We are pleased to announce that NVDA 2010.1 has been released. This release has been declared stable, which means it is suitable for production use and is recommended for most users.

NVDA 2010.1 focuses primarily on bug fixes and improvements to the user experience, including some significant stability fixes.

The only changes from 2010.1rc1 to 2010.1 are updates to some translations.

Download links and change log:

• NVDA 2010.1 installer
• NVDA 2010.1 portable version
• What's new in 2010.1

NVDA 2010.1rc1 has just been released. This is a release candidate, which means that unless any critical issues are found, this will be almost identical to the final 2010.1 release.

Note that there may be some minor updates to some translations (particularly of the what's new document) in the final release.

Changes from beta1 to rc1:

• Updated translations.
• Updated what's new.
• Fixed various harmless but annoying exceptions.
• In Miranda IM, automatic message reading is now also supported in the srmm plugin.
• Fixed problems in file selection dialogs in Miranda IM. (#580)
• Fixed some problems with logging of messages containing non-ASCII characters. This could cause spurious errors in some cases on non-English systems. (#581)
• The information in the About NVDA dialog now appears in the user's configured language instead of always appearing in English. (#586)
• Problems are no longer encountered when using the synthesiser settings ring after the voice is changed to one which has less settings than the previous voice.
• In Skype 4.2, contact names are no longer spoken twice in the contact list.
• Fixed some potentially major memory leaks in the GUI and in virtual buffers. (#590, #591)
• Focusing Total Commander lists other than the main list of files now functions correctly.
• Updated eSpeak to 1.43.03.
• Work around a nasty bug in some SAPI 4 synthesisers that was causing frequent errors and crashes in NVDA. (#597)

Download links and change log:

• NVDA 2010.1rc1 installer
• NVDA 2010.1rc1 portable version
• What's new in 2010.1rc1

We're pleased to announce that NVDA 2010.1beta1 has just been released. It is intended for those who are interested in testing and evaluating the upcoming NVDA 2010.1 release, but is not recommended for production use. Testers are encouraged to report any bugs found while using this beta.

Note that some translations may not yet be updated. They will be updated by the time of the final 2010.1 release.

NVDA 2010.1 focuses primarily on bug fixes and improvements to the user experience, including some significant stability fixes.

Download links and change log:

• NVDA 2010.1beta1 installer
• NVDA 2010.1beta1 portable version
• What's new in 2010.1beta1

We are extremely pleased to announce that NVDA 2009.1 has finally been released. This release has been declared stable, which means it is suitable for production use and is recommended for most users.

Major highlights of NVDA 2009.1 include support for 64 bit editions of Windows; greatly improved support for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Adobe Reader documents; support for Windows 7; reading of the Windows logon, control+alt+delete and User Account Control (UAC) screens; and the ability to interact with Adobe Flash and Sun Java content on web pages. There have also been several significant stability fixes and improvements to the general user experience.

Changes from 2009.1rc1 to 2009.1:

• Minor documentation and translation updates.
• NVDA no longer freezes in Save As dialogs on Windows XP and Vista systems with the Platform Update installed.
• The title of the Windows Logon screen is now always read in Windows Vista and Windows 7.
• Fixed a problem with the report date and time command (NVDA+f12). Previously, date reporting was truncated on some systems. (#471)
• Fixed the issue where the system screen reader flag was sometimes inappropriately cleared after interacting with secure Windows screens. This could cause problems in applications which check the screen reader flag, including Skype, Adobe Reader and Jart. (#462)
• In an Internet Explorer 6 combo box, the active item is now reported when it is changed. (#342)
• Dynamic updates in Adobe Reader documents (e.g. changes to form fields) are now properly reflected by NVDA. (This used to work, but regressed a few months ago.)
• NVDA now behaves correctly when an Adobe Reader document is scrolled by other means (e.g. pressing control+pageDown) before NVDA has itself scrolled the document in response to movement of the virtual cursor.

Download links and change log:

• NVDA 2009.1 installer
• NVDA 2009.1 portable version
• What's new in 2009.1

NVDA 2009.1rc1 has just been released. This is a release candidate, which means that unless any critical issues are found, this will be almost identical to the final 2009.1 release. The major change since the beta which should be tested is that installed copies can now fully access applications running as administrator in Windows Vista and Windows 7. This is not possible for portable copies.

Note that there may be some minor updates to some translations (particularly of the what's new document) in the final release.

Changes from beta1 to rc1:

• Updates to translations.
• Fixes to documentation.
• Fixed an issue which caused embedded objects not to be rendered in Mozilla Firefox 3.7 nightly builds.
• Fixed issues when pressing upArrow or downArrow in the password field of the Windows XP logon screen.
• Fixed an issue where NVDA would fail when navigating certain documents in Adobe Reader.
• The report text selection command (NVDA+shift+upArrow) now gracefully reports that there is no selection in objects which do not support text selection.
• The Save As dialog in the NVDA Log Viewer no longer causes NVDA to freeze in Windows 7. (#439)
• Fixed broken reporting of text under the mouse in many editable text controls and Windows command consoles.
• Fixed the issue where pressing the enter key on certain Miranda-IM buttons or links was causing NVDA to freeze. (#440)
• The current line or selection is now properly respected when spelling or copying the current navigator object.
• Fixed the issue where NVDA was sometimes not terminated properly on secure desktops when fast desktop switches occurred. This could cause the Windows control+alt+delete screen to fail to appear or multiple copies of NVDA to run at once on the Windows logon and shutdown screens. (This was fixed previously, but regressed a few days before beta1 was released.)
• Worked around a Windows bug which was causing garbage to be spoken after the name of link controls in Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer dialogs. (#451)
• NVDA can now fully access applications running as administrator in Windows Vista and later. You must install an official release of NVDA for this to work. This does not work for portable versions and snapshots. (#397)
• The NVDA error sound is no longer played in release candidates and final releases. Note that errors are still logged.

Changes in the build process for official releases:

• Python optimisations are enabled.
• All main executables are signed with the NV Access code signing certificate.

Download links and change log:

• NVDA 2009.1rc1 installer
• NVDA 2009.1rc1 portable version
• What's new in 2009.1rc1

We're pleased to announce that NVDA 2009.1beta1 has just been released. It is intended for those who are interested in testing and evaluating the upcoming NVDA 2009.1 release, but is not recommended for production use. Testers are encouraged to report any bugs found while using this beta.

Note that some translations may not yet be updated. They will be updated by the time of the final 2009.1 release.

Major highlights of NVDA 2009.1 include support for 64 bit editions of Windows; greatly improved support for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Adobe Reader documents; support for Windows 7; reading of the Windows logon, control+alt+delete and User Account Control (UAC) screens; and the ability to interact with Adobe Flash and Sun Java content on web pages. There have also been several significant stability fixes and improvements to the general user experience.

Download links and change log:

• NVDA 2009.1beta1 installer
• NVDA 2009.1beta1 portable version
• What's new in 2009.1beta1

This release includes an updated Polish translation which was meant to be included in 0.6p3 but missed out by a few days. It also includes a fix for an issue where some documents would not load at all in Adobe Reader. However, note that support for Adobe Reader in this release is still very rudimentary at best.

Download links and change log:

• NVDA 0.6p3.2 installer
• NVDA 0.6p3.2 portable version
• What's new in 0.6p3.2

This release provides a quick fix for those who could not start NVDA after installing NVDA 0.6p3 with the installer. In these rare cases, the NVDA start sound would be played, but NVDA would immediately exit with a critical error. If you did not experience this problem, you probably don't need to update. There is also another minor fix for those running NVDA using an 8.3 file path, which will again not affect most users.

Download links and change log:

• NVDA 0.6p3.1 installer
• NVDA 0.6p3.1 portable version
• What's new in 0.6p3.1

NVDA 0.6p3 has just been released. Unfortunately, it is almost two months later than the original release estimate, as we encountered some major problems which we felt needed to be fixed before the release. We also took the opportunity to update the user guide and provide several minor fixes.

Highlights of this release include:

• Support for braille displays! NVDA can now display both contracted and uncontracted braille on supported braille displays, and includes support for displaying the cursor and cursor routing.
• Many users found the term "virtual buffer pass through" confusing. Therefore, instead of virtual buffer pass through on and off, NVDA now reports focus mode (pass through on) and browse mode (pass through off).
• In virtual buffers, when the focus changes or the caret is moved, NVDA can automatically switch to focus mode or browse mode as appropriate for the control under the caret. For example, if a page automatically moves to an interactive control or a user tabs to or clicks an interactive control with the mouse, focus mode can automatically be enabled. This is configured from the Virtual Buffers dialog.
• Rewritten SAPI4 synthesizer driver which replaces the sapi4serotek and sapi4activeVoice drivers and should fix the problems encountered with these drivers.
• The configuration file and speech dictionaries are now saved in the user's application data directory if NVDA was installed using the installer. This is necessary for Windows Vista and also allows multiple users to have individual NVDA configurations.
• NVDA can now read text past 65535 characters in standard edit controls (e.g. a large file in Notepad).
• NVDA no longer sometimes freezes completely when editing text in OpenOffice.

Please read What's New in NVDA 0.6p3 for a more detailed list of changes.

Please note that this is a preview release, meaning that there are still some issues to be fixed before the next stable release. For more information about the current status of releases, see this article. Nevertheless, this release is recommended for most users. The old stable release, 0.5, is no longer recommended.

Download links and change log:

• NVDA 0.6p3 installer
• NVDA 0.6p3 portable version
• What's new in 0.6p3

NVDA 0.6p2 has just been released. The release is almost two weeks later than the original estimate proposed at the recent hack fest, as we decided to implement some additional noteworthy features, user interface changes, bug fixes and documentation updates.

Please note that this is a preview release, meaning that there are still some major issues to be fixed before the final 0.6 release. For more information about the current status of releases, see this article. Nevertheless, this release is recommended for most users. The old stable release, 0.5, is no longer recommended.

Download links and change log:

• NVDA 0.6p2 installer
• NVDA 0.6p2 portable version
• What's new in 0.6p2