Ai Squared

Hi everyone,

I was wondering about whether anyone else would see / does see benefit in controlling the mouse with the keyboard, particularly for use with the Internet? I'll explain what I mean:

Using the AppReader to read the internet, I have found that it does a good job, and it is easy to stop on links etc, however when you exit it, it leaves the cursor at the top of the page.

However, it leaves the mouse pointer right over exactly where you stopped reading, which means that in order to activate a link, you simply need to use AppReader to read your way there, exit AppReader, and click the mouse button. Since you don't physically have to move the mouse, it would be nice if you could make this mouse click with the keyboard.

Currently the only existing way I have found to do this is via Windows MouseKeys accessibility option, however this presents some problems, namely that it takes over the number pad either when numlock is on, or when it is off. This means that you either can't use the numberpad for things like Zoomtext reading commands / magnification level changes, without changing all those hotkeys, or that you can't use the numberpad for entering numbers - and then of course is the issue of people using laptops who for practicality's sake don't have a number pad.

After all that, I have three questions:

1) Is this a good way of 'reading' and generally accessing the Internet for those who use speech and magnification and don't generally use the mouse much?

2) Is there anything other than the MouseKeys accessibility option out there which already exists, which can be set up so that it avoids conflicts with Zoomtext (and without needing to use the numberpad).

3) If there's nothing else already available, I've started dabbling with writing my own program to do this, and I believe it can be done, and I was wondering, what features would you like to see in a 'better' MouseKeys?

So far my list of features I plan is simply:

- The ability to control the mouse with the keyboard (duh!) - movement / button clicking (left button, middle button, right button, double clicks etc).

- The ability to customise the commands for doing all these functions (or even not assign anything for particular functions).

But I'm open to suggestions for further features if people think it is a good idea.

Or would using the keyboard to click the mouse buttons be a feature people would like to see in a future release of Zoomtext instead maybe?

Ok, that's enough babbling from me, any ideas or feedback on anything I've said is most welcome!

Regards

OgO