Using Firefox
by Ishe Chinyoka
Contents
Introduction
Setting up the browser
Transferring your skills to Firefox
Settings in Firefox
Basics
Working with Add Ons
Conclusion
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Introduction
This is a brief tutorial on using firefox whilst you are
visually impaired. Yeah, with a wide range of browsers on the market today, we
know for sure that it's high time we also have these choices to exercise. At
one time, I wanted to use Opera, only to find that my screen reader wouldn't
support it.
So here we are interested with Mozilla Firefox from the
Mozilla Foundation. If you haven't yet got your own copy, please grab it here
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/
it's free and open source.
The fact that Firefox is free won't compromise the quality
of its functioning: in fact, I find it my favourite browser throughout the
whole year. It is highly customisable and you can tweak it to your heart's
desire.
The fact that it is open source means that Firefox comes on
a clean board. You see its code and you can custom design your own Firefox
edition if you aren't satisfied with the official release.
Firefox is accessible using JAWS for Windows from Freedom
Scientific starting with version 7.0 and NVDA. My assumption is that you have
installed Firefox 3.5 or better. Currently, Firefox is preparing to release
version 4.
Firefox can run on any Windows 32 or 64-bit machine, running
Windows XP/Windows Vista/2003/Windows 7, Linux and Mac OS. However, since this
tutorial was initially presented to someone using Windows XP, SP3, the tutorial
would have that mindset. If you have Windows 7, there won't be any problem
there.
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Setting up the browser
Now to the business:
1. download the latest version of Mozilla Firefox from
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html
2. Run the Installer which you saved on your disk. The
wizard would guide you through the whole of the installation process.
3. After the installation, you can launch the browser and
start surfing right away. However, unless you tick the checkmark off, the
browser installer would suggest to be launched soon after clicking on the
Finish button.
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Transferring your skills to Firefox
Firefox is different from Internet Explorer in a number of
ways. However, their support with popular screen readers is relatively the
same. The first screen reader to fully support Mozilla Firefox was Window-Eyes
version 6, followed by JAWS and NVDA. This therefore means that all the
keystrokes you'd been using in Internet Explorer are the same namely:
(A) To navigate through headings, press H for the next
heading; press Shift + H to move to the previous heading.
Press Z to move to the next region or landmark if you're
using JAWS.
Press L for the next List, and press I to move to the item
in a list.
Press G to move to the next Graphics (image) on a web page.
Press tab to move to the next link.
(B) You just use your arrow (cursor) keys on a page to read
lines. If you happen to come across a bunch of links, and these links seem to
disturb you, just press N to move to the next non-link region.
You can skip to the next paragraph by pressing P.
Otherwise you would see that there is no much learning curve
in transfering your skills to Firefox if you are using NVDA or JAWS.
Transferring your skills this way won't help you understand
the workings of Firefox though: You are going to need to learn a few tricks in
order to accomplish certain things.
When Firefox runs for the first time, it would run an Export
and Import Wizard. This wizard is to make you carry on with your browsing
experience without sacrificing your precious Favourite links and other settings
you had been using In Internet Explorer.
This Wizard would ask you if you want to transfer these
settings: you can choose "Yes" and all your settings from IE would be
part of your Mozilla Firefox browser.
Before concluding this section, I would just run through
some advantages and disadvantages of using Firefox from my own point of view
such that the decision to permanently use Firefox remains yours throughout.
Advantages
1. Firefox is free and Open Source. Its code is open to
inspection. There is no proprietary code locked behind bars.
2. Firefox runs on many platforms. This makes it possible to
start browsing in Linux if you occasionally work with many computers at a time.
You don't need to learn anything new.
3. Firefox is customisable through its Add Ons such that any
feature can be added to its already loaded ones by just going to the Add Ons
page and choose those which you like.
4. The fact that it is customisable also explains why it is
possible to use Firefox with Web Visum for form filling and labelling pages for
better accessibility.
5, Firefox is rated as the Number One browser on security.
You can choose to launch the browser in a private session if you are too
paranoid with security issues.
Disadvantages
1. Firefox has setbacks when working with Silver Light
content. (However, recent browsers support such stuff due to a Microsoft .NET
Framework extension)
2. Firefox, while it is free, it must be downloaded first
before you use it unlike IE that comes loaded on your PC.
3. It is difficult to update Windows from Firefox. It is a
snap with IE. However, you can just turn on Automatic Updates of your PC
instead of doing that in your browser.
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Setting up your browser
When Firefox launches for the first time, it would transport
you to its homepage. A homepage is your start page: the page that reflects your
own personal biases, prejudices, likes, tastes and even mirror your mood. If
you are terse, I would get it from this page!
Now Firefox has its own default start page which has a
simple search box and a few links to the Internet. But before you get to this
page, you would see a page advertising Firefox and congratulating you for
having sense enough to choose their browser over their rivals. Yes, you would
se such statements that would make you feel good for having chosen Firefox and
make you wonder why on earth you hadn't done this before! Just smile and keep
in mind that this is the way of trade everywhere!
So I don't want to see this page and Mozilla's start page:
It's high time I set up my own page reflecting my own mentality.
So it is high time you set up your browser in the following
areas:
1. Your homepage:
When you have Firefox running, go to Tools -> Options. Press
the Enter key here. A list of categories would load up.
Arrow to "General" and press the TAB key twice.
You would get to a field labelled "Homepage:" here
there would be an address to Mozillas start page. Simply overwrite it by typing
your favourite web page, for example the popular homepage on earth:
http://www.google.com.
Or if you've forgotten the page to your favourite web page,
don't despair. Simply tab to the button labelled "Use Bookmark".
Press the spacebar here, and Firefox would display all your bookmarks. Just
choose the one next to your heart and click OK.
You're done!
2. Other preferences:
The first thing I often look in a program is its array of
options: is the application customisable or not. So with Firefox, you need to
set up a few preferences.
Simply go to Tools -> Options and press Enter.
You would see that the Preferences are arranged in
categories in a list form.
To adjust any of these, get to the item in the list, then
press Tab to move to the appropriate fields under the given category. Take the
example of how we set up the Homepage in the previous section: We got to
General: then tabbed to the fields of interest and made our changes. This is
the procedure throughout.
The exception is with buttons: Some fields you get to by
tabbing would have buttons: if you are interested in changing these, activate
the button by the spacebar and other headings would be presented to you. Make
any change and click OK to apply the changes or Cancel to reject any change you
made to get back to the main Panel.
Just make sure you understand the main heading of your
preferred option. Here let me just describe a few of these categories:
(I) General: This covers the main items. It is not dedicated
to any one area, so you need to get to this first of all. Some of the areas
covered are
--The behaviour of Firefox on startup: Do you want it to
show your homepage? Do you want it to show a blank page?
-- Setting up your homepage
-- Working with your downloads: where your downloads should
be placed, what should the download window do during download process, etc.
-- Working with Add ons
(II) Tabs:
Firefox is the first browser to use what is known as tabbed
browsing. This is the process whereby the browser uses one window to display
its content, but it shows each page in its own tab. This has the advantage of
allowing you to browse in one tab while another page is loading in another tab.
So to set up your tab preferences, get to this category and adjust any
settings. Personally, I find the default behaviour comfortable, but we think
differently.
(III) Content:
As you browse on the net, your browser will need to display
certain pages correctly. You may find this distasteful to you: for instance,
some webmasters would embed active content on their pages to advertise their
wares. You can set Firefox to block all popups using this item. You can also
adjust whether you want Firefox to load images or not. This is also the place
to enable or disable JavaScript.
(And JavaScript is a lightweight programming language used
by webmasters to display dynamic content. Some scripts are used to write
lightweight games you can play in your browser window. So you need to enable
JavaScript if you want to fully enjoy the power of dynamic content. But if you
are afraid of speed on the Internet, wow just disable it. Some will tell you
that some Scripts can steal your bank details : but I doubt that power yet
because JavaScript is limited by your browser which acts as its host.)
You can choose to set the font here: which font family do
you prefer when viewing web pages? And what is the right size for that font?
You can also set the background and foreground colours if you wish.
(IV) Applications:
The other category you will find is that of applications:
here Firefox will allow you to set up default programs it must use to open
certain types of documents on the internet.
The default behaviour of all browsers is to open HTML and
tet pages in the main window. This takes into consideration that content
written in these formats is meant to be read. However, other formats such as
DOC, PDF, PPT and so forth are meant to be downloaded. The browser will
download anything it can't read or which it can not find a right plugin to
display. If it's music, you can direct it to the music player on your computer,
and if they are PDF files, you have to show the PDF handler.
Now to set all this up, when you get to the Applications
category, TAB and you will get an edit field where you can search for a
program. Let's ignore this for once.
Tab to the next field where you will get a dropdown box
where different types are listed. For each type listed in this box, there is a
handler for that type on the next field. Hey, and a handler is just a program
used by your browser or operating system to open it. For example, If you get to
web feeds in this box, tab to the next field and set this to be opened by MS
Outlook by just arrowing to MS Outlook in a popup that will appear. You can
also choose to save the type as a download if you don't want to run it. Just
arrow to "Save" in this box and ignore other options where different
handlers would have been shown. The advantage of saving any type on your disk
first is that you can open it later or when you are offline. Above all, you
have the opportunity to scan for the document for any malicious code (for
example, .doc files can carry some macros that are dangerous to your health and
that of your sweetheart if you aren't careful!) So for anyone not yet versed in
opening other types, please please and hey please don't be tempted to use some
handlers to open these applications! Save them first and learn them in the
comfort of your home at your own leisure hour without destructions.
(V) Privacy: Here you have the opportunity to regulate how
you can be found on the Internet. Make any settings that affect your privacy.
This includes settings on your browsing history: for how
long should Firefox remember your last visited pages? This has got the
advantage that you can load these pages quickly in future if it happens that
speed is an issue. Yet the disadvantage is that this compromises your privacy:
if you share a PC with another, or those men of shadows (The secret spies, and
other spyware programs) can read in your browser history cache and learn of
your browsing history. If you are paranoid about this, simply make Firefox not
to remember your browsing history like what I do. Personally I hide my history
because if I keep the history, the next time I try to open the page which is in
the browser cache, and there is no Internet conection, I may be tempted to
think that I have just loaded a fresh page yet it will be stale! So I make sure
that each time I close the browser, my history is cleared.
You can also choose to set Firefox to start browsing in a
private session. Here your browser will not show who you are by not loading the
cookie file when you get on the Internet. Beware of this setting because it
would render some pages not usable if you are in a private session. When we are
on the internet, the web is a stateless protocol. There is no continuous
communication with a server like on a telephone. So you must not exclude or
lock yourself up in a cuckoon as you won't be able to enjoy shopping online or
using some login sites.
You can also set up Firefox to accept or reject cookies
here. For safety, you can choose to accept cookies, but reject those from
Third-party domains. Third party cookies are those cookies stored on your
computer by another domain which you didn't visit but which was referred to by
the page you visited. For example, if you are on the web site of www.bbc.co.uk,
you want to accept cookies from the BBC domain. But then BBC has to promote
other sites on its pages such as www.homeandlearn.org.uk. This HomeAndLearn
domain linked by the BBC is a third-party so you should reject its cookies
because you have no business with it at this time.
However, if you have no problem with third-party cookies,
accept them. the advantage is that this will help you load these pages faster
the day you think you want to find out more about them. The choice is yours.
Other settings are that you can opt to clear your browser
history when you exit it.
And You can also customise how your location bar is
displayed: by default, the firefox location bar will display the Search box (it
uses Google as its search engine) and the address of the web page you are
viewing. We will talk more about this bar later.
(VI) Security:
These are settings that affect your security. This is more
or less similar to privacy, but security has more to do with fending off
malware rather than prying eyes. This addresses such concerns as installation
of add ons, blocking you from navigating to Reported Attack sites, dealing with
web forgeries, passwords and warning messages.
Whenever you try to install an add on in Firefox, you should
set it up so that you are alerted of this action. This will help you identify
the bad guys from the good ones on the internet. I think default settings on
this panel are okay.
And what are Reported Attack Sites?
Reported attack sites are those web pages which when a
visitor get to them, they would try to hijack their browser. They may load some
nasty scripts that would see to it that your homepage is changed to theirs,
that you are engineered to download viruses or spyware without your knowledge.
As an example, most crack sites and porn portals would plant dangerous apps on
your machine when you click a harmless link. For instance, if you click a page
labelled "About us", while the page will go to the About section, it
will trigger an ActiveX object that would download and install some EXE file on
your machine.
If this happens, the victim may find himself or herself used
to attack other machines. Well, sites like these are reported to the Firefox
community. Once such site is reported, your browser will block you from getting
there unknowingly. You can go there if you want, but you've been warned. This
often happens when you have found some results in Google which are linked to
the bad guys' page.
Anyway, I advise you to always make sure that the checkmark
for this is on.
And what are web forgeries?
Some sites (especially those whose addressess start with
https) require a certificate to be installed on your computer. What this means
is that it is safe to do business with that site since no prying eyes or
snooping noses would detect what is going on. So a browser would encrypt or
digitally secure your communicationj with the server. One example is the Gmail
page. All what you will be doing cannot be intercepted by a third party. Many
bank sites would also have these special certificates installed on the server
and on your computer.
It happens that there are some bad guys out there who are
waiting to pounce on unsuspecting customers. They would sell fake goods using
fake certificates. They may decide to forge a certificate of a reputable
company for their operations. So if you get to their page and disclose your
credit card number on the strength of the https protocol or similar
certificate, you would find that your bank account would be wiped off in
minutes!
So this is where Firefox gonna warn you of a certificate
forgery. And please, please, and I can multiply this word by a hundred or even
a thousand times, please don't ever deal with a site you aren't familiar. Well,
business is all about trust and faith in strangers, but business is also about
prudence and protecting your investment. If you are warned of a forgery, and if
you are in a desperate situation, better leave the site. Or if you continue to
browse, why not provide fake details to see what happens? In any case, such
sites don't sell any tangible goods: they sell fictitious items.
About passwords: every time you browse on the web, you
provide your username and password to log into some sites. Some of these sites
are just membership sites such as forums and online communities. You can set
Firefox to remember your password for each of these domains you visit. Some
people warn you that you need not use one password throughout many sites as
this compromises your data. This is true if you misplace a paper with your
password and someone gets it. If they know your username, then they will log
into your accounts and laugh their hearts out when they learn what trash you
view the whole day on your PC!
Hey, if you have poor memory, you can do that. Firefox even
lets you use different passwords for different sites -- the choice is yours --
but it also has the option of having just one master password. This is
advantageous when you can not memorise all those fifty different passwords for
fifty different sites. You just forget all those and Firefox will enter the
password for you on each of those sites. But before it does so, provide it with
a master password that locks all those passwords: you cannot let Firefox enter
your password details unless you first provide a master password to establish
your right to the passwords.
My personal opinion (isn't it the privilege of giving a
tutorial that you just give opinions? <ha, ha, ha! and smile!!>) Yeah my
opinion is that unless the portal that asks your personal details is a bank or
a university or any similar government body to do serious business with you,
never supply correct details on those forums. I'm not encouraging you to be
liars, but remember you owe it to your own dignity and privacy to keep some of
these details to yourself: nobody takes seriously those details you provide.
Those web masters may just want to build a profile of their members, but then
what?
Use what is known as a handle. For example,
"First name": instead of Ishe, enter Otto
"Middle name": instead of Theophilus, enter
"von"
"Last name": instead of Chinyoka, enter
"Bismarck".
I think you get the idea: you would smile when you are
greeted as "Hello Otto von Bismarck"! some dead 19th century German
chancellor!
And I don't see the use of the master password: that feature
is useless as far as security is concerned. Since it helps you become lazy in
remembering your passwords, but one day you will use another computer and you
wohn't know any password to start using your favourite forum. This is true if
the machine has crashed together with all the data without you doing any
backup!
So just ignore this feature: it even compromises your
security. It is like that one password used on a hundred sites: once a social
engineer gets hold of that one master password, they would log into all your
accounts and start chatting on your behalf. They would even start organising
large-scale criminal activities in your name buy that one master password. This
also underscores my advice on never supplying true personal details when you
fill in forms on online social communities. They compromise your personality.
Lastly, on this panel, there is the button for setting
warning messages you may need to see while browsing the internet. Some of these
are just a bother when you are in the midst of reading a lovely headline. If
you are using JAWS, you would hear it telling you "Some plugins are not
installed..." and a lot of this stuff. So open these settings and tweak
what kind of messages you want to see.
(VII) Advanced: These settings require advanced users. In
other words, the people who developed Firefox thought that the settings need
not be changed but left on their own unless you know what you are doing. But I
think any preference qualifies that caution: you can muck around in Options
unless you know what you gonna do.
But what I can say in support of the Mozilla guys is that
unless you really know your computer, advanced settings are better left
untampered with.
There are some property sheet tab pages on this panel
covering General Settings (where you can adjust accessibility settings. But
leave them like that because your screen reader never complained of Firefox
accessibility!)
You can also get to the Tab of Network: How do you connect
to the Internet: if you use a proxy server, just enter your details here. But
in most cases, Firefox will get these settings from your operating system
anyway.
The last tab is on Encryption: you have to make encryption
settings here.
Since this tutorial is just a basic document, I gonna leave
these out.
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Basics
After setting up your Firefox to your heart's content, it's
time to browse the Internet.
1. Start your Browser to go to your homepage.
2. On the Internet, you can open a page by pressing File
-> Open Location. But here we want brevity as time is gold, so just press
CTRL+L to display the Open Location item. Usually, this is the location bar
referred in the previous section. After pressing this key combination (CTRL+L),
Firefox will display the address of the currently loaded page. Simply start
typing your favourite destination without pressing any of the arrow keys. If
you do that, selection will be removed on the highlighted text. This will cause
what you type to be appended to the text already in the box instead of
overwriting it.
So in simpler terms, once you press control+L, just start
typing www.myfavouritepage.com without bothering what's in the edit field. If
you, however, accidentally press any of the arrow keys, just make sure that you
continue to press either the backspace or delete key until the edit field is
empty. After making sure that the edit field is empty, start typing the address
of your favourite news site.
This also means that it is a snap to copy the address of an
active page. In IE, you can use F4. This key also works in Firefox. But if you
want, press the CTRL+L and when the highlight is placed on the address bar, or
location bar, just press CTRL+C to copy the link to the clipboard.
To make searches, if you no longer know the address, or if
you don't want to go to Google homepage, Firefox has an in built search engine
that is powered by Google. Simply press CTRL+K to open the Search box. Type
your query and press OK. The results will be loaded in a new tab or the current
window. You will see that the result are from Google.
3. You can choose to open a new tab in Firefox without
necessarily closing the window you are viewing. Tabs help to organise content
and to simultaneously browse more than one page at a time. Firefox is one of
the first browsers to implement this feature before it was also implemented by
other browsers like our dear friend Internet Explorer.
When you open a page in a tab, you can cycle between pages
by pressing CTRL+TAB and your screen reader will announce the title of the
active window at the time.
Well, to open a new tab, press CTRL+T. Remember T for Tab
please, and L for location.
If you do that, an address bar will open just as in the
location bar: type the address of where you want to go and press Enter. The new
page will load in this newly created tab.
At any time if you no longer want to keep the window open,
Press Control+W: this will just close the active tab and leave the other tabs
active.
If you want, you can also open a separate window: by opening
a separate window, this means you are launching a separate Firefox window which
if you close won't affect another window. To do that, Press Ctrl+N. It will
open a new window like what the old IE browsers used to do: the consequence
being that you will fill your desktop with many Firefox windows. In fact, each
of these new windows can have its own tabs: whew! I trust you can track all the
sites you have opened in these windows and tabs in this way.
I personally favour working with tabs in one window and
leave separate windows to other programs that have no MDI interface.
You can close all tabs at a time by just the traditional
means of ALT+F4. If you do that, Firefox may ask you whether you are still in
your right mind doing that seeing that you have many tabs active. Well, if you
remember, these are some of the settings you must adjust in the TABS panel. If
you set that Tabs must be closed, you will close your tabs in peace.
4. Bookmarks are a powerful feature of any browser. They let
you store addresses to your favourite sites without knowing those strange ww's
and http's all the time. You just pick on the title from the list and hit Enter
and Hooray, here we go!
To go to Bookmarks in Firefox, simply press ALT+B, or do the
old trick of just pressing the Alt key, groping your way slowly to the right
via "Edit", "View", "History" and get to
"Bookmarks". Then press either up or down arrow key to activate the
Bookmarks menu. You know what's easier for you.
Bookmarks are what is called "Favorites" in
Internet Explorer. So if you did the Import of all your settings from IE during
the initial phases, you will find your favourite links here and their titles
intact!Arrow up and down on this menu to select your site of destination. If
you get it, Press Enter and the bookmarked page will load as fast as the loaded
page will disappear.
So you see, the disadvantage of just pressing the Enter key
on a bookmarked page is that it will displace the window of the currently
active page. Unless this is what you want, it is wise that you choose to open
the bookmark in a new tab:
to do that:
(1) Arrow to the bookmark of your choice;
(2) When you get there, you should not press enter but press
the Applications key instead;
(3) a popup/context menu will appear: use your down arrow
until you get to "Open in a new tab". Then Press enter on this
option.
The bookmarked page will load in a separate tab.
Another cool feature of Bookmarks is their ability to be
used in place of an address. The default behaviour of Firefox when you press
CTRL+L to open a new location or CTRL+T to open a new tab, is to display an
edit box for typing a web address. This means the assumption is that you want
to go to a new location you would type or you want to open a new tab with the
address you would type.
If you don't want to type any address, ignore the box and
its highlighted text. We don't care for it. Instead, press ALT+B to open the
Bookmarks list. Arrow either up or down, you know which way is nearer to the
bookmark in question. When you get to the bookmark, just press enter and it
will be used as the destination of the Open Location or New Tab address by the
location bar.
To add any page you are reading to the Bookmarks list,
simply press CTRL+D. A dialog box will appear asking you the name of the
bookmark you just added this way: the default will be the title of the page.
You also have the option to enter special tags (keywords)
referring to this bookmarked page. If you don't mind, just press enter and the
bookmark will be added to the list as the last item.
At any time, you can manage your bookmarks by going to Bookmarks
-> Organise Bookmarks. The Bookmark Manager will load and let you do a lot
of things such as arranging your bookmarks in different folders: you can decide
to create a folder called News to place all bookmarks to news sites; Technology
to place all bookmarks linking to Technology sites, etc.
Here you can also do one of the important things you can
ever do with data: you can backup your bookmarks. This is helpful if you have
more than one PC: you will need to grab a bookmark while you are away, and when
you get home, you will simply transfer the bookmarks you got into your PC at
home.
You can delete useless bookmarks if you wish from this
Bookmark Manager.
However, deleting a bookmark does not always need a bookmark
manager. You can do that as fast as you can get to the bookmark in question:
Go to Bookmarks -> arrow to the title of the bookmark,
press the Applications key and move to "Delete".
If you want even a shorter method, when you get to the
bookmark that causes offence, just press the Applications key and when the
context menu is active, hit the letter D. There is no confirmation for this
action: the bookmark will disappear and your cursor will land on the first
bookmark.
5. To work with links, just press the Spacebar or the Enter
key to activate it. The link will load a new window that would displace the
contents of the active window.
If it happens that you don't want to remove the active
window, because it is a search page where you constantly come back if you are
disappointed by the results, never worry. Open the link in a new Tab. To do
that, when you get to the Link, press CTRL+Enter. The new page you linked to
will be loaded in another tab and the source page will remain unaffected.
To open the link in a new window, press Shift+Enter and you're
done.
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Working with Add Ons
The power of Firefox comes from its customisability. This
means anyone can write a custom program that can be hosted in Firefox. Such a
custom program is written in a script language provided by Mozilla Firefox.
Well, here I won't get into the details of that language, but it is easier to
master as it will let you add any feature you like to Firefox.
A program you write this way which is hosted by Firefox is
called its Add On: it is just plugged into Firefox to provide extra
functionality that Firefox doesn't have at birth.
You can visit the Mozilla Firefox Addons page from your
Bookmarks (by the way, there are some bookmarks that come by default loaded
into your browser. All bookmarks that have something to do with Firefox had
been added at its development,.
However, I will talk of two of the bookmarks which are my
personal preferences: the Web Visum and Linkification.
(A) Web Visum:
The term Web Visum is a phrase built from the word
"web" and "visum". You know the former so let's deal with
the latter:
Visum is a Latin word for "vision". Yeah, Web
sight that is what it means -- not site but sight (they rhyme the same, oho!)
It is an add on developed to help blind and visually
impaired web surfers with the challenges of the Web 2.0 format. The nature of
this web standard is to provide a highly dynamic environment inside your
browser to make the browsing experience fun and interesting. At the same time,
security considerations are taken on board seriously.
Traditionally, many sites had been tricked to deal with
automated machines run by scripts. These scripts are known as robots as they
act more like human beings: they can be programmed to create an account, fill
in details and enter in automated text. This robot detects certain keywords on
a web page, followed by an entry box. So if the word "name" is
followed by an entry box, then we know the box requires someone to enter a
name.
This way, many web sites were spammed by rogue scripts.
Think of the frustration of a company that needs to gauge its popularity on the
web using the number of people
subscribed in its database. A rival company would simply launch ten thousand
robots to fill in details and you would think "Hey, I am the popular site
like Google here! I had ten thousand visitors yesterday! let's make ten
thousand products and ship them out!"
Only to be frustrated when you learn that these were
fictitious characters!
To minimise these risks, web masters (and mistresses in this
case! decided to come up with scripts to counter robot attacks. These scripts
that reside on the server (mostly PHP or ASP) would generate random images with
garbled up characters. These characters can only be seen by human eyes and not
machines. So a robot will fail to crack the test.
But then we blind people have no eyes and these machines are
our eyes! Now a collision path had been reached! We found ourselves once more
resorting to the traditional way of asking someone to read the text on my PC
with a fully functional screen reader!
Some guys decided to come up with the Salona project to help
you. Yet the disadvantage of the Salona service is that it works with humans
and those humans are volunteers. If you get to a web page, you have to send the
image to such kind guys. The guys would transfer back the decoded text and this
certainly takes decades without end. If you are like me who lives in the
southern hemisphere where times run contrary to that of these volunteers, you
are in tough luck! Yet I personally commend the efforts of these ladies and
gentlemen who are giving their time to decoding text for us. Their service
works across browsers, such that even if you are using IE, you stand to
benefit.
But with Web Visum, there are no humans. You just need to
create your account. After this, you will need to download the Web Visum Add
On.
This Add On comes bundled with lots of sounds which may
irritate you, but they can also help you to know that a certain event just took
place. The Add On is customisable and user friendly. Just download it from
their site
http://www.webvisum.com and start enjoying the power of the
web today.
Web Visum is popular for decoding images on these forms, but
you can do a lot with it: you can label links on those pages that are not
accessible. You just need a sighted friend: label those links with Web Visum.
You will be helping a lot of other blind and visually impaired people who would
stumble across that page in future. Such lable s are stored at the Web Visum
server. An example is the Sony Sound Forge page which was developed this way.
Web Visum labels only work when you are using Firefox: so if
you use another browser, those benefits aren't yours!
(B) Linkification:
Ever came across someone (especially on public forums) who
just provides a link but that link isn't clickable? Yeah, you will need to
highlight the link in question, Press your CTRL+C to copy the link to the
clipboard and CTRL+L key combination and
paste the link into the location bar. This certainly spoils the clipboard by
useless links!
Keep your clipboard for something else and not links from
web pages.
Now there is the Linkification add on in Firefox. This Add
On will help you click on those links. Thus, any link on a web page will be
clickable and not for you to first highlight and copy the text. You just push
your space bar and hooray, you are heading to the promised land!
If you want this Add On, here is their web page:
http://yellow5.us/firefox/linkification/
There are lots of Add Ons in Firefox. They are arranged by
categories: simply browse through them and pick what you want and leave the
rest to others. Here I just sampled the two of my favourite Add Ons: I found
others for web feeds, but I am sure you will recommend me to some when you get
them.
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Conclusion
Hey, that's it for now. This tutorial would only be helpful
if it serves its purpose: if it confuses you, I'm sorry. I never like confusion
myself so feel free to drop me an email to
chinyoka.consultant@gmail.com asking for clarification.
May God bless you all! Please if you find this tutorial
useful, instead of wondering what to do with your gratitude, simply help
someone in a conundrum. There are many beginners out there: help them. This
stuff was obvious nonsense to someone because they know more than I do, but
never take for granted the knowledge of others. What's obvious to you may be a
mystery to the next guy: so give this tutorial to anyone who may benefit. No
charge is put on this tutorial by the author, so distribute it as much as you
wish provided that you don't change its contents.
This way, the world respects us as a blind community no
matter our race, colour, creed, religion or nationality.
May God be with you once again!
Ishe Chinyoka
University of Zimbabwe
Harare
Zimbabwe
Phone: +263 913 974610
Email: chinyoka.consultant@gmail.com
THE END