Big Plus for Vista SR vis-a-vis DNS!

Submitted by BruceCyr on Fri, 03/02/2007 - 18:11.

General SR

Pogue's NY Times Circuit review of Vista SR shows a huge command-and-control innovation for Vista SR:

"* “Show numbers.” It’s great to know that you can click any button or tab by saying its name. But what if you don’t know its name? What if it’s some cryptic little icon on a toolbar? You can’t exactly say, “Click the little thing that looks like a guy putting his head between two rollers.”

For this purpose, Microsoft has created a clever command called “Show numbers.” When you say that, the program overlays every clickable thing with superimposed colorful numbers. Just say the number of the button you want, and then say “OK.”

The numbers appear automatically if there’s more than one button of the same name on the screen, too–several Settings buttons in a dialog box, for example. This trick also works great on Web pages. Say “Show numbers” to see a number label superimposed on every clickable element of the page."

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/?ref=technology
(N.b., registration required)

Or did I miss that feature of DNS? And maybe its applicability is conditioned on the controls the application uses - like type of edit controls limiting DNS' Select-and-Say applicability?

Bruce

This is one significant

Submitted by KnowBrainer on Fri, 03/02/2007 - 18:59.

This is one significant advantage Microsoft has over NaturallySpeaking. We were lucky to be one of around 20 speech recognition consultants, from around the world, who were invited to the Microsoft Vista speech development demo. “show numbers” was one of the first commands they showed us. This is the kind of innovation that keeps the competition on their toes. The DragonBar that appears at the top of your screen was first introduced by IBM in ViaVoice. The L & H engineers copied it into DNS 7 and there is a good possibility that DNS 10 will introduce its own variation of the “show numbers” feature. Much as we appreciate the Vista speech engine it's best not to forget that the Vista speech utility also lacks a number of amenities such as the yellow Results Box and the Command Browser. We currently feel that the Vista speech engine has little to offer over NaturallySpeaking BUT it's free and a lot of developers are going to begin working on that platform.

KnowBrainer Support Staff - Lunis Orcutt

Dictated with DNS 9, KnowBrainer and UniVoice

I have asked for something

Submitted by BruceCyr on Sat, 03/03/2007 - 17:54.

I have asked for something like this tool for many moons -- since VoiceGroup days -- as a tool for writing macros. MS can probably adapt it for that purpose when the time comes. I wonder if it depends on "insider" knowledge about the interfaces, or whether this is something Nuance can mimic.

They have said all along that facilitating the hands-free user has been one of their goals, and it looks like they mean it. Hurrah for competition!

Bruce

You can see the Show Numbers

Submitted by DSteiNeuro on Sat, 03/03/2007 - 21:11.

You can see the Show Numbers feature in this now old Video:

http://wm.microsoft.com/ms/inetpub/chenley/vista%2...

I wonder how much of the Show Numbers is built into Vista OS & applications vs the Vista SR appliction. For example Word2007 does something similar if you press the alt key by itself.

http://office.microsoft.com/training/training.aspx... (click the play button to see Demo)