Released:

  • When reading documents continuously, Vocalizer's speech and SuperNova's visual focus highlighting are now more accurately synchronised.
  • Communicate with friends, family and colleagues using improvements in: Windows Live Messenger, Skype and Yahoo Messenger.
  • Productivity improvements with speech, magnification and Braille fixes in Microsoft Word and Lotus Notes.
  • 64-bit Terminal Server Environments are now supported.
  • Dozens of new stability fixes and updates to the Dolphin scripting engine.

Did you know?

  • SuperNova version 12 is more than 30% more stable than version 11.
    SuperNova's Customer Feedback system reports version 12 on average runs for one third longer than version 11.50, and unique crashes have halved!
  • SuperNova version 12 automatically corrects thousands of Vocalizer mispronunciations.
    SuperNova products with speech support include over 2300 UK English exceptions for the Nuance Vocalizer text-to-speech synthesiser. For example words like: "hedgerows", "phonebook" and "tradeshow" are announced correctly.

Reading Documents

FIX: Thanks to indexing improvements in Dolphin's SAM Vocalizer driver, users should now experience improved text highlighting and speech synchronisation when performing a "Read from here". #22256, #18878.


TIP: You can start SuperNova reading from the cursor to the end of the document by pressing NUMPAD PLUS in the Desktop Hotkey Set or CAPS+DOWN ARROW in the Laptop Universal set. SuperNova will automatically highlight text as it is read.


FIX: When performing a Braille Document Read, users may have noticed a momentary stutter or unexpected Braille output. This is now fixed. #22612


TIP: You can assign the buttons on your Braille Display to perform Braille Document Read Forward and Braille Document Read Back from the Hotkeys Dialog found from SuperNova Control Panel>General Menu>Keyboard and Hotkeys.


Instant Messaging and Internet Telephony

NEW: Yahoo Messenger version 11 is now supported.

FIX: In Skype version 5.5.0.124 the password and username fields are now spoken and Brailled correctly. #22670

FIX: In Windows Live Messenger 2011, the Contact list is now tracked in all views using: magnification, speech and Braille.

Office Applications

FIX: In Microsoft Word 2007 the page number announcement is now more reliable and no longer stutters.

FIX: For Microsoft Word 2010 users a problem has been resolved where some dropdown combo boxes were being incorrectly magnified and announced. #22614, #22173.

FIX: Lotus Notes' inbox now speaks and tracks correctly.


TIP: In Microsoft Word you can read the current page number any time by pressing the Speak Status Bar hotkey NUMPAD2 in the Desktop Hotkey set.


Terminal Server Support

Remote Desktop clients can now use local Braille displays or speech synthesisers connected in 64-bit environments.

NEW: SAM64.dll for 64-bit client applications.

NEW: 64-bit SamRemote DLL for Terminal Server and Remote Desktop RDP client. #15750.

FIX: At closedown "UniqueRun" object closed with the wrong function on Terminal Server. This resulted in a re-run of SuperNova Reader Magnifier reported to be failing on Terminal Server.

Windows General

FIX: The Windows 7 calculator now speaks again as expected.

FIX: Microsoft's update window used to select Windows and Office, updates and service packs, now speak as expected. 15349

FIX: The Windows XP Start Menu now reads as expected having deleted items using the right click context menu. #15349.

FIX: The speech and magnification will no longer stopped at the second dialog in SuperNova's Launch Pad. #19852 #20853. Note this should also resolve the issue #22504.

SuperNova General

FIX: A fix has been made to SuperNova's True Fonts where the colours become confused and displayed incorrectly in Windows XP 16-bit colour mode. #22629.

FIX: Users may have noticed that SuperNova's hotkeys would suddenly stop working. A keyboard hook watchdog has been added to resolve this. #18591.

FIX: Some changes to SuperNova's detection watchdog have been made to improve recovery.

FIX: A fix has been implemented for an intermittent memory / handle leak in the Windows detector.

FIX: A fix has been made for a hang related to MSAA that occurred in various applications including Internet Explorer 9 and Outlook 2010 under Windows XP and Windows 7. #23314, #22919, #23021.

FIX: Updated copyright text on the splash screen. #23529

Scripting

Deliver magnified, spoken and Brailled access in a single Dolphin script. SuperNova version 12.07 includes build 170 of the Dolphin Scripting Engine featuring the following fixes and improvements:

FIX: A fix has been made for custom dialogs (such as Supernova's Launch Pad) that did not close properly at closedown.

FIX: Added additional information to the scripting engine crash log to make it easier to pinpoint which part of the script caused the crash.

FIX: The warning output from functions were not being shown inside the script editor. This is now resolved.

FIX: You are now able to specify a filter name in the call to InsertArea.

FIX: StartTimer now returns 1 if a timer was started or nil if it failed to start a timer.

FIX. If you call StartTimer with the id of an existing timer, you now get a warning message rather than a script error.

FIX. A fix has been made to stop reported crashes when adding a new timer.

FIX: When the VF.StorePosition() script function is used then there was a problem where the VF.RestorePosition() is not called before the script exits.

FIX: Using the ribbon bar in Microsoft Office 2007, the read additional focus information hot key and read shortcut hot key speak information about the current item. These only work if the ribbon is normally visible. If you normally have the ribbon minimized, these keys fail. To fix - you can now specify a filter name in the call to Area.Insert by adding a string member to the table with the name of 'filter'. #14649

FIX: Using System.CheckVariable(Check_MODE) in a script before SuperNova has finished loading causes SuperNova to crash on start up. #23395.

FIX: An extra sanity check has been added to the InsertArea to stop you adding a child text area to a text area.

FIX: SuperNova's scripting engine was not calling the EventAutomaticSpeech2 event if one was defined in the Default Application script. This is now resolved. #23403.

FIX: An extra sanity check has been added to InsertArea to stop it returning an invalid area handle if during the insertion, SuperNova decided to discard the area being inserted.

FIX: When using 'Add Current Area to List' in a custom list from an action, the list utility would crash. This is now resolved. #15394.

Crash Fixes

FIX: A crash/hang that occurred when the focus control information was null have been resolved. Known occurrences were whilst using Outlook 2010 and Internet Explorer 9. #22919

FIX: A crash caused by the files in the Dolphin "product improvement" upload directory with non-standard file names has now been fixed. #22828.

FIX: The process locking code has been modified to make it safer against potential deadlocks.

FIX: A crash that occurred during closedown where the detection thread did not close down properly. #22802.

FIX: Improvements to the hang detector have been made so that it is much more unlikely to stop the detection thread when in an unsafe condition. #22893, #22776, #22777, #22785, #22792, #22793, #22801, #22802, #22803, #22825, #22826, 22857, #22858, #22859, #22860, #22889.

FIX: A crash that occurred whilst closing the Dolphin product feedback has now been fixed. #22895.

FIX: An Internet Explorer and Firefox crash has been resolved. #22785.

FIX: Problems in the SuperNova control panel "Help Menu"/"SuperNova Hotkeys" (DolphinKey + F1). Have been fixed. #22777.

FIX: A crash in Internet Explorer at www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article12935800.ab when trying to get the version resources for FlashUtil10w_ActiveX.exe has now been fixed.

FIX: A crash that occurred due to the graphic training not dealing correctly with an error condition. #22683.

FIX: A crash in training mode is now fixed. #22711.

FIX: A SuperNova crash that occurred whilst changing display modes has been fixed. #22495, #22117.

FIX: An intermittent crash when a window closes and another immediately opens, when the previous active window was the SuperNova Control Panel has been resolved.

FIX: Code changes which should reduce the possibility of crashes after the detection thread has been terminated have been implemented.

FIX: When using Windows XP SP3, dol_sit.dll a hang occurred due to a delay in waiting for a network shortcut to connect to the share. This is now resolved. #23033.

FIX: A crash has been fixed where a desktop monitor had negative coordinates. #22783.

FIX: Users running Windows XP and using magnification may have experienced a crash that occurred when running TrueFonts in 24 bit colour mode. This crash will no longer happen. #22916.

FIX: A crash whilst closing down Windows XP with SuperNova running has been resolved. # 22641.

FIX: A crash whilst closing SuperNova with Outlook 2003 and Internet Explorer 8 running has been fixed. #22894.

FIX: A crash when typing in Microsoft Word 2003 under Windows XP has been fixed. #22120.

FIX: A crash in dol_mem memory management module happened whilst using various applications under Windows XP. This is now resolved. #22080.#21993

FIX: A crash during the installation of the SuperNova 12.06 update has been resolved. #23005.

FIX: A crash occurred when copying string data back to the script engine from a function. This crash has been reported as occurring whilst using Microsoft Word 2010 or 2007. #23374, #23031, #22967

FIX: A crash in SuperNova's scripting engine when using Microsoft Word 2010 or Notepad has been resolved. #23555, #23249.

FIX: A crash when re-logging in from a disconnected terminal server session has been fixed. This crash also occurred if the screen colour depth is changing at the same time. #22761.

FIX: A crash whilst starting or using Internet Explorer on http://www.ns.nl or http://www.greenpois0n.com. Has been fixed. #23825, #23210.

FIX: A crash when using Internet Explorer 8 where the "MsgWaitForMultipleObjects" failed has been fixed. #22825, #23415.

Other v12 releases:

Complete Version History