What's New in MAGic 9.0

Use the links below to learn more about the new features and enhancements in MAGic version 9.0 (released in March 2004). For detailed information on any of these new features, visit the MAGic Documentation page and download the MAGic User's Guide or Quick Start Guide.

Color Enhancements
Cursor Enhancements
Mouse Enhancements
Schemes
Quick View Frame
More Tracking Options
Preferences
Dynamic Lens View
Mouse Speech Delay
Keyboard Options
Additional Highlight Options
More Reading Commands
Uppercase Letter Announcement
Automatically Speak Web Pages
New Support for PDF Document Reading
Support for Java Programs
Enhanced Support for Microsoft Excel

Color Enhancements

Color enhancements allow you to define how MAGic displays colors on your screen. This feature greatly expands the former Invert Colors function and lets you replace and swap colors, adjust the brightness and contrast, apply tinting, make your screen monochrome (black-and-white, yellow-and-white, and so on), and invert the brightness and colors of your screen. You can apply color enhancements to the magnified area, unmagnified area, or both. Activate your color enhancements by clicking the Color Enhancements button on the Quick Access Window.

Cursor Enhancements

MAGic now allows you to control the appearance of your cursor in the magnified and unmagnified areas of the screen. Cursor enhancements make the cursor easier to follow when editing or writing text. MAGic lets you choose from a wide selection of styles and colors for these enhancements, and you can even define your own custom colors. You can also control the transparency, length, height, and thickness of the enhancements. This allows you to dynamically control both the shape and size of the enhancement. Additionally, you can control when the cursor enhancements display on your screen (for example, you may want the enhancements to only appear when you press the MAGic Key). Activate the cursor enhancements by clicking the new Cursor Enhancements button on the Quick Access Window.

Mouse Enhancements

Mouse enhancements let you control the appearance of your mouse while in the magnified and unmagnified areas. These enhancements make the mouse pointer easier to track and maneuver on your screen. MAGic lets you choose from a wide selection of styles and colors for these enhancements, and you can even define your own custom colors. Additionally, you can customize each enhancement style by changing the length, height, thickness, and transparency. You can also control when the mouse enhancements display on your screen (for example, you may want the enhancements to only appear when you are moving the mouse).

Note: The mouse navigation options have been moved to the Tracking dialog box.

Schemes

MAGic 9.0 introduces schemes for mouse, cursor, and color enhancements. A scheme is a group of settings that you can apply at a single time. Schemes allow you to quickly switch between different configurations of mouse, cursor, or color enhancements, according to your current needs.

Tip: If you right-click the Mouse Enhancements, Cursor Enhancements, or Color Enhancements button, you can use the context menu to quickly switch to a different scheme.

Quick View Frame

The Quick View Frame allows you to monitor a portion of your screen while you continue to work in other areas. Any changes that occur in the area you are monitoring are immediately shown in the Quick View Frame. The Quick View Frame lets you keep a specific area of the screen constantly in view.

More Tracking Options

MAGic lets you control how it tracks the cursor, mouse pointer, menus, dialog box options, and highlighted text on your screen. Choose centered tracking if you want MAGic to continuously follow the item, ensuring that it is always in the center of the magnified area. Choose edge tracking if you want MAGic to move the magnified area only when the item is no longer visible on the screen. In addition, the Tracking dialog box now lets you toggle the mouse navigation options auto switch, mouse line lock, and tether to display.

Preferences

From the File menu, choose Preferences to change the way you use MAGic on your computer. You can use this dialog box to start MAGic when your computer starts, disable your screen saver while MAGic is running, minimize MAGic when it starts, enable/disable the bilingual user interface, specify whether MAGic should prompt you before overwriting schemes, and determine whether MAGic asks you to save your settings when you quit.

Note: The Disable Screen Saver and Enable Bilingual User Interface check boxes have been moved to the new Preferences dialog box. The functionality of the Run MAGic at Startup command (on the File menu) has also been moved into this dialog box.

Dynamic Lens

The Dynamic Lens is a new magnified view that opens a small rectangular window, which is magnified, while leaving the rest of the screen unmagnified. This window follows the mouse pointer or your current location within a document or dialog box if you are using the keyboard. In addition, when you move to a dialog box option or menu command, MAGic automatically resizes the lens so that it only magnifies the currently selected item. If you type in an edit box or document window, the lens expands to the width of the entire screen so you can see as much of the text as possible. You can switch to this new magnified view by selecting Dynamic Lens in the Magnified Views list located on the MAGic Quick Access Window.

Mouse Speech Delay

You can now specify the length of time you want MAGic to wait before it reads the word or line at the current location of your mouse pointer. The delay is measured in tenths of seconds. If you move the mouse pointer away before the delay has elapsed, MAGic does not read the word or line.

Keyboard Options

The options allowing you to differentiate between left and right ALT, CTRL, and SHIFT when assigning hot keys have been moved from the Options dialog box to the Keyboard Assignments dialog box. This allows you to switch functionality on the fly while assigning keystrokes to functions without having to close the dialog box. An Apply button has been added to this dialog box so you can test your keystrokes as you assign them.

Additional Highlight Options

The Document and Text Reading dialog box gives you even more control over how MAGic highlights text while speaking. You can choose from three different highlight styles, and you can adjust the color, transparency, and thickness of the highlight.

More Reading Commands

MAGic 9.0 includes several new commands that you can use to read documents and text. To read the current line, press MAGic Key+L. To read the current sentence, press MAGic Key+S. To read the next sentence, press MAGic Key+SHIFT+S. To read the current paragraph, press MAGic Key+P. To hear the contents of the Windows Clipboard, press MAGic Key+C. Say Block has been changed to Say Color Block and reads connected words with the same foreground and background colors. The keystroke for this function is MAGic Key+CTRL. You can also use this command to read text that you have selected.

Uppercase Letter Announcement

If you select this option, MAGic says, "Cap," before reading capital letters that you have typed or moved to with the arrow keys. You can enable or disable this option in the Typing Echo dialog box or by pressing MAGic Key+F2.

Note: You must enable typing echo if you want MAGic to announce uppercase letters.

Automatically Speak Web Pages

You can now choose to have MAGic automatically begin reading when you view Web pages or other HTML documents.

New Support for PDF Document Reading

MAGic now supports reading PDF documents with Adobe Acrobat or Reader 6.01 or later. MAGic can smooth black text in PDF documents and follow your movement through documents, menus, and dialog boxes. Text in PDF documents is highlighted and tracked when you read them with MAGic. Mouse speech also works when in PDF documents.

Support for Java Programs

MAGic 9.0 includes support for Java-based programs. You can now use MAGic to magnify and speak Java programs, just as you would any other Windows program. MAGic tracks your movement through menus and dialog boxes, and you can use the reading commands to read text.

Enhanced Support for Microsoft Excel

Cell coordinates and contents are announced when you move to any cell in an Excel spreadsheet. You can also choose to hear row and column heading information when you move to a new cell.