Using Window-Eyes Scripts Using Window-Eyes Scripts: Window Eyes offers a very powerful feature called scripting. Scripting is the ability for individuals to customize Window Eyes to perform functionality which is not built directly in. This gives great flexibility and power immediately, without having t wait for GW Micro to implement certain features or functionality. Starting with Window Eyes 7.0, scripting has become a core component. Individuals capable of doing basic or advanced scripting can create what could be referred to as add-ons to Window-Eyes. The main repository for scripts can be found at www.gwmicro/scriptcentral. When you first installed Window Eyes, only a few basic scripts were installed by default. Beyond these basic scripts, it is up to you to decide what scripts you do and do not want installed on your system. By default, Window Eyes installs the following five scripts: gwtoolkit, virtualview, autocomplete, lvnav, and progressIndicator. I’ll talk a little bit more about each of those shortly. Let’s take a look at how you can manage scripts and how they can be installed and used. This tutorial will not go into how to create scripts. This is simply meant to show you how you can take advantage of the wealth of scripts already written. So, I’m still sitting at the desktop of Windows Vista with Window Eyes running. I’m going to go ahead and to go one of the Window Eyes file menu options that we did not go into detail at all when we were talking about the menu options. So let me bring up Window Eyes with control-backslash. WE: Window Eyes Press alt-f to go to file. WE: F, save s pull down Let me down arrow one time. WE: Manage sets and scripts, m pull down Manage sets and scripts. Now we did open this long enough to go into the set file manager dialog in the past, but now we want to look at some of the script options that are here. I can press either the right arrow or enter to open this up. Press right arrow. WE: Scripting status = on, u Scripting status equals on. This allows me to turn scripting either on, manual, or off. If I hit enter on this, and I will. WE: Menu closed. On, list box 2 of 3. Dialog, select scripting status So select scripting status, I’m on 2 of 3, which is on. If I were to up arrow… WE: Off, 1 of 3 Down arrow. WE: On, 2 of 3 Down arrow again. WE: Manual start, 3 of 3 On means that it is going to go ahead and authorize all of the scripts that I have installed. Window Eyes will automatically launch those scripts as it needs to do that. Off means that all scripting is off. If you just want to say that you don’t want any scripts to ever run, you would just turn this to off, and it would remain off until you turn it back on. This is a great way to quickly turn off scripts altogether. Manual start means that scripting is allowed, but doesn’t automatically start the scripts as Window Eyes typically would. Scripts will only be started when you go into a dialog, which we have not shown you yet, and you can specifically tell which scripts you want started. That is good if you have something going on and you have a script that isn’t doing what it should be doing and it may be confusing you, then you can just manually start the scripts, which means that they are not running, and you can start them on your own until you can find what the offending script is. I’m going to escape out of here, which is going to leave me the default of “on.” Press escape. WE: Window Eyes I’m going to go back into the file menu by pressing alt-f. WE: F, save s pull down Down arrow to manage sets and scripts or press “m” for the shortcut. WE: M, scripting status on, u So I am back at scripting status. Now I’m going to go ahead and hit down arrow once. WE: Add or remove packages, A dialog. I’m going to skip add or remove packages for right now. We will come back to that one a little later. One more down arrow. WE: Script manager, m dialog. Script manager. This also opens a dialog. I’m going to go ahead and hit enter on this one. WE: Menu closed, dialog. Script manager. Scripts for running applications, s. autocomplete.vbs, application, global, status running, version 1.9, description autocomplete 1.9, list view 1 of 5 This brings up a dialog that is very powerful and allows you to do a lot of manipulation within the scripts. There is also an advanced option, which gives you even more options, but I am not going to talk about that in this tutorial section. Basically, this is like a task manager of all of the Window-Eyes scripts that are running. Before I get into the details of that, let me just back up a little bit and talk about these scripts and what they specifically are. A script is just a little program that can be running that can drive Window Eyes to do certain things depending on what applications are running and things like that. That way, for a script writer to go in and customize an application to make it work beautifully with Window Eyes, it can be as complicated as you want, or it can be as simple as you want. Again, I am not going to get into how to create them. That is what they do. They create these scripts, and can create one which is global, which means it is running all of the time with Window Eyes, no matter what application is running. It means that this script is running and is available to you. If a script is designed for a particular application, then instead of being global, it should be application specific. The script author is actually the one who decides on how this works. The script author will package it up for you. If it is application specific, then Window Eyes will not launch that script until that application is launched. If the script is tagged as global, Window Eyes will automatically launch the global script when Window Eyes itself launches. So as soon as Window Eyes comes up, it will launch all global scripts, no matter how many there are. Now Window Eyes will look at what applications are currently running. Window Eyes can be started at any point, so there may have been applications already running. Then it will look to see if it has any scripts for these programs, and if it finds any, it will go ahead and load them. From now on, it will only launch application scripts when that application is started. So let’s say that I get Skype up and running, and I have my Skype scripts installed. When I open Skype, Window Eyes will look for those scripts that run with Skype and will start them. Again, you can have an unlimited amount of scripts for an application. So you might have multiple scripts for a single application. That is the beauty of Window Eyes. I will show you how you can install and uninstall scripts in this section. So that is just a little bit of a background on how scripts themselves actually work. When we came into the script manager dialog, it mentioned that it was sort of like the “task manager” of Windows. The task manager will show you all of the current applications that are running on your Windows system. The script manager dialog will show you the status of all of your scripts for Window Eyes. These scripts may be running, or they may be stopped, or disabled, or whatever the case may be. This will show you the status of the scripts. It brings me in, by default, to this list view. The list view, by default, has headings of, “ Script, application, window title, status, version, and description.” That also depends on the view that I am currently looking at. It currently showed me that autocomplete.vbs, application was global, window title was blank, status is running, version is 1.9, and description is autocomplete 1.9. Now, autocomplete is a script that GW Micro has written that will automatically speak as you are typing in certain edit boxes where it automatically completes. Lets say that I am in the run dialog of Windows, and I am typing something, it will automatically complete that. If I am in an application, it can autocomplete what I am trying to type in by guessing what I am going to finish typing. Window Eyes will read that script and complete the autocomplete for you. It will let you know that there is an auto complete going on, and it will tell you what they think the auto complete should be. It will also let you manipulate the particular options that it is giving you. That is because of this auto complete script. Let me down arrow one more time. WE: gwtoolkit.vbs, application global, status running, version 6.91, description a collection of shared objects for use with other scripts, 2 of 5 The GW toolkit script is also a global application that was created by GW Micro. It said version 6.91 was present at the recording of this tutorial. It said that its’ description was “a collection of shared objects for use with other scripts.” There are many features and functionalities that we wanted to keep consistent within scripts as they are written. You want to have the same functionality. Like checking for updates of a script, or that way that we produce help, or how we define a hotkey. There are many of these shared objects that we created at GW Micro and put them in this GW toolkit that the other script authors can use. Now they do not have to use this, but we suggest that they do so that you have consistency between your scripts. Again, if you have a script that is allowing you to define a hotkey to do a functionality and it allows you to change that hotkey or define that hotkey the way that you want it, and any good script is going to give you that ability. We created those shortcut little tools that the script author can use that gives you that same feel. No matter what script you are using, you will have the same feel how you define your hotkeys or how you display the help or how you read through the help. So this toolkit is a script that is running that its only job is to just sit there and wait for other scripts to use its’ functionality. So it is a global script, just waiting for people to use it. That is the beauty of our scripting. You can create these shared objects that other scripts can use. Let me down arrow one more time. WE: lvnav.vbs, application global, status running, version 1.16, description lvnav 1.16, 3 of 5 This script is called lvnav and this is a script that lets you virtually navigate through a list view. Right now, if I am up and down arrowing through this list view, we read it great. But let’s say that you wanted to go across this by columns, or you just wanted to move around without changing the selection. So, for instance, if I hold down my insert key, with num lock turned off, and use the dedicated arrow keys, I can navigate around this like I am in an Excel spreadsheet. I can move from column to column, left to right, or I can go directly up and down a column. Hold down the insert key, and press the right arrow key. WE: Application global. Insert-right arrow again. WE: Window title, empty column Insert-right arrow again. WE: Status running. Insert-right arrow again. WE: Version 1.16 Insert-right arrow again. WE: Last column, Description lvnav 1.16 I am just moving between all of the columns of the current row, virtually. The reason that I am able to do this is because of this script. If I stop this script, then this insert-arrow key would do nothing inside this list view. If I press Insert-up arrow, it will go to the previous script. WE: gwtoolkt, Insert-up arrow again. WE: autocomplete 1.9 This took me to the first script in the list. It allows me to virtually move around the list view by cell, and then I can route things to it, select items in here. All scripts have a little description of how you use them. If you are a Firefox user, you can think of an add-on that adds functionality to the web browser. That is what scripts do for Window Eyes. They add functionality. Lvnav is a self-contained global script that adds functionality to list views. Auto complete adds functionality to edit boxes. It is up to you if you want these add-ons to be running. You can uninstall these scripts if you do not find them to be useful to you. Let me down arrow one more time. I am hitting the dedicated down arrow key. WE: ProgressIndicator.vbs, application global, status running, version 1.2, description Window Eyes progress bar indicator, 4 of 5 The progress bar indicator is an add-on that will automatically read progress bars as they are displayed on the screen. So remember when we were installing Window Eyes and we were talking about getting a percentage that was complete during the installation. I could visually see that we were about 25% done, 50% done, and so on, because there is a bar graph on the screen filling up, from left to right, indicating what percentage is done. There are also marquee bars. These are similar to progress bars, but they do not tell you what percentage of the operation is complete. They only have a bar with a small object that moves back and forth from left to right to let you know that something is happening. This script will look for these progress bars, and when they find them, it will speak them to you. It gives you a lot of verbosity. Press down arrow one more time. WE: virtualview.vbs, application global, status running, version 3.1, description virtual view 3.1, 5 of 5 This is the final script that we automatically installed. What this particular script does is it allows you to take any content from an application and paste it to the clipboard. Let’s say that you have a message box, or a dialog box, and you want to get the text out of it. You could put your mouse up there and review the text, and you could be keying it in as you view it with the mouse pointer, but it is a lot easier to take a snapshot of that particular window, and put it on the clipboard. You can then paste this information into another application. You now have the entire content of that text box in a text format. So these are the five scripts that we have pre-installed. Before I get into details about any of these individually, I just want to tab around so you can get a feel for the script manager dialog. There are no application specific scripts right now because Window Eyes is the only program that is currently running. If I would open another program, then more scripts might be added. Window Eyes does not, by default, load application specific scripts. Let me tab again off of the list view. WE: Display scripts, all by name, n radio button, checked, 1 of 4 This is a radio button that has four choices. It allows me to determine how the list view is displaying the scripts that are currently there. By default, it selected “all by name,” which means that it will show me all of the scripts that are currently running, and it is going to sort them by name. The next radio button, if I were to right arrow one time, is… WE: Display scripts, all by application, l radio button, checked, 2 of 4 “All by application” means that they will be sorted by the application column. So I’m going to have all of the global scripts together and all of the application scripts together. For example, all Microsoft Word scripts would be together, and the MS Excel scripts would be together. Right arrow one more time. WE: Display scripts, global, g radio button, checked 3 of 4 When I select global, this will only show me the global scripts. Right arrow again. WE: Display scripts, application Window Eyes, p radio button, checked 4 of 4 This said “application Window Eyes” because Window Eyes was the program that was in focus when I pressed control-backslash. If I were running Microsoft Word when I pressed control-backslash, then Window Eyes would have remembered that and then would have said “application Window Eyes.” Then it would have shown me all of the scripts that were running for Microsoft Word. So it is important to remember that if you are running a program and then bring up Window Eyes, it will remember the program that you were running last. I’m going to leave this set at “all by name,” so I’m going to left arrow three times quickly. WE: Display scripts, all by name, n radio button, checked, 1 of 4 Let me tab one time. WE: Show more options, w, checkbox unchecked The “show more options” option gives you a lot more options of being able to manipulate your particular scripts and how you deal with scripts. There is an option in there that lets you set the security level within your scripts. For example, you can set it up and say that I only want to run scripts that are signed by GW Micro. I only trust scripts that are signed by GW Micro, or I only want to run these five scripts that may or may not be signed by individuals or companies. One of the things that GW Micro has taken very seriously is security. We want to make sure that you aren’t allowing malicious scripts to be running, or scripts that you aren’t aware of to get into your system and start running. That is how viruses get spread. With Window Eyes, by default, all scripts are trusted, meaning if you install a script, Window Eyes is going to automatically trust that script and go ahead and run it when it needs to be run. You can say that you don’t want all scripts to be trusted, but only the ones that you mark as trusted. GW Micro has signed every script that they produced. If anything is tampered with on the script, then that signature is lost. It is no longer signed as a GW Micro product. If the signature is still there, that is a way to tell that it is an unmodified script and hasn’t been maliciously touched, and is from a trusted source. You can trust whatever scripts you want to trust. Let me tab again. WE: Stop, t button Stop would just stop the script that is currently selected in my list view. Now when I left the list view, auto complete was the script. If I were to hit enter here, it would automatically stop the auto complete script. Now the script is still there, but it is stopped. Now if I would shut down Window Eyes and start it back up again, the script would be running again. If I would hit stop, then not only would the script stop, but this button would change to something else as well. Let me just hit enter on the button. WE: Script stopped. It said, “Script stopped,” and it left me on this button. Let me tab back with a shift-tab. WE: Show more options, w checkbox unchecked Let me tab now. WE: Start, t button So now it said to start, and just to show you what it looks like when it says stop, let me hit alt-s to get back to the list view. WE: S, scripts for running applications, autocomplete.vbs, application global, status stopped, list view, 1 of 5 So now it’s status is stopped. It’s functionality is no longer there. If I wanted to start that back up again, I could tab back down to the start button and press enter. Pressing alt-t would start it back up as well, since “t” was the shortcut. WE: T, script starting, script running Now the script is starting and is actually running again. I could verify that… WE: autocomplete.vbs, application global, status running, version 1.9… That is how you can individually start and stop scripts. Let me just tab back down. WE: Stop, t button There is the stop button again. Tab again. WE: Help and options, h button Help and options allows me to script specific allows me to get help and information about scripts that I highlighted. Let me go back to the script option. I want to look at the progress indicator script. Press alt-s. WE: s, scripts for running… Press p. WE: p, progressindicator.vbs… I’m going to silence that by hitting the control key. I just pressed the letter “p” to get to the progress indicator script. Now press alt-h for help and options. WE: h, progress bars, seconds interval, radio button, checked 1 of 3, dialog Window Eyes progress bar options. One of the powerful features of this is the ability to create as complex or as simple of a dialog that you want for your script. In this case, the progress indicator has given me lots of options. It said that I was in a progress bar, and had seconds intervals. When you get a progress bar, there are multiple ways that Window Eyes can read the progress bar to you. I just want to show you here how you can go in and deal with the progress indicator. You can do “help and options” for any of the scripts that are running. In this case, it has three radio buttons. It says seconds intervals, percentage intervals, and do not indicate. Now if I have it at “seconds intervals,” that means that no matter what is happening to my progress bar, every “x” seconds, the progress bar indicator is going to go off and read you the status of that progress bar. So if the progress bar is moving very slowly, then by default right now it is set at 5 seconds, every 5 seconds it is going to go off and read the percentage. If the progress bar is moving slowly, it might say 10%, and five seconds later, say 10% again. If I were to hit the right arrow. WE: Progress bars, percentage interval, radio button checked, 2 of 3 Percentage interval means that the status won’t be told unless it has changed by “x” percent. 5% is the percentage by default. So if I have a slow moving progress bar, I might hear 10%, and then 30 seconds later, hear 15%. It won’t read anything between that because it has to be a multiple of 5. That is how the percentage interval actually works. Pressing the right arrow one more time would take it to the “do not indicate” option. I’m going to go ahead and leave it as a percent interval instead of a second interval. Press tab. WE: Interval, 5, edit box So this is my interval, which is set at 5. This means that I will be notified every 5 percent. Tab again. WE: Progress bars, no sound, radio button checked, 4 of 4 When the progress bar is changing, I have the option of being able to play a sound as it is changing. Now I can play just a little “blip” every 5%, or I can play a custom sound. If I have a .wav file that I want it to play, then I could play that. I could also play ascending sounds, which I like the best. Currently I am set at no sounds, but I am going to hit left arrow one time. WE: Progress bars, ascending sound, radio button checked, 3 of 4 Ascending sounds. What this means is that every 5 %, I’m going to get a new tone. So the tone will start out low, and gradually get higher as it gets closer to finishing. That is a non-verbal way of getting an indication of approximately where your progress bar is as it is going along. So I am going to leave that at ascending sounds. If I were to select the custom sound, then some other options would become available, like actually allowing me to type in the wave file, or browsing for my wave file. Again, this is a very powerful user interface where the script can actually enable or disable controls depending on what you selected. So, since I have not selected custom sound, the progress sound edit box is disabled and the browse button is disabled. Press tab. WE: Progress bars, speak percentage, checkbox checked If this option is checked, not only will you hear the ascending sound, but you will also have the percentage spoken to you. So it might say 13%, 18%, 23%, in intervals of 5 again. So I will leave that checked. But if you are having the sounds played, then maybe you wouldn’t want the percentage to be spoken, because it may be behind the ascending sound. Tab again. WE: Marquee bars, seconds interval, radio button, checked 1 of 2 The same things apply to a marquee bar, as well. A marquee bar is a progress bar that doesn’t actually show the actual percentage, it has this little beam of light that goes left and right across the normal looking progress bar, instead of looking like a bar chart that keeps getting bigger and bigger. This just goes back and forth, letting me know that I am doing something. We can set this so that we hear where we are on the marquee bar every five seconds. We can’t check on a percentage using the marquee bar, because there isn’t one. We can also set this so that nothing is announced. Press tab. WE: Seconds, five, edit box Every 5 seconds, my marquee bar will do something to let me know what is going on. Press tab. WE: Marquee bars, no sound, radio button checked. 3 of 3 So I can either say no sound, where nothing is heard, or there is a custom sound, or a default sound. The default sound will not be ascending since there isn’t a percentage there. It will just be a “blip” type of a sound. So you can use the built in sound that ships with the script, or you can make your own custom sound, if you have one that you want to put in there. I’m going to go ahead and leave this at no sound. Press tab. WE: Marquee bars, speak text. Checkbox checked So, just like progress bars, this also has a speak text checkbox. This is checked by default. I will get a verbal message of the marquee bar. Now what verbal message will it speak? Go ahead and tab off of this one more time. WE: Text to speak, progressing, edit box Text to speak. So as the marquee bar changes, this is the text that the script will speak. It will say that the marquee bar is progressing. So, every five seconds, if there is a marquee bar there, we are going to say, “progressing.” Remember, this is all part of this script, and not of Window Eyes. Tab one more time. WE: Block windows, b, no selected items, list box Now this is a blocked windows list box that currently does not have anything in it. This allows you to do is, after we created the progress indicator script, we found that some people said that while they loved the progress indicator, they were annoyed with some applications because they never took the progress bar away. It was always speaking the progress indicator. So we have given you a hotkey within the progress indicator script, where you can say, when this window is active, if you hit that hotkey, it will remember that window. Whenever that window gets activation again, the progress indicator script will just totally ignore it, as if it did not have progress indicators. Now if you wanted to bring them back, you could just hit the hotkey again, and it would remove it from this blocked list, and it would start to read the indicators again. This is a quick way of ignoring this particular window. Since there isn’t anything in the window, there are a couple of other buttons that are currently disabled. They are “clear blocked windows,” and “delete all blocked windows.” Tab again. WE: Save, button Save lets me save these particular verbosity options for this script, so that it is automatically saving these. This is a stand-alone script that is using Window Eyes. Tab again. WE: Cancel, button One more tab. WE: Help, h button This actual help that is going to come up is using the gwtoolkit to display the help, so that no matter what script you are using, you are going to get a consistent feel for it. I’m going to go ahead and open the help, so I’m going to hit enter. WE: Help information, h. This script is designed to get you immediate feedback on the status of progress bars in the active window. There are two types of progress bars. The main progress bar contains a visual indicator as to the progress of giving sighted users a percentage from 0 to 100. Marquee bars are similar but they don’t give a percentage. Instead, they just give a sighted user an indication that progress is being made. This script gives you the ability to monitor both types independently. Read only edit box. Dialog, Window Eyes…(silenced) I see that this help needs to be updated because it did not talk about the hotkey. We allow the hotkey to be defined if I tab off of this. Now if I go download this particular script, I’m going to show you where you can download scripts from our repository area. It will give a full description in agonizing detail of all of the scripts that are up there. The script author gets to put up the help and how to use the scripts, things like that. This is a short-cut help. Press tab. WE: Default hotkey: Control-shift-windows- p. Read only edit box. So, we show the default hotkey of control-shift-windows-p. If I press this combination, it will tag the window to be blocked or open the window up to be used again if there are progress bars in there. Tab again. WE: Change hotkey, k button. If I hit enter here, it will change the hotkey that I want to use for this particular script. Some applications will have multiple hotkeys for the scripts, but this only has one. Tab again. WE: Undefined hotkey, u button Well, if I’m just never going to use this particular hotkey because I don’t want to block this, then I would just undefined it and hit enter here. Tab again. WE: Check for update, never, n radio button, checked 1 of 3 Scripts are great, but they are constantly changing, so it is necessary to get the updated script. There are three radio buttons here for check for updates: never, which is checked by default; on script start, which will make the script check for updates on the web page when it is started. If a new update is found, a dialog will come up saying that there is an update available, and will ask you if you want to install it or not; and the last one is check for update, custom. This is where you can check for script updates once a week, or once a month, and then I could tab off of this and there is a button that is now available that says, “Set custom interval,” and I can select the interval that I do want to check. Right arrow to on script start. WE: Check for update, on script start, s radio button, checked, 2 of 3 I prefer that it actually stay at this one. You could right arrow again to get to the custom radio button, but we will stay with this one for now. Tab again. WE: Check for update, d button This is if I want to manually check for an update, even if I have a check on start or whatever, if I just want to check immediately, I can press enter on this button. Let’s go ahead and do that. WE: No update available for Window Eyes progress bar indicator. It is that quick. It automatically went to the web and to GW Micro’s page. It looked to see if there was a newer version of the script and found that we are currently using the most up-to-date version, so it came back and told me that. Now again, if there was an update, I would get that same dialog, and it would allow me to install it. Tab again. WE: Close, button This takes me out of the help. Again, each help can be slightly different, but depending on if I have hotkeys or multiple hotkeys or whether or not I’m allowing to check for updates, those options may or may not be there. It is up to the script author. Press enter on close. WE: Dialog, Window Eyes progress bar options…(silenced) I am back to my progress bar options dialog for the progress indicator. I’m going to go ahead and back over to save, so I’m going to press shift-tab twice. WE: Save, button I was sitting on the help button before, so I shift-tabbed to save and hit enter. WE: Dialog, Script manager, scripts for running applications….(silenced) So now I have just modified the options of the progress indicator, and each script may or may not have options or help but we hope they do, and give you some information on how you deal with that. Go ahead and escape out of the script manager dialog. Typically, the only reason that you might want to come in here is if you want to see what is currently running or things like that. Press escape now. WE: Window Eyes Go back into the file menu by pressing alt-f. WE: F, save s pull down Press “m” for manage sets and scripts. WE: M, scripting status on, u Down arrow one time. WE: Add or remove packages, a dialog With scripts, what we have done with Window Eyes is, not only is it important that we could have script authors create scripts, we wanted to make sure that it is extremely easy for users to install and uninstall these scripts, if they choose to do that. That is what we have done with add or remove packages. This is a very simple way for you to install or uninstall scripts that you have. It is very similar to the add or remove programs application that you might have on your system. Let me hit enter on this dialog option. WE: Menu closed. Installed packages, I, auto complete, version 1.9, install date: Friday, September 12, 2008, list view 1 of 5, dialog Add or remove packages Here it said that we were at the first of the five packages that we installed by default. It said that the name was “automcomplete,” version 1.9, install date Friday, September 12, 2008. Now you can tell when I installed Window Eyes and when this tutorial was recorded. I could down arrow through these options and it would give me all of the install dates and the packages that I have installed. Let me just tab off of this. WE: Add, a button If I want to add a new script, let’s say a friend has given me a script package, or I have gone to GW Micro’s page and I downloaded a package, it creates this .wepm file. So it will be something .wepm. That is a Window Eyes package that is there. It is a collection of all of the scripts and information. The support files are also included in that package. Window Eyes gives the script author a very easy tool to create that. In fact, it is off of your menus, but we’ve disabled that option because you are in beginner menu mode, and that is more for an advanced user. It just allows them to create this package, and label their script as a global script or an application specific script. There will be multiple files within each package. So if I press enter here, it will open up an add dialog like it would if it were inside Word or Notepad and you were opening up a dialog, it would open up a box and let me browse wherever I wanted to find the .wepm file. I could then hit enter and it would start to install the package. Tab again. WE: Remove, r button If I would hit enter here, it would prompt me and ask me if I was sure that I wanted to uninstall the selected package. If I said yes, then it would automatically remove all of those options. If I was on the progress indicator package, then it would remove all of the files associated with that package. It is that simple to uninstall and install. Tab again. WE: Close, button This will close the dialog box. Now I am actually going to install a script here in a little bit, but I want to show you where you can actually get them. We only ship these five with the Window Eyes install, and we only wanted to install these because we wanted the toolkit in there because it is a shared repository that has a lot of functionality that other scripts will be using. We also felt that the other four scripts would be useful to you as well. The web page that we will visit shortly will give you more information on how these scripts actually work. Press escape to get out of this dialog. WE: Window Eyes I’m going to escape out of Window Eyes by pressing escape again. WE: Start button Now I’m back at the start button. I’m going to launch Internet Explorer, and I’m going to go to www.gwmicro.com/scriptcentral. Press control-escape to bring up the start menu. WE: Start menu, start search, edit box In Windows Vista, I know that it is always the first option in my start menu, so I’m going to down arrow one time. WE: Internet, Internet Explorer, list view, 1 of 12 Press enter. This will launch Internet Explorer. WE: Windows Internet Explorer, 41 links, 2 unclicks, 1 table, 6 headings. You might have heard a little blip there. That is because there was a progress indicator bar that came up on the application at the bottom right of the page, while the page was loading. This came up because of the progress indicator script. I’m going to go ahead and hit control-o for open. WE: O, open, d combo, edit box, dialog (silenced) This is the open dialog for Internet Explorer. It is asking me to type in the URL (web address) of the site that I want to go to. I’m going to type in www.gwmicro.com/scriptcentral or you can type “sc” after the slash as well. This is a little shortcut for script central. We allow either one of those. Press enter. WE: Welcome to GW Micro, Security report, 73 links, 2 unclicks, 8 headings. Link skip to main content, link Window Eyes, link Braille Sense, link SmallTalk Ultra, link….(silenced) I’m going to leave it up to you to read this web page. It offers all sorts of things. It has the top scripts that have been downloaded. You also have the ability to look at all of the scripts that are in there. I want to go ahead and look for a specific script. There is a script called “weathero not,” which is not necessarily an accessibility type of script, but it is a tool that you can use to check the weather of whatever city you choose. You can set up as many cities as you’d like and you could just press a keystroke to get that information read to you. I’m going to use our search feature to look for this script quickly. I know that there is an edit box in here that allows me to type in words. If you go through this page, you will find that there is an edit box on here. We suggest that users create an account so they can log-in using their username and password on Script Central. This will allow you to comment on scripts, rate scripts, and put up your own scripts. We like it when people rate scripts. This way, it lets others know which scripts are good and which ones aren’t. Plus it is good feedback for the script author. Users can also search for scripts by a particular author, if they’d like. I’m going to go ahead and use our control search mode by pressing n, and then pressing “e” for edit box. WE: Edit box, search script central There we go. That is the one that I want. In order to fill out a form, I have to be out of browse mode. So I am going to hit enter on this. WE: Browse off. Search script central. If you have scripts that you would like to contribute, or if you wish….(silenced) I’m going to go ahead and type in “weather” and press enter. WE: 1%, 100%. Security report, 40 links, 2 unclicks, 28 headings. Link skip to main content…(silenced) It actually found the “weather or not” script. I’m going to press “h” to go to the next heading. WE: heading 3, you are here. H again. WE: Heading 3, GW Micro Script Central script details for Weather or Not 3.3 by GW Micro There we go. Let me down arrow from here. WE: GW Micro Script Central script for Weather or Not 3.3 by GW Micro. Down arrow again. WE: Link previous page. Down again. WE: Link format this page for printing. Again. WE: Link general. Again. WE: link heading 3. Again. WE: Weather or not 3.3 by Again. WE: link by GW Micro Down arrow again. WE: This script is rated 4 out of 5 stars with 5 ratings. Down arrow again. WE: Link XML feed for Weather or not 3.3 Again. WE: Release date March 21, 2008 Again. WE: Last update August 15, 2008 Again. WE: Supported languages: English Again. WE: Link download now That said that the supported language was English, but we have made things very simple to become localized. We want to make sure that these scripts work in all languages out there. I could go on farther. There is a description of what the script is, talks about all of the versions that are there, and some other stuff for you to read through. Press enter on this download now link. WE: Cancel, button. Dialog file download. Do you want to open or save this file? Name weatherornot.wepm, type….(silenced) It asked me if I wanted to open or save this file. It said that its’ name was weatherornot.wepm, and it told me the type. Wepm files have been registered with Window Eyes, so when these files are found, they are automatically launched by Window Eyes, and this makes it easy to install these files. There are two things that I could do here. Let me tab a few times until I hear open. WE: Open, o button This will open this installation operation. But before I do that, let me hit tab one more time. WE: Save, s button This will let me save this weatherornot.wepm file and put it on a disk. So if I didn’t want to install it now and wanted to save it, I could pick this particular option. Then I could go into the add/remove dialog and I could select add, then browse for the file, and press enter. This would install it. But I’m just going to shift-tab one time to get back to open. WE: Open, o button Now press enter. WE: Dialog, Internet Explorer security, Web site wants to open web content using this program on your computer. This site will open in unprotected mode. Internet Explorer is….(silenced) This is a feature of Windows Vista that alerts users of the security issues of this download. We want to go ahead and allow this to continue. It is on “don’t allow” by default, so press shift-tab one time. WE: Allow, a button This tells me that the name is Window Eyes, the publisher of the file is GW Micro, Inc. Press enter on “allow.” WE: Dialog, verifying web…dialog, package preview weather or not 3.3 GW Micro, Inc. Package details, d, this script requires the GW toolkit. For more information, please visit www.gwmicro.com, scripts weather or not, read only edit box So this immediately went into the add/remove dialog and automatically selected the add button that we saw before. It automatically gave it the name from the web page and it is starting the installation. This dialog that I am at is the same as if I would have saved the .wepm file, and went to add/remove, and selected add, and then browsed for the file and hit enter. It is a lot easier to just hit enter on “download now” and “open.” That takes us directly to the install. Here, it just came up with some package details. When you package up your script, the script author has the ability to type in a few little messages about the details. In order for this to work, you will need the GW toolkit. Well, we already have the toolkit. It also gives me a list of all of the files. If I press tab again…. WE: Files in package, f weatherornot list box, 1 of 4 So I am on the first of the 4 files included in this package. We provide this for your convenience to know, so that way you have a feel for what files are being installed. These 4 files will get installed when you install this script. Now if I don’t like this, I can cancel or abort this installation. This script will be installed into the Window Eyes area that also has all of the set files. Press tab. WE: Install, I button Tab again. WE: Cancel, button Tab again. WE: View certificate, v button The certificate is the signing ability that the package might have been signed under. GW Micro signs all of its certificates. By signing it, we are guaranteeing that this is a certified Window Eyes product. If anybody messes with this .wepm file, then that signature will no longer be valid. If there is no signature, or it is not valid, you will find that the view certificate button is no longer available because it is not certified. Now that doesn’t necessarily mean that you don’t want to run unsigned scripts, because if you know the source that you got the script from, then it doesn’t necessarily need to be signed since you trust the source. But if you want to verify that a script has been signed, then the view certificate button will do that for you. Shift-tab twice to get back to the install button. WE: Install, I button Press enter on install. WE: License detail, L copyright 2008, GW Micro, Inc. All rights reserved….(silenced) This brings up a license agreement. Every script author has the option of bringing this up. All of GW Micro’s scripts are open scripts. You are allowed to take the source code and do whatever you want with it, you just have to acknowledge that this script came from GW Micro. This is just a general license agreement that is allowing you to use this script to your liking. Now some scripts might require you to acknowledge that you have read the agreement, but this one does not require that you agree with the agreement in order to use it. So that checkbox isn’t there. Press tab. WE: Continue, c button So after I have read the entire contents of that license agreement, I can press enter on continue. WE: Package installed, GW Micro script central script details for weatherornot 3.3 (silenced) Now I am back in the Internet Explorer page. This script is now installed. That is how simple it is. Let’s go take a look at the help and options of the weatherornot script. Bring up Window Eyes with control-backslash. WE: Window Eyes Press alt-f for file WE: save s pull down Press M for manage sets and scripts. WE: Scripting status on, u Press M for script manager WE: M, menu closed. Dialog….(silenced) I’m in the script manager dialog now, and I’m going to press “w” to get to weatherornot. WE: w, weatherornot.vbs, application global, status running, version 3.3, description weatherornot 3.3, 6 of 6 That is how easy it is to install a script from Script Central. Even if I were to shut down Window Eyes and restart it, the script would still be there. Press alt-h now to go into its’ help and options. WE: h, dialog weatherornot options, locations l, no selected items, list box Here is where I can actually type in my locations of where I want to be able to go. Press tab. WE: Add, a button I’m going to go ahead and hit enter on “add.” WE: Enter location, city, and state; city and country; or postal code, edit box, dialog So it said for us to enter the location using city and state, city and country, or postal code. Well in my case, I’m going to go ahead and just give it our postal code here at GW Micro, which is 46825. Press tab. WE: Save, s button Save. Press enter. WE: Looking up ZIP code. Please wait. Dialog weatherornot, Is Fort Wayne the correct location? Yes, no, yes y button That shows you how powerful this scripting is. It was able to go off to the Internet, and verified that Fort Wayne, Indiana is the correct ZIP code. Press “y” for yes. WE: Dialog, new location. Enter location, city and state, city and country, or postal code….(silenced) This brought me back to the weatherornot options. Now if I were to shift-tab back to that list, it would show me Fort Wayne, Indiana on the list. Press tab now. WE: Temperature, Fahrenheit, combo box 1 of4 So it shows me the way that I want to display my temperature. Fahrenheit is there by default. There are four options available. Press the down arrow. WE: Celsius; both; none Those are the other options. Up arrow back to Fahrenheit. Then press tab again. WE: Air pressure, none, combo box, 4 of 4 There are four options in air pressure. How do I want to know about air pressure? In this case, I am not going to hear about it. Tab again. WE: Wind speed, none, combo box 4 of 4 This is wind speed. I can set and choose how I want to hear the wind speed. I’ve got combo boxes in here to let me do that. This is all developed by a simple script. Tab again. WE: Options, descriptive conditions, checkbox checked This lets me choose if I want to hear the descriptive conditions of the weather. I’m going to go ahead and keep this checked. Press alt-h for help. WE: H, help information, h weatherornot provides current weather conditions either in the custom dialog or through speech only, depending on the hotkey used. Weather information is gathered from www.weatherunderground.com. Read only edit box If I tab off of here, it has the check for updates button. Press tab. WE: Check for updates, never, n radio button checked, 1 of 3 If I like to make sure that I am current, I can right arrow to “on startup.” WE: Check for update on script startup, s radio button. Let me tab over to hotkey manager. Press tab WE: Hotkey manager, k button Press enter here. WE: Dialog, hotkey manager, hotkeys, s, speak weather conditions, list box (silenced) This brings up a dialog that is used for applications that have more than one hotkey. The progress indicator that we showed had only one hotkey. But with this script, we do have two hotkeys. It gives me a list box of all of the different hotkeys. Let’s hear what the first one is. WE: Speak weather conditions, 1 of 2 Speak weather conditions. So if I tab off of this… WE: Description, d, speaks the weather conditions for the selected locations Tab again. WE: hotkey h, control-insert-w, read only edit box So control-insert-w will read me the weather for my location. Now let me shift-tab twice to get back to the weather list. WE: hotkeys, s, Down arrow once. WE: Display weather conditions, 2 of 2 This will actually bring up a dialog and show those. Press tab. WE: Description , d, displays the weather conditions for the selected locations in the read only edit box for easy reviewing. Press tab. WE: hotkey, h, alt-insert-w, read only edit box So alt-insert-w is the hotkey for that. So instead of control, I am using the alt key. This actually brings up a dialog. I can select the hotkey that I want and can get a description. I can see what the hotkey is, and if I have one and want to change it, I could just tab again… WE: Capture key, c button If I don’t like alt-insert-w, I could just hit enter here and I’ll be prompted for the key press that I do want. Tab again. WE: Undefined key, u button If I’m never going to bring up the dialog and I just want to hear it, then I could undefine this functionality. Again, I can go through all of the hotkeys designed for this script, and customize them exactly the way that I want them. Press escape to get out of this dialog. WE: Dialog, weatherornot…(silenced) I am back to the weather or not help dialog. I’m going to hit escape again. WE: Dialog, weatherornot…(silenced) Now I am back to the weather or not script options. I’m going to go ahead and hit enter to close and save this. Press enter. WE: Scripts for running applications. I am back to the script manager dialog, which I silenced with the control key. Now let’s see if these hotkeys work. Press control-insert-w WE: Please wait. Fort Wayne, IN. Temperature 79.0 F. Pressure 28.47. Wind speed 3.1 mph And there you go. We now have the weather for Fort Wayne, Indiana. Very simple to be able to do that. Press alt-insert-w now. WE: Please wait. Condition details: Fort Wayne, IN. Temperature 79.0F. Pressure 28.47. Wind speed 3.1mph. Read only edit box, dialog Current conditions This actually brought up a dialog in an edit box and puts the contents within that edit box, allowing me then to arrow through this. I could press control-home to get to the top, read the current line, go right by letter, down arrow, or go right by word by pressing control-right. This is all done with the weatherornot script. There are many, many scripts that are on the GW Micro page, which is www.gwmicro.com/scriptcentral. This is a great resource for scripts. Take a look at those add-ons and go ahead and install the ones that you want. You can also uninstall the ones that you don’t want. Script Central is a very powerful tool that GW Micro created for you to use. You can find all of the available scripts there. Let’s go onto the next section.