Leasey Has Been Updated Including Support for JAWS 2018!

This message was originally posted to the Leasey email list.

Hi to all

Leasey version 3.3 build 68 is now available. Please read this message carefully as it contains important information.
You may like to keep it for reference.

The changes in this version of Leasey will be outlined below, although they are fully described in the documentation. In addition, early next week, two in depth LeaseyBite audio and text tutorials will be available detailing the changes and how to use the new features.
If you use LeaseyCuts extensively, significant changes have been made in this area, see below. If you feel you may need tuition on this point, we suggest you do not upgrade until the audio tutorial is available on this subject.

This is the first version of Leasey to accommodate JAWS 2018 and all JAWS updates going forward. You will find that JAWS updates will become more frequent during the ensuing months, and what we have done in this version of Leasey is to ensure that it can be installed into this new version of JAWS and upwards including 2019 etc as we head into next year.
We are doing our very best to look ahead, so by the time we get to this time in 2018, people should not be asking why Leasey isn’t installing into the new version of JAWS. This has been a very challenging time for us and we hope all goes smoothly from this point forward.

For those people using JAWS 2018, you will need to head to our website and download the version of Leasey you are licensed for, Total Package or Advanced. Despite me asking people not to, some people yesterday still used the JAWS 2018 migrate settings feature and caused themselves some real difficulty. We have tried to take care of this in the installer if you are one of those people.

If you are not running JAWS 2018 right now, you can check for updates in the usual way and the build should come down to you. However, if you are reliant on the human generated speech prompts in Leasey Total, I recommend you download the new installer and run that. This is because on some machines, elevated permissions are required to install the speech prompts and they are not being brought down using check for updates. We cannot take that risk at the moment in putting the human speech prompts in check for updates.
This is an issue which will be resolved in future releases.

In summary, if in any doubt, download the installer and run it. You cannot do any harm that way. Installing over the top of your existing version will be just fine.

Unless anything is spectacularly wrong, this will be the last major Leasey update for 2017. I think we’ve come a very long way with Leasey this year with many new features and improvements and we hope you continue to enjoy using the product.

What to Do if You Have a Problem.

Leasey is installed on hundreds of machines around the world. I am the only person dealing with Leasey technical support, so please bare that in mind. If you have a problem, please do not use social media to let us know. That is the wrong place for dealing with such queries. Please email support@leaseycentral.com, and in this way, your issues can be tracked and dealt with properly. If something needs to be fixed via a further small update, it can be dealt with much better this way.

If you need assistance with installing Leasey, for example if you do not have the knowledge to install a program, please let us know so that we can arrange a support call. Again, please be patient.

And lastly, the changes in this version. Do enjoy using this latest release of Leasey!

New in Build 68.

Improved support for iTunes 12.7. This has been enhanced in many areas. As of this writing, an archive of a training course in the use of iTunes is available for those who would like to purchase it. Students who completed the training class benefited from over 7 hours of tuition. Please consult the Training page on our website for details.
LeaseyRadio now contains full access to all the radio stations in the Shoutcast directory. In addition to you being able to listen to the existing radio stations Leasey has available, you can browse through, or search, thousands of radio stations which are part of Shoutcast's directory. Browse by category, or search for a radio station, musical artist or song title. If you search for a song, Leasey will bring back a list of all stations playing the track. As you browse through any station, for example by genre, Leasey will not only tell you the station name but also the song playing on the station. This gives you the opportunity of you being able to easily select something you'd like to hear. A LeaseyBite will be produced to demonstrate this feature. Press Leasey Key then R to check it out.

As stated in the documentation, if a few stations do not play in Shoutcast, please do not contact us. Clearly if absolutely none of them work, that is a different matter entirely. But if you find some stations do play and some do not, that is outside of our control. Some stations are listed in the Shoutcast directory which are no longer in operation or which are temporarily not streaming. You can usually tell if a station is streaming content because, as you browse the station listings, you will find we have included the song title playing at the time you access the list. That is a very good indicator that it is streaming content.

LeaseyCuts have had many changes. Again, these changes will be demonstrated in a LeaseyBite. LeaseyCuts pointing to web pages are now in their own separate list for easier access, accessed by pressing the Leasey Key then Control+Semicolon, and they are browser specific. So if you create the LeaseyCut, and Firefox was running at the time, that is the browser which will be used to launch the site in the future. These days, people want to choose the browser to work with specific sites.
Our recommended browsers are Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.
If you do use Firefox, check out this useful blog post about its future.

Pressing the Leasey Key then Shift+Dash will allow you to set the JAWS behaviour when a LeaseyAlert is focused. This behaviour is now independent of LeaseyPoints.