Window-Eyes Explorer Window-Eyes Explorer: Windows Explorer is an application that lets you manage all of the files on your hard drive, CD-ROM drive, network drive, or USB drive. No matter which of these drives, the idea of storing information on them is very similar. You can think of how things are organized, if you think of how a file cabinet is used. If you open up a file cabinet drawer, you will find several folders. If you pull a folder out, you may notice that there are more folders within that folder. Within those folders, you may find individual pieces ofpaper, or possibly even more folders. All of your storage devices can be thought of exactly like this. For example, your c: drive is typically your main hard drive. If you look at it, you will probably find several folders on it, as well as individual files. If you look within some of the folders, you will find individual files, as well as more folders, and on and on. It really is up to you how far you carry this folder idea. For example, by default, all of the Window Eyes files are stored in a folder called Window-Eyes, which is located on your c: drive, but within a few more sub-directories. The actual location of the Window Eyes program files is c:/program files/gw micro/window-eyes. If you look in this folder, you will see many files and a few other folders. One of those folders is called manual, assuming that the manual was installed during installation. Within the manual directory, you will find many files, which comprise of the entire Window Eyes user manual. Let’s start up Windows Explorer and show how this works. To start Windows Explorer, simply press Windows key-e. This is a system command that immediately launches Windows Explorer, no matter what you are currently doing. So I’m going to go ahead and hold down that famous Windows key again, and tap the “e” key. WE: Windows Explorer, no selected item, list view This brings up Windows Explorer. It also said that I was in a list view with no selected item. That is just the way that Vista starts this. Let me down arrow to select an item. WE: Devices with removable storage, 1 group Actually let me up arrow once, so we can get to something more useful. WE: Local disk d, 30, 32.4gb free… This told me that I was at the second of the two options, so let me up arrow one more time. WE: Local disk c, 45, 25.6gb free of 46.5 gb… Local disk, c drive now. So it depends on the view that you are in, within the list view, of how things are arrowed around. I personally like the view of details, which allows me to arrow from top to bottom in this. To change the view, typically you can just press alt-v, to bring down the view menu WE: V, file v pull down Now I am going to down arrow through this menu. WE: Status Bar, b; Explorer bar, e; Extra large icons, x; large icons, r; medium icons, m; small icons, n; list, l; Details, d; I won’t go through all of these options because there are a lot to go over. But let me go one more. WE: Tiles, s checked So tiles, with s being the shortcut, is the one that is selected. Let me just go up one to details. WE: Details, d Details and list are probably the best because you can arrow from one to the other. Press enter on details. WE: Menu closed. Local disk c, type local disk, total size 46.5 gb, free space 25.6 gb, hard disk drive 2 group, list view, 1 of 9 This is much more friendly and easier to navigate. So now when I down arrow, I will go to my d: drive. WE: Local disk d, type local disk, total size… I’m going to silence that by pressing the control key. This just has different headings, like name, title, drive size, free space, etc. I want to show you how we can get to the Window Eyes manual using this approach, then how we can get to it quicker. Let me go back up to the c: drive, because that is the root of my drive. WE: Local disk c, type local disk…. I’m going to silence that. I know that I am on the c drive, so I can hit enter. This will actually open up the c drive. WE: Album one, unselected, list view, 1 of 18 It tells me that I have an item called “album one.” If I down arrow one time… WE: Crossroads, 2 of 18 And I have several other directories, one of them called program files. I can hit the down arrow until I get to it, or I can type in “p” to help me get there quicker. WE: P, Program files, 8 of 18 Remember, we want to go to program files, then gw micro Window Eyes manual. So I’m going to hit enter on program files. This will open up all of the program files that I have in this folder. WE: No selected item, list view There are no selected items to begin with. If I down arrow one time… WE: Common files Down arrow again. WE: Design site; Google; Gw Micro So there is the Gw micro directory. Again I could have “g” to get there. Now I’m going to hit enter on GW Micro. WE: Window Eyes, date modified, 9/12/2008, type file folder, unselected, list view, 1 of 1 It said unselected. It is highlighted, but it is unselected. Visually, I see a rectangle going around the item, but it is not highlighted in color. To get it fully selected, just hit the space bar. WE: Space, Window Eyes, date modified, 9/12/2008, type file folder, 1 of 1 Since it didn’t say unselected, I can assume that it is selected. If I hit enter on this, it will open up this folder. WE: Manual, date modified, 9/12/2008, type file folder, unselected, list view, 1 of 158 Again, it said that it was unselected, so I can hit the space bar to select it. All of the Window Eyes program files are within this directory. But I want the manual, so I’m going to hit space. WE: Space, manual, date modified, 9/12/2008, type file folder, 1 of 158 I’m going to silence that by hitting the control key, and hit enter to open it up. WE: Appendix A Hotkeys reference guide, date modified…. I silenced that with the control key. Now I see all of the individual sections of the Window Eyes manual with actual names. It started with appendix a, appendix b, and so forth. It sorted these alphabetically. But if I down arrow a few times real quickly… WE: Section 1, Introducing Window Eyes, date modified, 4/9/2007 So I just went to section 1 of the Window Eyes manual. If I were to hit enter on this, it would actually launch Notepad and leave Windows Explorer open in the background. This will also open up this section. Press enter. WE: Section 1, Introducing Window Eyes, Notepad. 1, Introducing Window Eyes, this section of the Window Eyes manual provides…. I silenced that again, but you can see that it automatically loaded in this section and started to read through it. I will talk about reading relative to the cursor in another section of this tutorial. So I’m going to go ahead and close Notepad with alt-f4. WE: Manual, section 1, Introducing Window Eyes… I have silenced this once again. This brought me back to the Windows Explorer window because that was the last one that was open before I hit enter to open up Notepad. And I can go through this as much as I want. If I want to go back a level, I can just hit the backspace key… WE: Manual, date modified…(silenced) This took me back one level. I am now inside the Window Eyes program folder. I could keep going back if I wanted to. I can also press f6 when I am in Windows Explorer. If I do this… WE: Name It took me to name, which is the column header of the list view. I can then arrow between the different column headers, and do things with that. Press f6 again. WE: Desktop, split button This takes me up to a split button, which allows me to type in the path that I want to do. F6 again. WE: Organize, button This takes me to what is like a command bar at the top of the menu. I can arrow between all of these options. Press f6 again. WE: Documents This takes me to a favorite links group. “Documents” is the first one in the group. F6 again. WE: Collapse folders, button Folders group, which is collapse. I could open this up with the enter key. F6 again WE: Window Eyes, expanded, 3 items, tree view, depth 6 Here is a tree view that actually takes me into the depth of my hard drive. So, instead of interacting in a list view and opening up new folders, I could of actually used this tree view to navigate to the particular folder that I want. A tree view is very much like the start menu. If I down arrow one time… WE: Manual, 1 of 3, depth 7 So, it told me I’m at depth 7, the first of three in the Window Eyes group. This is just showing me the sub-folders, and not the individual folders. If I want to see what is inside the manual, then I can hit enter on this and it would open up the manual folder for me. Down arrow one time. WE: Sets, closed. 2 of 3. So this is the sets directory. I could open that up by pressing the right arrow key, and arrow through that. Now because that I’m on a tree view, I can actually hit the left arrow key now…. WE: Window Eyes, expanded, 3 items, depth 7 It brings me back one level. If I hit the left arrow again… WE: Window Eyes, closed This closed the folder. Press the left arrow again. WE: Gw Micro, expanded… This takes me back one level to GW Micro. It is very simple to navigate a tree view to get to a specific folder or file. I can press enter, and then hit f6 to go over to the list view to access the file that I want. I’ll just up arrow from here. WE: Google, closed, 4 of 32 Google just happened to be the folder that I had above the GW Micro folder. If I press f6 again…. WE: Date, modified, 9/12/2008… I am back in my list view now. Hopefully this has given you a quick overview of how to use Windows Explorer. Let me show you another way to get to the Window Eyes text manual, outside of having to go through all of the directories. Press alt-f4 to close Windows Explorer. WE: Desktop, Adobe Reader 8, list view, 9 of 10 It took me back to the desktop. I’m going to go to the start menu, so press control-escape WE: Start menu, start search There are a couple things that I can do at this point. I can go to the all programs group, find Window Eyes and open it up and go down there, or we can use the search box in the Vista start menu. I’m going to type in “manual” to see what happens. WE: Window Eyes text manual, programs group, 1 of 17 And there it is. Now it may not have directly found it for you, depending on what items you have, but it did find it for me. If I hit enter on this, it will open up the Window Eyes text manual. Now there is also the Window Eyes manual, and the Window Eyes scripting manual, but it came up with the text manual, which is what I was looking for. If I were to down arrow, I would hear the Window Eyes manual and then the scripting manual. So I could have typed in “text manual” and I might have gotten a better search, but this is a much quicker way than having to search through all of the menus. Press enter now. WE: Windows Explorer, Appendix A…. It launched Windows Explorer, and went immediately to this manual directory, and I am sitting on Appendix A. I could arrow down and select appendix A and hit enter if I wanted to see the file. We think that the Help format is better, and we will show you that in a later tutorial section. But this offers you a quick way to access the manual. Let’s move on to the next section.