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Thread: HPR 3.04 - IE7 - WinXP - Complete Doctype

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Number of posts in this thread: 4 (In chronological order)

From: Hunt, Jan
Date: Thu, Mar 08 2007 8:10AM
Subject: HPR 3.04 - IE7 - WinXP - Complete Doctype
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I am wondering if anyone else has noticed a problem with HomePage Reader
3.04 using IE7 on Windows XP?

I recently upgraded to IE7 and noticed that when checking my pages that
HPR really freaked out. The entire window would progressively shrink,
then a blank HPR screen would show and my CPU was locked at 100%.
Looking in Task Manager showed two instances of HPR running and I could
not End Task on them. Instead I had to go into the Processes and End
Process on HPR.exe and Explorer.exe and then reboot.

At first I wondered if it was my machine, but I loaded HPR 3.04 on an XP
machine that had IE7 at work, and the same thing happened.

Now the weird thing is that NOT ALL web pages caused HPR to freak. I did
some investigating and it turns out that if the web page uses an
incomplete or no doctype then HPR reads along fine, but add a complete
doctype to the page and the problem is triggered. I also noticed that
sometimes a page with a complete doctype would start reading along fine
until you did something in HPR like VIEW > SHOW > HISTORY or if you made
the screen larger or smaller etc.

"It takes a great artist to work within the standard
and make something worthwhile."
Jan Anderson Hunt

From: Alastair Campbell
Date: Thu, Mar 08 2007 8:20AM
Subject: Re: HPR 3.04 - IE7 - WinXP - Complete Doctype
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> I recently upgraded to IE7 and noticed that when checking my
> pages that HPR really freaked out.

I believe IBM discontinued support and updates before IE7 came out, so
this isn't too surprising.

Kind regards,

-Alastair

--
Alastair Campbell | Director of User Experience

Nomensa Email Disclaimer:
http://www.nomensa.com/email-disclaimer.html

From: Jared Smith
Date: Thu, Mar 08 2007 9:30AM
Subject: Re: HPR 3.04 - IE7 - WinXP - Complete Doctype
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On 3/8/07, Hunt, Jan < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> I am wondering if anyone else has noticed a problem with HomePage Reader
> 3.04 using IE7 on Windows XP?

I noticed the same thing - the shrinking window, along with frequent
crashes. HPR is abandonware, so I wouldn't worry about supporting it
or testing with it now.

<rant>
It's a bit of a shame really. HPR was the best screen reader for
developer use and I imagine that a large share of their customers were
from the seeing community. But between lack of support, no
responsiveness on bugs and new features, and implementing a crippled
demo version, it's no wonder that IBM reported that sales were down
and they were discontinuing HPR. They essentially killed it
themselves. Wouldn't it be nice if the code were put into the open
source realm for the community to continue working on?
</rant>

Jared Smith
WebAIM.org

From: Joshue O Connor
Date: Thu, Mar 08 2007 9:50AM
Subject: Re: HPR 3.04 - IE7 - WinXP - Complete Doctype
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>Jared Smith
>HPR was the best screen reader for
> developer use and I imagine that a large share of their customers were
> from the seeing community.

<echo rant>

Absolutely. IMO it was really useful for user testing purposes as you
could show the speech output as highlighted text in a separate window so
a sighted user who was just not used to the way a screen reader
operates, or who indeed finds listening to a screen reader a little
overwhelming.

This was great for user testing purposes as a sighted person could more
easily make connections between what was going on on-screen and the
speech output so people watching a user test could more easily follow
what was going on.

Josh


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