is no longer incorrectly considered to be inside the 
table. (#4152)
•Microsoft Word 2010 spell check dialog: The actual misspelled word is 
reported rather than inappropriately reporting just the first bold word. 
(#3431)
•In browse mode in Internet Explorer and other MSHTML controls, tabbing 
or using single letter navigation to move to form fields again reports 
the label in many cases where it didn't (specifically, where HTML label 
elements are used). (#4170)
•Microsoft Word: Reporting the existance and placement of comments is 
more accurate. (#3528)
•Navigation of certain dialogs in MS Office products such as Word, Excel 
and Outlook has been improved by no longer reporting particular control 
container toolbars which are not useful to the user. (#4198)
•Task panes such as clipboard manager or File recovery no longer 
accidentilly seem to gain focus when opening an application such as 
Microsoft Word or Excel, which was sometimes causing the user to have to 
switch away from and back to the application to use the document or 
spreadsheet. (#4199)
•NVDA no longer fails to run on recent Windows Operating Systems if the 
user's Windows language is set to Serbian (Latin). (#4203)
•Pressing numlock while in input help mode now correctly toggles 
numlock, rather than causing the keyboard and the Operating System to 
become out of sync in regards to the state of this key. (#4226)
•In Google Chrome, the title of the document is again reported when 
switching tabs. In NVDA 2014.2, this did not occur in some cases. (#4222)
•In Google Chrome and Chrome-based browsers, the URL of the document is 
no longer reported when reporting the document. (#4223)
•When running say all with the No speech synthesizer selected (useful 
for automated testing), say all will now complete instead of stopping 
after the first few lines. (#4225)
•Microsoft Outlook's Signature dialog: The Signature editing field is 
now accessible, allowing for full cursor tracking and format detection. 
(#3833)
•Microsoft Word: When reading the last line of a table cell, the entire 
table cell is no longer read. (#3421)
•Microsoft Word: When reading the first or last line of a table of 
contents, the entire table of contents is no longer read. (#3421)
•When speaking typed words and in some other cases, words are no longer 
incorrectly broken at marks such as vowel signs and virama in Indic 
languages. (#4254)
•Numeric editable text fields in GoldWave are now handled correctly. (#670)
•Microsoft Word: when moving by paragraph with control+downArrow / 
control+upArrow, it is no longer necessary to press them twice if moving 
through bulleted or numbered lists. (#3290)
Changes for Developers
•NVDA now has unified support for add-on documentation. See the Add-on 
Documentation section of the Developer Guide for details. (#2694)
•When providing gesture bindings on a ScriptableObject via __gestures, 
it is now possible to provide the None keyword as the script. This 
unbinds the gesture in any base classes. (#4240)
•It is now possible to change the shortcut key used to start NVDA for 
locales where the normal shortcut causes problems. (#2209)
◦This is done via gettext.
◦Note that the text for the Create desktop shortcut option in the 
Install NVDA dialog, as well as the shortcut key in the User Guide, must 
also be updated.
-- 
Christopher Hallsworth
Student at the Hadley School for the Blind
www.hadley.edu