Tag Archives: Windows

Microsoft Narrator and some emoticons

Messing around with Windows Narrator, because I found a more complex emoticon I used in the past (>>-x_x–>, an arrow through a dead face) and that led me down the rabbit hole trying to figure out how to make that more accessible. (Short answer: probably too many “standards,” no real way to make it work.)

I tried Apple’s screen reader on an iMac years ago at work. I don’t remember much about the experience, it was pleasant enough, but then I didn’t test it out on any of my old blog posts hahaha! So I don’t know how Apple deals with emoticons. Unless there’s a screen reader on the iPad that I’d have to dig around to test out.

Anyway, here are a few things I noticed with Narrator:

  • Why is “Windows” pronounced as if it rhymes with endows? Isn’t Narrator made by Microsoft?? Confusing.
  • It’ll read some emoticons/punctuation. But it can be inconsistent:
    • Read ^^;; as “caret caret” first (ignoring the semicolons), then “sweating face.” (Which, no! It’s not…sweating! It’s sweatdrops!)
    • Read >.< as “angry face” once, then didn’t read it the second time.
    • The >>-x_x–> emoticon above was read as “x underscore x.”
    • It read ^^ alone as “happy face.” (It’s…not quite…happy, more like bashful happy? Right?)
    • Read o_O; as “confused face” (probably ignoring the semicolon) but o.O was read as “oh dot oh.”
    • It didn’t read >.< but it does understand >_< as “angry face.”
  • For some reason I couldn’t get Narrator to read anything in Pale Moon other than the title of the Window. Strange. I didn’t want to spend my time diagnosing that or trying to figure out Narrator.

I was disappointed it couldn’t read any text coded with abbr and title or aria-label. I supposed there’s a setting I have to configure, but it’s not on by default. So I guess there’s no making emoticons 100% accessible at this point in time. :/ (Read as “uneasy face.” xD [Read as “x d.”]) But at least it read + correctly, so as someone wrote in 2014 that “1+1=2” was often read as “1 1 2”, things have gotten somewhat better over the years…?

less zippy laptop

Quicky post … right.

Finished upgrading Win XP and drivers and such on my laptop, then re-installed all the programs and copied back most of my files. Interesting note: most of the programs I installed, I downloaded free online. Only three were on CD (Paint Shop Pro 6, yes, Photoshop 7, and my Canon camera things).

For a day or two after the fresh install I had a really hard time connecting to the internet. I could access the computer network, but not the internet. X( I’ve had problems with my laptop network card (external, yes my laptop is that old) and XP SP2 before. I downloaded a new driver that time, but I don’t know how I fixed it this time. Apparently some weird mix of installing and uninstalling some drivers I downloaded from Dell made things click. *blink*

Now my speed never reads as fast as 54 mbps, it’s about half that speed or less, but then again I never really trusted the high number before. Just because the card can go that fast doesn’t mean it is.

The only other problem I have is, for some reason my laptop doesn’t like to come back from standby. Whenever I try to wake it up, everything runs slower than molasses if it were a hundred years old. At first I thought it was my wireless card driver or something, because that’s happened before, with that whole SP2 fiasco, but my laptop runs fine from startup.

Then I thought it was Photoshop, because it’s been running slow recently (can’t remember what settings I had it at before), but a third time proved that theory false. Now I’m wondering if it’s Firefox that’s the cause, but I’m too scared to try it out, and I can’t remember if I had Firefox open the very first time…

End result? I’ve got 4.92 gigs of free space on my harddrive, less than before, but I’ve also got most all my music on this laptop now. XD That folder went from about 3.5 gigs to a bit over 12 gigs. I also sacrificed my pet pictures—they’re currently only on my external harddrive (must remember to copy them to my desktop…*worry*)—I don’t normally do anything with them anyway. That saved me three gigs.

(Oh, of course, my startup time is about the same as it was before, perhaps a mite faster, but not really noticeable. Firefox (still on 2) also has gone back to opening fairly slowly, but what can ya do?)

All in all, I am one happy puppy. Or should I say kitty? We don’t have a dog at the moment. :(

[comments closed to reduce spam]

zippy laptop

Yay! I have a fresh install of XP on my laptop! XD It starts up so fast! But I still have to install all my programs again…

Firefox (2 still, don’t quite like 3) starts up really fast too! :D Still have to import my bookmarks, and work on my preferences (allow or deny cookies for sites as I go around).

I’ve gone from 5.5 gigs hard drive space free to 25 gigs free! Tomorrow I’ll have to move all my files back on here. Hoping I have enough space to upload most of my music. *crosses fingers*

I finished reorganizing my closet today too. (Well, finished installing new shelving and finalized where I put everything.) What a productive day! It just zipped by! Like my laptop! Ohoho!

Windows ME and a search engine hit

I don’t like Windows ME. It made me kick the compi! Well, I never really liked this compi anyway. I guess I liked it when it was new. But now it’s all old. Hm. I wonder how old it is. I suppose this summer it’ll be three years old. Well anyway.

I was 1: talking to Adam; 2: reading blogs; and 3: browsing Launch Yahoo! thingimabobber. Oh yes. I was looking through the music videos, and went back one page, then it caused some error in some thing, so it closed. Then the music video window caused an error, so that closed, and I gave up and read blogs again.

But there was still a window thingie in the taskbar (if that makes any sense …) but it was blank; the window was just called “Music Videos.” So I clicked on it, and then the IE window with the blog caused an error in something, and then AIM caused an error in KRNL382.EXE (something like that …). ARGH.

Everything was still on the screen, too; the desktop wasn’t showing. I started clicking on windows and nothing happened so I went to restart and it did that Program running thingie, so I said End Task. Waited, nothing. Did that oh maybe three more times.

I started kicking the Start button on the computer because I decided music videos weren’t worth the trouble and that I’d go on my laptop. Nothing. So then I kicked the restart button and waited for the scandisk to finish, and Adam had signed off. ;_; So mean. Windows, I mean, not him.

Hm. One upside to all the problems (or I should just say problem, as far as I can tell all the problems are with the video card thing) on my laptop is that there’s no scanning of the disk when I forcefully shut the thing down. >D ^^;;;

Also. I seem to have gotten a referral from Google for “time pass on net.” Hm. O_o Wha? *ponders about the day when she gets a search engine hit for “wasting time on net”* XP;; Well anyway. I went to the results page for the search. It seems I’m listed second. o.O Right. But something more odd. Under the title, where they put the text that was hit with that search, it says

“… e-mail: @flimsysilence.net @hotmail.com @planet-save.com >-save … faked sick for a long period of time (longer than … get a FREE copy of the BACKSTAGE PASS CD-ROM …”

O.O!!! Whaaaa?! Faked sick? Me?! XP Hah. But then, what are CAPS doing in any sort of relation to one of my sites??? Especially the word “free” and the words “backstage pass” in caps!! O_O;;

*later* Ah, I found out the answer. o.o; *pats Greymatter search function* *huggles it* ^-^’ (note: Livejournal doesn’t have a search function. ¬_¬ or at least not as far as I can tell) CAPS: something about a music show on tv? and faked sick (referring to Hidek :b it wasn’t me!)