Wednesday 20 May 2009

Well, sadly, this blog has been a long time coming but at least there is some news to report.

There is a new version of Thunder up there on www.screenreader.net and some useful improvements too.

You will find three options: the first, thunder.exe is what you need if you just want to install Thunder and run it from your usual computer.

The second, let’s you use a memory stick, a thumb drive, and use Thunder on any machine. You just push the memory stick with Thunder on it, into a USB drive and away you go. The download is a .zip file. So you copy that zip file on to the memory stick and unzip it again on the memory stick – unzip here.

The third option probably won’t concern most home users. But Thunder is increasingly being used in schools, colleges, and other organisations. In such cases, the network manager will want Thunder as an MSI file so she can control the way it behaves on the various machines.

Of course, all versions are free to anyone in the world and we very much want to hear from you how you get on with Thunder. We mostly receive good reports and lots of encouragement but there will always be problems with computers and software. We can only learn from your feedback and strive to improve things.

We do encourage you to make a donation towards our work if you are pleased with what you get. We are not money-grabbers but do have monthly expenses in running this service.

You will find some improvements to both Thunder and to WebbIE too. There is a new set of help and support files. You will see on the website or should I say see or hear, a link with the title “First Help”. This is for complete beginners and gives you a start as to which keys to be pressing. The other help files in Thunder help were written by a volunteer great supporter who is a user himself who does not see the screen.

Always on the move, we shall be spending time next week planning ahead how we are going to improve Thunder and the web even more. It works fine on corporate websites where lots of cash has been spent but the web is changing fast and many of us are board with corporate stuff and want to do our own thing and listen to others doing their own thing too. And it is not reasonable to expect such home-spun websites to be so accessible. We have been looking at Facebook, Youtube and Twitter amongst others. Great fun and it won’t be long before we show you how to enjoy such pleasures.