Thunderbird 3 RC 2 with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10

I am happy to report that nothing really got broken in trying to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 with Mozilla Thunderbird 3 RC 2. The toolbar buttons and menus are still accessible, and my custom buttons are still there, though I had to put them back again. Dragon’s Thunderbird 2 commands, like “next/previous message” and “write mail,” still work. Don’t be alarmed if the File, etc. menu is grayed out — you can still access it, as well as the submenus.

Please note, however, that you will need to use the Mouse Grid commands and Tab and Enter to get around the box and buttons for Tools — Options. They seem to have gone the route of Firefox 3, that way. Oh well.

The newest thing about it is the tabbed interface. When you highlight a message and click Read (if you have the button), your message will only open in a new window. But if you say “press Enter,” Thunderbird will open the message in a new tab. As with Firefox, you can speak a word in the tab — like “Inbox” — and Dragon will click the tab. EDIT: I may have spoken too soon. The only tab that Dragon will click is the 1st one, the main one — Inbox, or Sent, or whatever folder your messages are in. To navigate around any other tabs, you will have to use the “press Control <number>” command.

The “close tab” command doesn’t transfer, because Dragon obviously couldn’t apply that to Thunderbird 2. So you have to say “press Control W.” This is where Vocola or another add-on program might come in handy.

Another thing I like about Thunderbird 3 is that there seem to be more buttons included. A few I don’t remember seeing are Reply to List, Archive, and Restart. One of those may be a custom button I forgot about, but I don’t think so. There are also better keyboard shortcuts in Thunderbird’s menus to begin with, so that even if you don’t have a button, you can make a command if you have an add-on program.

Speaking of buttons, there are now automatically included buttons in each e-mail you open. Rather than putting the Delete, Reply, and other like buttons up in the toolbar, Thunderbird has put them above the message, by the subject and recipient lines. (If you use Skip Trash rather than Delete, you will still have to put the Skip button up in the toolbar. You can’t put it within the message.)

One thing I do want to mention is that if you’re using the custom Read button, you want to say “click to select columns to display,” and then uncheck “read.” If you don’t do that, then your Read button won’t work, because Dragon will click the tiny button labeled “click to sort by Read” instead of opening your highlighted message.

Another thing I want to mention is that there is still no total select and say support, but you can still dictate reasonably into a message field — though to be on the safe side, as with anything, you might want to dictate into your word processor or the dictation box first.

I haven’t tried any more add-ons yet, but will report when I do, and when I’ve had more of a chance to use the program. But for now it’s pretty cool.

Click Thunderbird links with Dragon

If you haven’t found it yet, here’s a way to click links in a Thunderbird e-mail message with Dragon without using the mouse commands — basically, Thunderbird has a typeaheadfind.linksonly setting too.

To access Thunderbird’s version of about:config, go to Tools — Options — Advanced. Under the General tab, click the Config Editor button. Highlight accessibility.typeaheadfind.linksonly and press Enter to set it to true. Now, you can say a word in the link to open it — the link will be highlighted, and simply say “press Enter.”

Or, if the link is spelled in such a way that there aren’t any pronounceable words, you can tell Dragon to type a few of the letters, and get the same result. If there’s more than one instance of what you’re trying to say, tell Dragon to press Control G. The link will open in a new tab, at least in Firefox. I don’t know what it does with IE, because it’s been a while since I’ve used it — so long, in fact, that I still have version 6. (I have a feeling I should have upgraded to version 7, just in case, but ah well. I’ll live.)

Dragon and Thunderbird — more cool stuff

I have to amend my previous post about Dragon and Thunderbird — I found another toolbar extension that lets you access your folders vocally too, without having to use the sidebar, once you’ve set it up. Quick Folders adds a new toolbar, to which you add folders from your sidebar (or create new ones). Using the mouse commands, drag the folders from the sidebar into the new toolbar. For filling new folders, drag messages from your inbox or wherever to the folder on the toolbar. Or, you can highlight the message and say “Message,” “Move,” “Recent,” then your folder. (You can also, of course, create a Vocola shortcut.) Now, you should be able to speak the folder tabs — for example “1 Sent,” “2 Drafts,” etc., and get instant access. Now you can even hide the sidebar.

Accessible email: Mozilla Thunderbird with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10

UPGRADE/UPDATE NOTE: This post refers to version 2. See my post on Thunderbird 3.

You may have noticed that, thanks to Google’s new “improved” code, the buttons in the Standard Gmail interface are now completely buggered, which is to say you can’t speak them. You can tell Dragon to press some of the keyboard shortcuts, but not all. For a while I used Gmail in basic HTML view, which meant that I could at least access the buttons, but I couldn’t use any “mailto” links or even empty out my trash folder.

Now, if you have Vocola, you can make voice commands out of Gmail’s Standard keyboard shortcuts, especially if you use the Google Labs custom keyboard shortcut option. I have Vocola, but I didn’t feel like creating voice commands for this. I like to see how I can work with existing things before I do any adding or tinkering. So, on a hunch, I decided to download Mozilla Thunderbird 2. Dragon contains basic commands for this, such as to compose or select a message, and it gets better. With a bit of customizing, Thunderbird gave me an e-mail interface that was as vocally accessible as HTML view in Gmail, but that offered the full functionality of Standard view. (Even the dialog boxes in Thunderbird are accessible.) All you have to do is add your Gmail address and password to Thunderbird’s settings, and you’re good. Just follow the prompts.

Vocal access to Thunderbird is provided by all of the menus and toolbar buttons, which are structured in exactly the same way as they are in Firefox. That is, you can right-click the toolbar and say “customize,” and from there drag-and-drop any buttons you want. You also have the option of text and icons, text only, or icons only. To get the most functionality out of Thunderbird, you’ll probably want to download the Custom Buttons add-on for Thunderbird, because it will give you many more voice shortcuts than what the program comes with. After arranging the default buttons and choosing additional ones from the add-on, I can access the following things by voice:

Get Inbox (add-on)
Write
Address Book
Reply
Reply all
Forward
Delete
Junk
Print

Skip Trash (add-on, allows you to delete a message without sending it to the Trash folder)

Read (add-on, allows you to read a highlighted message without saying “press Enter”)

Detach Attachments (add-on)

There’s also a button for emptying your trash, but I didn’t download that one because I don’t need to very often and you can also get there by saying “File,” then “Empty trash.” There are also a lot more buttons that come with Thunderbird itself, but I don’t use them. You’ll just have to take your pick. There are also buttons for your address book, all vocally accessible too. I won’t reproduce them all here. Also, chat around the View menu and see which layout is most convenient for you.

To read a message, you can go through the list by saying “Next/Previous Message”, then saying “press Enter” or (if you have the button) “Read.” To switch between the side folders and your inbox, all you have to do is say “Tab” and an arrow key to get to the folders, and if you have the Get Inbox button, just speak it to get back to your inbox.

ADDED: It’s easier just to download Quick Folders.  Quick Folders adds a new toolbar, to which you add folders from your sidebar (or create new ones). Using the mouse commands, drag the folders from the sidebar into the new toolbar. For filling new folders, drag messages from your inbox or wherever to the folder on the toolbar. Or, you can highlight the message and say “Message,” “Move,” “Recent,” then your folder. (You can also, of course, create a Vocola shortcut.) Now, you should be able to speak the folder tabs — for example “1 Sent,” “2 Drafts,” etc., and get instant access. Now you can even hide the sidebar.

To make Thunderbird work with the “mailto” option, you can do several things. If you’re using Firefox 3, you can go to Tools — Options — Applications, and check for Thunderbird under the “mailto” drop-down. If it’s not there, browse for it. You’ll end up with the file path, then Thunderbird.exe.

Alternately, you can go to Control Panel — Internet Options — Programs, and choose Mozilla Thunderbird under “e-mail”. Regardless of which way you do it, if you have Firefox, enter about:config into the address bar and make sure the following Booleans are set to true by searching for and double-clicking them:

network.protocol-handler.expose.mailto
network.protocol-handler.external.mailto
network.protocol-handler.warn-external.mailto

If you don’t have the string network.protocol-handler.app.mailto then you can add it. Just copy and paste it from here. Then, go into about:config and right-click somewhere. Then choose “new string.” Paste the string. After you create the string, it will prompt you for Thunderbird’s location. In Windows XP, this is C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe.

It’s possible you might not have to do all this to get it to work — in my case, it was just that a couple of values had been false. It’s still a good idea to check about:config just in case.

All in all, I like Thunderbird much better than the Internet-based Gmail. The interface is cleaner, and I didn’t have to write any new commands. I’m a minimalist, so I just have the boring gray background, but if you want something more lively Thunderbird has several themes for you to choose from on the add-on site.