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A personal update on Thunderbird

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burt henry

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Oct 29, 2009, 5:46:25 PM10/29/09
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I just installed the NVDA beta and Thunderbird3beta2 yesterday. As a
couple of ppl have expressed interest...
First: the NVDA 2009.1beta is feeling good under my fingers/no
issues/generally seems to be a bit smoother and more responsive, and as
always is a breeze to install. I have yet to try it with ms word, and
open office writer; program that did not work so nicely with other NVDA
vers I have tried.
Second: as advertised NVDA works well with Thunderbirdd3; TB2 didn't
give access to msg txt only reading links in msgs. As many of you have
read I was having access problems with JAWS as well when it came to
reading editable txt fields when writing e-mail, newsgroup posts and
replies. JAWS also works better with tb3.
Third: a couple of minor issues are that KB or MB sizes for folders are
not now read by either screenreader, and after the installation I had a
default mozilla news server folder that assumed the name of my old news
account on Albazani.net. I was at the point of installing the beta in
spite of its otherwise good performance as I could not subscribe to news
groups on the Albazani server. (sometimes it would refresh groups list,
but mostly sent errors of a couple of kinds) I could not post to the
Mozilla groups that I subscribe to, having no privileges on
mozilla.org's server, couldn't change the name of the news server to
Albazani, and was generally confused by the new folder/sub folder system
that TB installed. It had named my news account the same as my e-mail,
and changed a security setting, eliminated my sig-line, and btw not
imported news-group subscriptions. After a bit of checking account
settings a simple delete of the my news albasani account and
resubscribing has things pretty much inorder. (had to deactivate the
saving msg alert that interrupted every time a backup copy was saved)

There are some new goodies for archiving, something called activity
manager (that I've not yet checked out), and a new interface that is
very accessible. Now there are more options to tab through including
edit, del, add to address book, labels....(think there is a way to get
it looking like t-bird used too, but haven't read up on this) There are
generally more features, but it's not so busy that I feel lost, and it
is my first day using the program. So far all of the old hotkeys work
too. It will be interesting to see if extensions from TB2 will work on
the official ver., as mine don't. Of course this is a beta from a few
months back, they're on beta4 now, and there is an RC coming out anyway
now.
It is for sure worth checking out if you don't like your current e-mail
client, or were not that happy with earlier TB ver.s Don't think that
many old TB users will want to stay with2.x, and think that ppl that are
not to impressed with TB2 may well find this just different enough to be
worth considering.
As for me, if no one gives me reasons to try another e-mailer or
newsreader with in a couple of weeks I think I'll be hooked. Stability
is my only lingering concern, but the access aspects seem resolved.
B.H.
Arthor C. Clarke famously said,"Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic"

as

burt henry

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Oct 29, 2009, 6:20:59 PM10/29/09
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I forgot to mention that for usenet one great improvement in NVDA TB
access is that now reply levels are read, making it much easier to
navigate msg trees. You just open the tree with right arrow, and msgs
all open up nicely. With TB2 you had to check well, and as levels were
not announced some threads were confusing.
B.H.

burt henry

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Oct 30, 2009, 4:32:00 PM10/30/09
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Here is one more interesting thing/like it....The "smart folders"
thinggy puts all of your trash, under a main trash heading, and then you
can choose sub-folders for each account: for example-level one trash
level 2 my news's trash and my main mail account's trash and my work's
mail account....the same goes for out-boxes, drafts, etc.
I saw the smart folders mentioned when I was checking out beta2, but
strangely t-bird didn't set these up until I updated to beta4 this
morning. I remember reading that you can go back to the old style TB
folders tree if you like, but I think I like this better. The RC is set
to ship next week/Tuesday was the original date/it might be a couple of
days behind/still a few "blockers".
Burt Henry

burt henry

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Oct 30, 2009, 5:08:58 PM10/30/09
to
This is also nice-the activity manager is like the down-load manager in
firefox is how one relates to it/keeps track of what you move from
folder to folder, delete, archive etc. If you get side tracked it is a
good way for a blind person to check on general movements with out
having to recheck individual msgs or look in to various folders for
msgs. The "move to "*" folder again key is a good example of where
confusion has occurred for me. Ms gs might get moved in to drafts
instead of trash, or a connection might fail and one thinks that msgs
have been sent when they have not...
B.H.
P.s.-unless there is some big bug or access issue I won't post again on
this until the RC, or maybe the official release ships.


On 10/29/2009 4:20 chela, burt henry wrote:

burt henry

unread,
Oct 31, 2009, 4:13:15 AM10/31/09
to
this should have gone out more than 12 hours ago, but I can't find it on
the group...the same goes for one more of mine and one from ChrisMc'M. I
am not seeing my sigline either. Are you ppl seeing it?
.
B.H.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: A personal update on Thunderbird..."with all that he
forgot something?"
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:32:00 -0600
From: burt henry <burt1...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: burt1...@bigsearchermail.com
Organization: bando?ers
Newsgroups: alt.comp.blind-users
References: <hcd2fj$hru$1...@news.albasani.net>
<hcd4gb$ktb$1...@news.albasani.net>


Here is one more interesting thing/like it....The "smart folders"
thinggy puts all of your trash, under a main trash heading, and then you
can choose sub-folders for each account: for example-level one trash
level 2 my news's trash and my main mail account's trash and my work's
mail account....the same goes for out-boxes, drafts, etc.
I saw the smart folders mentioned when I was checking out beta2, but
strangely t-bird didn't set these up until I updated to beta4 this
morning. I remember reading that you can go back to the old style TB
folders tree if you like, but I think I like this better. The RC is set
to ship next week/Tuesday was the original date/it might be a couple of
days behind/still a few "blockers".
Burt Henry

On 10/29/2009 4:20 chela, burt henry wrote:
> I forgot to mention that for usenet one great improvement in NVDA TB
> access is that now reply levels are read, making it much easier to
> navigate msg trees. You just open the tree with right arrow, and msgs
> all open up nicely. With TB2 you had to check well, and as levels were
> not announced some threads were confusing.
> B.H.

Tiddy Ogg

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Nov 1, 2009, 2:46:46 AM11/1/09
to
On Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:13:15 -0600, burt henry <burt1...@gmail.com>
wrote:

>this should have gone out more than 12 hours ago, but I can't find it on
>the group...the same goes for one more of mine and one from ChrisMc'M. I

Messages have arrived. Don't bother looking at sigs.

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