What's Coming in Leasey 4.2.

Hi to All

Each year as we approach Leasey's birthday, we always try to produce an update for our users containing new features. This year is the same, and you will find a summary of most of them below.

All New Weather App in LeaseySearch.

Lots of people like to know about the weather, and we've had a weather app for quite some time. However it has now been redesigned to include the following features:

• Extremeley fast and responsive.
• Does not require gaining information from a specific website so should be reliable.
• Search by place name, postal code, zip code or region.
• If you are unsure of the correct spelling for a place name, type the first few letters to get a list of possible matches.
• Type the word, Nearby, to get a weather report based on your location.
• The opening screen summary page can be easily navigated and contains:
  • confirmation of location.
  • the local time (useful for determining the time in a specific region for example).
  • The current temperature (either in Celsius, Fahrenheit or both, you choose. LeaseyWeather is highly configurable.
  • Weather summary in text form.
  • Wind speed in Kilometres per Hour, Miles per Hour or both, you choose.
  • Humidity.
  • Feels like temperature.
  • Immediate upcoming forecast for the day.
  • Minimum and maximum temperatures across the day.
  • Average temperature across the day.
  • A seven day forecast is given. You can quickly and easily move through the days of the week to get the forecast.
• Hour by hour forecast for a day which contains:
  • Temperature.
  • Summary in text format.
  • Chance of rain as a percentage.
  • Chance of wind as a percentage.
  • Chance of overcast as a percentage.
  • Chance of clear skies as a percentage.
  • Chance of snow as a percentage.
  • Chance of thunder as a percentage.
• It is easy to navigate to a specific hour in the daily forecast.
• Astro information is given including sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset,
  moon phase and moon elumination.

TVMaze in LeaseySearch.

TVMaze is a huge database of TV shows past and present. Using Leasey, search for a TV show which is airing now or which has done so in the past. Simply type the name of the show and press Enter. It is useful to learn about shows of the past and those which are airing now. This app is extremely responsive.
It will return:

• Confirmation of the show name.
• The genre of entertainment.
• The status, such as whether the show is airing now.
• The running time of each episode.
• The transmission dates for the entire show, such as 1986 to 2019.
• The time the show was scheduled.
• The day the show was scheduled.
• A summary of the show content.
• A link which will allow you to see the entire episode list of the show.
• A link which will allow you to see most popular cast members in the show together with the character played.
• A link to search for a specific episode by date.

If you choose to retrieve the episode list, you will get:

• The name of the episode.
• The season number and episode number.
• The transmission date.
• The transmission air time.
• A summary of the episode.

Please note. If a particular program is not listed, or there is a missing episode summary for example, please do not contact us. When we introduced support for Last.FM, we were sometimes receiving technical support queries stating that an item was not listed. All Leasey is doing is ensuring the way in which you access these services is easy to use and accessible. We are not responsible for the content contained within them.

Other New Features.

A keystroke can be pressed to report the number of files tagged with LeaseyTags in File Explorer.

The ability to create a new Outlook Email message, a new Outlook appointment, and a new Outlook task from any application. Microsoft Outlook does not need to be running initially to use this feature.

For a while, we have had the ability to unprotect a Microsoft Word document with a keystroke. This functionality has now been extended to unprotect Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations.

When using LeaseyDiary, it is now possible to set an alarm to sound when (or before) an appointment is due.

Support for the WordWeb dictionary. WordWeb is a dictionary which can be downloaded to the computer. The program has a full dictionary and thesaurus for American, British, Canadian, Australian, Indian, and global English. The WordWeb program does not form part of the Leasey installer, but it can be downloaded at no cost from the organisation's website. Leasey ensures that the program is very accessible.

Radio Stations. We've made a change to the way in which the LeaseyRadio directory is managed. There are often situations where the links to radio streams change. When this occurs, assuming we know the location of the new radio server for the station, we can make a change so you immediately can start listening to the station once again without the need to produce a new build of Leasey.

All of the above features were requested by Leasey users.

Alternative Location for Leasey Configuration Files.

Most people will not notice any difference relating to this subject, but we've spent a lot of time reorganising Leasey's file structure.

In the event that JAWS is uninstalled, there was a possibility that Leasey settings could be lost. While Leasey has always had the ability to backup settings, not everyone takes the opportunity of doing this. We've therefore made it possible for Leasey to reference these files from another location. If JAWS is completely removed therefore and reinstalled, the Leasey settings will still be there. It also means that if you install Leasey into more than one JAWS version, she can take advantage of exactly the same settings.

When you install the new version of Leasey, the new migration process is transparent and you should not need to do anything special to ensure everything works correctly.

Don't forget as demonstrated in a LeaseyBite audio tutorial, Leasey does have the facility to merge Leasey settings from an alternative JAWS version into a new one. So, when you install Leasey into JAWS 2020, (and yes she is ready for JAWS 2020 now), you can bring across your Leasey settings and other JAWS scripts to version 2020 without a problem, as you always have been able to do.

Conclusion and Spreading the Word.

As you can see, a great deal of work has been taking place for the new update and we hope you enjoy using it when it comes along.
We'd be grateful if you could please tell more people about Leasey. If Leasey is to include more new features, there is a cost implication for each new feature added. In order to keep the price of Leasey as low as possible, Leasey needs more people to use the facilities she has available.

The new update will be released on 30 October, probably just before JAWS version 2020 is available.

Have a great day!