What’s new in Legato

The browser would not close while the ring menu was open

Press the right button, get the ring, then try to quit — nothing happened, and the menu did not close either. The ring lives in a frameless window of its own which takes the keyboard, and menu shortcuts were not reaching past it. Escape worked, because that is handled by the menu itself; Command-Q did not, because that belongs to the application menu.

• Command-Q now quits while any of our own windows is open — the ring, the menu card, the tour, the account card, the extensions card. All five had the same hole.
• It quits the ordinary way, so the session, history and downloads are written to disk exactly as they are on a normal quit.
• Closing the window now takes the ring down with it, and anything that was waiting on the menu for an answer gets its refusal. A site that had asked to share your screen used to wait forever.

On the light theme the ring hid the whole browser

The ring is drawn on a sheet the size of the browser window, and that sheet is meant to be transparent — only the circles should be visible. On the light theme it was painted solid instead: no toolbar, no tab strip, no page, just a blank field with the circles in the middle. The dark theme was not affected.

The backdrop under the ring is denser

The disc behind the circles was tinted with the theme’s own background colour, which on a dark page means dark over dark — invisible. It is now darkened with black, which works on any page, and the page still shows through it: the ring is part of the page, not a window on top of everything.

What’s New, in the Help menu

This page, and the menu item that opens it. It sits right after «Check for updates», because that is one thought in two steps, and it opens at YOUR version rather than the top of the page.

Walls at the edges

When the pointer reaches the edge of the page you hear a dull knock, like walking into a wall, and an orange border appears around the whole page. The knock is for people who hear it, the border for people who see shapes but not text. Before this, a pointer at the edge felt exactly the same as a pointer in the middle of nothing.

• The edge is the last three pixels, and it lets go only when you move four times further away, so it does not chatter at you.

The ring menu on the right button

Press the right button anywhere on a page and a ring of circles opens in the middle of the window. It opens in the middle on purpose: it used to open at the pointer, which is what every browser does, and it was wrong — a blind person does not know where their pointer is.

• What is in it: describe this image, read this block, the page at a glance, what this form wants, read the form as it will be sent, check the form, read the table, read on from where I stopped, where is the pointer, where am I, what was repaired here.
• The wheel turns the ring and it clicks, one item per click, like a revolver cylinder.
• The left button presses whatever is selected, wherever your hand is resting — you never have to aim at a circle.
• Hold the right button and turn the wheel to move the selected item around the circle; let go and it stays there, and the browser tells you its new position.
• Only the item you actually moved is remembered — the rest the browser arranges itself, so new abilities can still find their way in.

What the wheel does on the page

It is not the wheel scrolling. It is the wheel walking.

• Turn the wheel and you move to the next thing; the browser names it.
• Turn it sideways, or hold Shift and turn, to change what it steps by: everything, headings, links, regions, form fields.
• The two side buttons jump between regions.
• Hold the left button and draw a frame, and the walk stays inside what you drew.

The pointer says what it is on

Rest the pointer on something and the browser reads it. Move across the page quickly and it stays quiet — it waits about a fifth of a second of stillness before speaking. Cross into another region and it names the region.

Works with whatever you have

• Trackpad, trackball, ordinary mouse — same events, same behaviour.
• A wheel step setting with three sizes, because a trackpad sends many tiny movements and a mouse wheel sends one big click.

How to turn it on

Settings, then the reading section. Both switches are off by default: a mouse lying untouched on a desk should not move your reading when someone bumps it. Both belong to Legato’s own voice — they appear when the browser is reading with its own speech, not with your screen reader.

• "Mouse wheel walks the page" — the wheel and the side buttons.
• "Say what the pointer is on" — the pointer reading things under it.
• The ring follows the first switch, because the ring exists for the wheel. With both switches off the right button still opens the same menu, as a plain list you walk with the arrows — nothing is lost, it just stops being round.
• And if you would rather have the normal Chrome menu back, there is a switch for that too.

Fixed in this release

• A tab opened before you switched the voice on stayed deaf to the keyboard forever.
• Our own word "Button" was read by the Russian voice and came out as "baton" — our words now go to the voice of their own language.
• When your screen reader went away, everything stopped reading and nothing said so.
• Reading mode took the keyboard whenever you chose anything.
• On five first-run screens the lists swallowed Enter and Escape.
• On Windows the key grabbing now steps aside for the system.
• Describing an image works on pictures the page draws itself, where it used to be silent.
• "Read this block" reads the section under the pointer instead of the whole page.
• Ask for a table where there is none and it says so out loud, instead of one beep.

Windows, honestly

The Windows installer is not signed yet. SmartScreen will show a blue screen and hide the run button behind "More info". The Microsoft Store version is signed by Microsoft and has none of this. The Mac build is signed and notarised, so it just opens.