[gui-talk] Fwd: SkypeTalking 0.8 released!

Fri Apr 16 16:33:47 UTC 2010

From: Hrvoje Katic hrvojekatic at gmail.com
To: skypetalking at googlegroups.com

Dear friends,

Proud to release exciting new version 0.8 of SkypeTalking. This is the 
fourth release, and contains lots of new features and some bug fixes and 
improvements as well.
Comparing to first release from February (SkypeTalking 0.5), this is a 
big step forward!
Some highlights of this new release are chat monitoring, easy way for 
changing a mood text on the fly, improved support for file transfers, 
better reporting of call duration, contacts manager and SMS support.
I would like to thank again to all of the contributors, as well as our 
second developer Gianluca who has also made a lot of work on V0.8.
Now regarding the translations. The following translations still have to 
be updated. They will unfortunately be outdated in 0.8. These are as 
follows: czech, spanish, japanese, polish, portuguese and chinese.
All others are updated, including the documentation. I am just unsure 
for russian and ukranian readme but whatsnew is translated.
We also simplified the installer, and jfwapi.dll is now automatically 
registered, so users running 64-bit JAWS should no longer have problems 
with SkypeTalking not detecting JAWS. SkypeTalking can now also be 
launched with Alt+Ctrl+Shift+T hot key, which I didn't mentione in 
whatsnew, so this will be updated for the next version under 0.8 section.
Everyone here on SkypeTalking mailing list was able to follow how much 
work we've made on this new version, and thus every feedback is welcome. 
We fixed some bugs, and some may be still present. The one problem that 
we are aware of is slower performance with some commands e.g. slow 
loading of contacts manager, slow reactions with end call command 
(alt+ctrl+shift+end) etc. Another bug is where SkypeTalking will say New 
SMS when that's in fact a new file transfer. I also experienced some 
interesting problems where some events are not spoken sometimes for some 
reason, so I ask myself, if they are spoken in general, then why they 
are sometimes ignored for no reason, even if ignoring is off. I hope 
that we will be able to address these bugs, but in general the program 
should work quite well.
Here comes the complete list of new features copied from what's new 
document as well as the download link for both portable and installer 
versions of SkypeTalking 0.8.

New: Added the ability to monitor active chats, in other words, opened 
chat windows. Use keystrokes Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Function keys F1 through F10 
to set monitor on one of the last 10 active chats (press twice to bring 
focus to that chat window). You can then use Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Numbers for 
reading last 10 messages in currently monitored chat. Pressing 
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+C will announce currently monitored chat, and pressing it 
twice will bring focus to that chat window.
New: Added the ability to read and/or change your Skype mood text. 
Pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+M will speak your current mood text, and 
pressing it twice will open a dialog box that lets you change your mood 
text.
New: Alt+Ctrl+Shift+O command reports the current user online status, 
and when pressed twice, will report the user's current balance on a 
Skype credit.
New: Added command for speaking the current call duration, Alt+Ctrl+Shift+D.
New: Added contacts Manager, accessed with Alt+Ctrl+Shift+F11, which is 
the alternative to Skype contact list. It will display your contacts in 
a multi-select list box allowing you to select them with a spacebar and 
perform various actions on them such as Call, Chat or View Profile. It 
will also display the Last Seen information for offline contacts, which 
is inaccessible with some Skype versions and to some screen readers such 
as NVDA. The View Profile action will open a profile viewer that will 
allow you to review the selected contact's details by using the Tab and 
Shift+Tab and the arrow keys. The Call and Chat actions are 
self-describing. Pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+F11 twice will focus the 
original Skype contact list. If multiple contacts are selected, then you 
will have options for creating a conference or a multi-chat.
New: Added commands for answering and ending a call, Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Home 
and Alt+Ctrl+Shift+End (not on the NumPad). Pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Home 
during a call will toggle between hold and resume for the current call. 
Pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Home twice quickly will answer and join the 
incoming call to a conference. Pressing Alt+Ctrl+Shift+End twice quickly 
will toggle microphone mute or unmute.
New: Added support for sending SMS with SkypeTalking. The command 
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S will now open an SMS wizard which will allow you to 
send SMS to any phone number. There are two dialogs, one for the phone 
number and the another one for the message text. When entering a number, 
use semicolons to separate multiple phone numbers and also include your 
country code. If everything is correct, press Enter to continue. Next, 
enter your SMS text, then press Enter or tab to Send button to send a 
message, or press Escape or Cancel Button to cancel sending. While 
composing a message, you can press F2 to check out your current SMS 
count, how many characters you have left, and also the current SMS 
price. A Critical Stop sound will play in case when there are 0 
characters left in a message text.
New: Added a new option to settings dialog to automatically quit Skype 
when exiting SkypeTalking. It's set to On by default.
New: Added a new option to settings dialog, "Confirm when exiting 
SkypeTalking". It's turned on by default, so now when exiting 
SkypeTalking, you should also confirm that you want to exit. If it's 
turned off, SkypeTalking will behave like in previous versions, which 
means that it will exit immediately. This option was added to prevent 
users from exiting program by accident.
New: Added the ability to customize SkypeTalking keyboard shortcuts, 
though currently you have to use INI file for this. The Key Bindings tab 
in the Settings dialog is scheduled for the next release. If the 
keyboard assignment in SkypeTalking.INI is incorrect, than the default 
assignment will be used, but user will also be warned about an invalid 
assignment. You can modify all keystrokes under the [shortcuts] section. 
Please use this carefully, and also restart SkypeTalking if the changes 
didn't take affect immediately.
New: Added languages: Danish and French.
Changed: Read last chat message command changed from Alt+Ctrl+Shift+M to 
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+R. Also when pressed twice, will move the focus and 
monitor to that chat.
Changed: Exit SkypeTalking command changed from Alt+Ctrl+Shift+F4 to 
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Q (for Quit).
Changed: The Settings Dialog command changed from Alt+Ctrl+Shift+S to 
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+P (for Preferences).
Changed: Removed taskbar icon. You can now use associated SkypeTalking 
commands instead of the right-click menu.
Changed: API wrapper version is now spoken when pressing 
Alt+Ctrl+Shift+V twice, since this information is not useful for the end 
users.
Improved: call duration is now reported in hours, minutes and seconds.
Improved: Added file transfer speed and data transferred information to 
File Transfer Status command (Alt+Ctrl+Shift+F).
Improved: SkypeTalking will no longer allow multiple instances running 
at the same time, and it will reproduce a Ding sound if the user tries 
launching another instance of SkypeTalking by accident while it's in memory.
Improved: If the critical error happens while loading SkypeTalking, an 
error tone will be played from your PC speaker. Please inform the 
developers about this as soon as it happens.
Bugfix: SkypeTalking will no longer ignore contacts that haven't set 
their full names, and it'll speak their Skype Id's instead. Thus, you 
will no longer hear something like "Skype: is online".
Bugfix: When opening settings dialog, the focus is now properly set to 
Language Combo Box.
Bugfix: In settings dialog, the Ok and Cancel buttons are no longer 
bypassed when navigating with Shift+Tab.

Download links:
SkypeTalking 0.8 installation program: 
http://skypetalking.googlecode.com/files/SkypeTalking_0.8_Setup.exe
SkypeTalking 0.8 portable version: 
http://skypetalking.googlecode.com/files/SkypeTalking_0.8_portable.7z

Feel free to forward this email to other mailing lists, including 
SkypeEnglish, NVDA etc.
Also join me on the inovations show  on The Global Voice radio where I 
will be presenting SkypeTalking to the listeners soon.

Greetings from Croatia/Zagreb,
Hrvoje Katic - SkypeTalking president

Thanks for supporting free and open source SkypeTalking addon for Skype.
For downloads, info and source code repository, visit SkypeTalking project
website at http://skypetalking.googlecode.com

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
MSN Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
Skype:  steve1963
Twitter:  steve9782