WebbIE

News

September 2008
Most of our support queries at the moment are about the BBC Listen Again and iPlayer. You'll find these two pages useful: RealPlayer and the new Flash for getting Adobe Flash working so you can listen to the BBC iPlayer programmes.
August 2008
A new version of the WebbIE and Accessible programs is now available to download, free as ever! Download the latest WebbIE 3.7.3. Here are some details of what is new in 3.7.3:
  • New BBC iPlayer Listen Again program. The BBC has changed their Listen Again service, so the old BBC Listen Again program has stopped working. This, and the briefly-lived iPlayer programs, have been replaced by this new BBC iPlayer Listen Again program. It lets you get all the programmes for the last week from BBC radio, and also lets you open pages containing BBC television programmes too. You will still need RealPlayer or Real Alternative installed to hear the radio programmes.
  • New Clock program. This is a simple program to tell you the time, chime, and set reminders. Thanks to Kevin Cussick for working on this one.
  • WebbIE improvements. You'll no longer get those annoying Script Error messages, Google search works again (it was broken at the end of August) and now lets you access the second page of results, and old programs are correctly removed from your machine. You'll be able to get more information on inaccessible Flash and Java applets on those few sites that provide it. You can go to web pages by pressing Control and O and typing the web address, just like Internet Explorer. And Window-Eyes users will find that WebbIE no longer steals the Control, Alt and W shortcut key.
June 2008
New article on accessible web design: Choosing the alt tag or attribute content.
April 2008
After much development and testing, a new version of WebbIE, 3.6, with lots of new programs (Accessible PDF, iPlayer, Make USB Sticks, new Gutenberg), bugfixes and improvements. Most of the WebbIE and Accessible programs have been updated: get the latest version now. Download.
October 2007
A busy couple of months working on WebbIE 3.5, but finally got it out of the door. Notable stuff includes fixes to Accessible BBC Listen Again, more feeds work in RSS News Reader, and some new programs letting you find podcasts and feeds and download podcasts to your computer. Check it out at the download page.
The BBC also sorted out their Radio Player problems this month, so lots of radio programmes that disappeared from the listings are back. You'll also need the new version to handle programmes on many times a week.
Many people have provided new translations of WebbIE, so another language is linked from the front page and we have more language support in WebbIE itself. Thanks!
Working on the next WebbIE release: do let me know if you have any queries, suggestions or requests.
August 2007
Think I've tracked down a tricky bug with WebbIE 3.3.6: on machines with the colour depth at 16 bits, WebbIE would not start up (a new icon, of all things). You can check out the Download page for how to get the latest, not-quite-released 3.4.0 if you're having this problem.
July 2007
WebbIE 3.3.6 is out: no, there is no 3.3.3 or 3.3.4, and 3.3.5 only lasted ten days. Fixed some bugs, improved the general user interface experience, and did a bunch of work internally so the programs will work better. There are also handy navigation sounds so you know when WebbIE is working and the crop page function is now really good at ripping out all that rubbish at the top of a web page and leaving the bit you want to read. Download WebbIE 3 now.
Over on the new development side we have Google RSS and Podcast Search, which lets you find RSS news feeds and podcasts and add them to Accessible RSS News Reader and Accessible Podcatchers, and Accessible Podcast Downloader, which lets you download your podcasts so you can listen to them when not on the Internet or transfer them to a personal MP3 player to listen on the move. Download Google RSS and Podcast Search and Podcast Downloader now.
The BBC Listen Again program is having some problems because the BBC Radio Player, from which the BBC Listen Again program gets the radio programmes, is in turn missing many radio programmes - especially those for Radio 7. Up to the BBC to fix, I'm afraid.
Finally, on a personal note, Alasdair has received his PhD from the University of Manchester and is now Dr. King. Some of his PhD research should find its way onto the site over the next few months.
April 2007
WebbIE 3.3.2 is now released. It fixes bugs with 3.3.0 and adds the ability to invert colours so people can work in white on black, which suits some people. We've also linked the Polish version from the front page now - thanks to Dorota and everyone who has helped with translation over the last few years!
If you check out Download you'll find Accessible iTunes: this lets you rip CDs and listen to them using iTunes from Apple.
February 2007
WebbIE 3.3.0 is now released. It's largely lots and lots of bugfixes: extensive testing has, we hope, produced the most reliable and useful WebbIE ever. Thanks to everyone who alerted us to problems. There is one new feature: if you have problems with HTML help files in Windows, you can now open them up in WebbIE and get all the contents through the normal WebbIE view. Do download WebbIE 3.3.0.
December 2006
A new version of WebbIE and the accessible programs. This one, 3.2.0, includes two new programs: Accessible Gutenberg lets you read books available for free from the wonderful Gutenberg Project, a website dedicated to bringing you out-of-copyright texts in a simple text format. Accessible Gutenberg lets you search through the book catalogue, downloads books for you and lets you read them simply and easily: it even keeps track of where you've got up to. Accessible Radio Tuner lets you listen to dozens of radio stations available around the world over the Internet: it comes with about 60 stations preset, but if you find one is missing from there and you want to see it included, just let us know and we'll try to add it. There are also bugfixes, as ever, and a new WebbIE feature: you can now type words straight into the address bar and WebbIE will do a Google search for you (standard browsers have done this for years, of course!) Finally, after many queries, I've updated my Windows '98 and Me version of WebbIE and included it in the installer, so if you have one of these old operating systems then you should find that you have a working WebbIE installed after you've installed the latest version. Happy New Year!
November 2006
Google changed its website and broke Google Search in WebbIE, so a new WebbIE 3.1.3 is now available to fix that. It also supports more links in more sites, such as Microsoft Hotmail, where advanced JavaScript it used. Finally, for non-English users, you can now change the user interface language (the text on buttons and menus) from within the Options menu in WebbIE.
Some users want to be able to use (for example) BBC Listen Again without installing WebbIE. None of the WebbIE programs "takes over" the computer, so you should not do any harm installing any of the programs, even if you never use it. However, for those purists out there, you can now select in the installer to install only those applications you particularly want on your machine.
October 2006
Several users contacted me to say they missed the ability of Accessible RSS News Reader to open web pages in WebbIE, rather than the default web browser: WebbIE 3.1.2 therefore uses WebbIE for displaying web pages linked from both RSS News Reader and Web Directory. Other users pointed out bugs with the show listing for Accessible BBC Listen Again and the new slider control in Accessible Podcatcher. Thanks for all your comments.
WebbIE now handles PDF files it encounters by trying to use Google to get a web page version, rather than the quite inaccessible Adobe PDF version. It won't work for every PDF file, but it's a lot better. Let me know what you think.
September 2006
All of the WebbIE applications get a bug-fix, update, and a new site design to make it easier for people to download and use WebbIE!
July 2006
The completely free, fully-featured new screenreader, Thunder from Sensory Software, is now available. Support for Microsoft Word and Excel, Outlook Express, Windows, and the Web through WebbIE: works with most synthesised voices, including non-English voices. It's powerful, easy-to-use - and completely free!