Word processing may be the most obvious application of speech recognition, but it isn’t the only one. Gadgets like smartphones and iPads factor heavily into the equation, too. If you’re like me, you spend more time than you care to admit on the web — browsing, tweeting, exchanging email, and trying out new apps.
Dragon Professional Individual command shortcuts for searching and dictating online are easy. The menu commands of the email and browser applications provide all the specialized commands you need, and the rest is basically just word processing and window management. Nonetheless, in this chapter, I assemble a few tricks worth knowing.
Browsing the Web
Using Dragon Professional Individual with Internet Explorer, (IE 9 or higher), or current versions of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, lets you do your entire web browsing by voice, efficiently, without having to touch a mouse or keyboard. Of course, you can use them if you want — do whatever is most comfortable for you.
For use with Dragon Professional Individual, an extension is available, called the Dragon Web extension. This extension enables the browsers previously mentioned to have more complete web application support.
You will know if the extension is enabled in that version of the browser by clicking the gear icon and choosing Manage Add-ons. If you see the extension listed (Dragon Web Extension) and enabled, you can proceed.
Some features may not be available in your browser of choice. You need to experiment to see whether one that you want to use is available.
Getting started
To start browsing the web, follow these steps:
Start Dragon Professional Individual.
Start Internet Explorer.
It doesn’t matter how you start Internet Explorer. You can start it with the “Start” command by saying, “Start Internet Explorer,” by selecting a Favorite from the Start menu (not in Windows 8), or by clicking its desktop icon with the mouse. The first time you access IE after you install Dragon Professional Individual, a window pops up asking you if you want to enable Dragon in Internet Explorer. Click Proceed and follow the instructions.
That’s all there is to it. Your browser opens and is immediately ready to take your commands.
Choosing Firefox or Chrome as your browser
If you enjoy using Firefox or Chrome over Internet Explorer, the Nuance folks serve you well. Dragon Professional Individual works equally well with Firefox and Chrome, so you can just select links by saying them in that browser instead of IE. If you want to use Firefox with Dragon Professional Individual, you can do it without much of a learning curve. Just remember the following when using Firefox:
Make sure Firefox is pinned to the Start menu, so that you choose Firefox from there if that’s the way you prefer to launch it.
As an alternative launch method, say, “Open Firefox,” “Launch Firefox,” or “Show Firefox” to launch it.
Say, “Go To The Address Field” when you want to get to the address box.
To install the extension for Firefox, the method is the same as for IE. You see the pop-up window asking whether you want to enable Dragon in Firefox and you click Proceed and follow the directions.
If you want to search something directly, use the shortcut examples in the “Using shortcuts created for the web” section later in this chapter.
To install the extension for Chrome, you will see the same pop-up window asking you to install the extension. When you click proceed, you see a screen from the Chrome web store. Just click the plus (+) sign and then click Add.
That’s it. You’re on your way and using the browser of your choice.
One reason people started using Firefox or Chrome was because they enjoyed using multiple tabs. You can use the following voice commands with Firefox or Chrome tabs:
“Add A New Tab”
“Open A New Tab”
“Click The Next Tab”
“Click The Previous Tab”
“Go To The Next Tab”
“Go To The Previous Tab”
“Close Tab”
Giving orders to Internet Explorer
You can give Internet Explorer its marching orders in several ways:
Natural Language commands: See Chapter 9 for a discussion of Natural Language.
Keyboard commands: See Chapter 8 for a discussion of levels of control.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, Dragon Professional Individual enables you to have more control over when you need to say “Click” when issuing commands. This is particularly important with web browsing. To see what you have your commands set at now, go to Tools ⇒ Options ⇒ Commands.
See the check boxes that say: Require Click to Select Hyperlinks in HTML Windows, Require Click to Select Menus, and Require Click to Select Buttons and Other Controls, and see what your settings are. If you want to say “Click” with web browser commands, then leave them selected. If not, deselect them. As you go through the commands in the rest of the chapter, say “Click” before each command if you have them selected.
In addition, you can use the same “Move” and “Go” commands that work in the Dragon Professional Individual DragonPad, like “Go To Top/Bottom” or “Move Down Three Paragraphs.” You can also use the mouse voice commands (see Chapter 15) to click toolbar buttons or links on web pages, but usually one of the other techniques achieves the same result more easily. Table 13-1 shows how to replace the Internet Explorer toolbar buttons with Natural Language, menu, or keyboard voice commands.
Web browsers provide multiple ways to open a web page or move from one web page to another. Your home page opens when you start Internet Explorer (unless you start it by selecting an entry from the Start ⇒I nternet Explorer ⇒ Favorites menu). From there, you can move around on the web by choosing links; clicking toolbar buttons (refer to Table 13-1 for menu and keyboard equivalents); entering a web address into the Address box; or jumping to a page for which you have stored its location on the Favorites menu.
Linking from one web page to another
One useful feature you can use while browsing is the capability to click a link on a web page by saying all or part of its text label. For example, suppose that you are viewing the web page shown in Figure 13-1, the “What’s next” page of the Nuance blog, and you want to click the link labeled Connected Living. All you have to do is say, “Click Connected Living.” IE searches the links visible in the Internet Explorer window to see if any of them contain that text. Because one and only one such link appears on the page in Figure 13-1, the linked page is chosen.
Figure 13-1: Dragon Professional Individual checks for the occurrence of Connected Living on the page.
Pick whatever part of the link’s text label is easiest to say.
If the link is an image, say, “Image.” Dragon Professional Individual selects all the images visible in your viewing window and numbers them. Then simply choose the number of the image you want by saying, “Choose <image number>.” If you know the text label of the image (it is displayed while the image loads), select it by name, just as you would any text link.
When you’re clicking links that have the same words in them (for example, “Learn more”) you will find that Dragon places a green number to show you its selections. Choose the number that corresponds to the one you want. It works the same way as your Correction menu does by giving you numbered choices.
Dictating to the Address box
The Address box is the textbox at the bottom of the browser’s toolbar, the one that shows the web address of the current page. Say, “Go To Address” to move the cursor into the Address box. Then dictate the address you want and say, “Go There.”
You can start a web search by dictating, “Question mark <search terms>” into the Address box and then saying, “Go There.” For example, if you are looking for articles about McDonald’s franchises in Antarctica, say, “Question mark, McDonald’s, comma, Antarctica.” When “?McDonald’s, Antarctica” appears in the Address box, say, “Go There.”
The most recent 25 web addresses that were typed or dictated into your Address box are kept on a list that drops down from the Address box. To make it drop down, get the cursor into the Address box, and then say, “Press Alt Down Arrow.” Naturally, “Press Alt Up Arrow” makes the list retract again. Move up or down the list with the “Move Up/Down” commands, like “Move Down Three.” After you select an address from the list, say, “Press Enter” to tell your browser to go there.
Using the Favorites menu
By far, the easiest way to connect to a web page is to store its location on the Favorites menu. Using this menu is also the simplest, quickest way to keep track of websites and return to them by voice commands. Use voice commands to go to a website on the Favorites menu as follows:
If Internet Explorer is running in the active window, say, “Favorites,” then say the name of the favorite item you want from the menu. It doesn’t matter where on the menu the favorite is. If, for example, you have a favorite called CNN in a folder called News Sites on the Favorites menu, you just have to say, “Favorites,” then say, “CNN.” You don’t have to say the name of the News Sites folder.
Use the Favorites menu on the Internet Explorer menu bar, just as you use Start ⇒ Internet Explorer from the menu. If Internet Explorer is the active window, say, “Click Favorites, News Sites, CNN.”
When you are at a site or page that you want to bookmark in your Favorites menu, say “Add To Favorites,” and it will be placed on that menu list.
When you create favorites, give them short names that are easy for you to pronounce and easy for Dragon Professional Individual to recognize. If the names of the favorites you already have are too long or too difficult, you can change them. Follow these steps:
Open Internet Explorer.
Don’t select the favorite itself, because you don’t want to open it right now. In the CNN example earlier in this section, you would say, “Click Start, Favorites, News Sites.” The menu expands so that you can see the CNN favorite, but it is not selected.
Use the Move Up/Down commands to highlight the favorite.
If CNN is the fifth entry in the News Sites folder, say, “Move Down Five.”
Say, “Right Click, Rename.”
A Rename dialog box appears.
Dictate the new name.
Say, “Click OK.”
Pinning websites or pages to the Start menu
If you are using Internet Explorer or Firefox and running Dragon Professional Individual, you can use voice commands to pin shortcuts to the Start menu. This is an added benefit when you are working quickly and want to grab something to look at later. A simple voice command will capture it. To pin it, do the following:
Say, “Pin this <web page or website> to the Start menu.”
You will see a dialog box with the web address (also known as One Box).
If you want to edit the box, say, “Go To The One Box,” and edit accordingly.
To finish say, “Click.”
Moving around a Web Page
Dragon Professional Individual has an automatic scrolling feature that I find very convenient for reading long articles. Just say, “Start Scrolling Down,” and the text of the current web page starts moving up your screen like the credits at the end of a movie. Adjust the scrolling speed by saying, “Speed Up” or “Slow Down.” (I love it — no computerese nonsense like, “Set Scrolling Speed Up Five,” or something equally obscure.) The “Stop Scrolling” command (and I bet you already figured this out) stops the scrolling. To go backward, say, “Start Scrolling Up.”
If automatic scrolling makes you feel like you’re in a speed-reading test, you have other options for moving through a web page. Perhaps you are accustomed to using the scroll bar on the right edge of your browser’s window to move through a web page. As always, mouse-oriented techniques don’t translate to speech as well as keyboard-oriented techniques do. The simplest way to scroll through a web page by voice is to say, “Press Page Down” when you want to display the next screen’s text.
The “Move” and “Go” commands (see Chapter 5) also work with a browser, but predicting what they’re going to do is sometimes hard. The “lines” that Dragon Professional Individual moves when you say, “Move Down Four Lines” don’t precisely correspond to the lines of text that you see on your screen. (They’re usually a little bit larger than the lines of text. Don’t ask me why.) And on web pages that have several frames, images, animations, or other advanced features, what a “paragraph” means is anybody’s guess. “Top” and “bottom” are still meaningful terms, though, and you will find that “Go To Top” and “Go To Bottom” are good commands to remember when you’re reading long documents on the web.
Entering information on a web page
Many web pages contain forms for you to fill out or textboxes into which you can dictate longer messages. Dragon Professional Individual has special commands for entering such information or messages.
Before you can dictate text into a textbox, you must first move the cursor there. You can, of course, move the cursor by clicking the mouse in the box, just as you would if you weren’t using Dragon Professional Individual. Alternatively, you can say, “Click <the name of the text box>” to move the cursor to the textbox on the page.
For example, say, “Click Name.” When the cursor is in the box, you can dictate, edit, and correct, just as you would in any Full Text Control application. (See Chapter 8.) When you finish with that textbox, repeat the process to move to a different box. Say, “Click <the name of the textbox>” to move on to the next textbox, and so on. Go back to an earlier textbox by saying its name. You can also move to the next textbox by saying, “Next Control.” You can also say, “Edit Box,” and Dragon will number every available edit box on the page so you can choose it.
To click a radio button or check box on a web page, just say, “Radio Button” or “Check Box.” Dragon will number the available check boxes or radio buttons. Say “Choose <n>” and Dragon will act as though you clicked it with your mouse. If it was a check box, for example, it will now be unchecked.
To cycle through the objects on a web page, say, “Press Tab.” Say, “Press Shift Tab” to cycle in the opposite direction. This technique is useful when you want to go from one kind of object (like a textbox) to a different kind of object (like a radio button).
Here are some additional commands you can use to move around with tabs:
“Open New Tab”
“Switch To Last Tab”
“View The Next Tab”
“View The Previous Tab”
“Close Tab”
Using shortcuts created for the web
Many of the activities you normally perform on the Internet are supported by special shortcuts created by Nuance. Take advantage of these shortcuts because you can use them no matter where you are. Check the Command browser to see a complete listing, which includes the following commands:
Searching the web: Use Google, Bing, or another search tool to find anything (well, not your misplaced car keys!). For example, say, “Search Google For Patio Furniture,” and your browser opens the search and displays the results.
Searching using specific search categories: These include images, video, news, maps, or products. For example, say, “Search Video For Fossils.”
Searching a specific well-known site: Find exactly what you want at a specific website. Speak the website name, such as Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Amazon, and eBay, in your command. For example, say, “Search Amazon for Dragon Professional Individual For Dummies.”
Searching using a web address: If you want to go to a specific website, say, “Go To Address Bar” and then say the URL you want to go to, as in “Red Cross Dot Org.”
View the shortcut options for the web and other commands by choosing Tools ⇒ Command Browser.
Picking and launching your web browser
For use with Dragon Professional Individual, an extension is available, called the Dragon Web extension. This extension enables the browsers previously mentioned to have more complete web application support.
Some features may not be available in your browser of choice. You need to experiment to see whether one that you want to use is available.
As mentioned in 