In this section we'll go over the different ways you can obtain and run NVDA. NVDA is a portable screen reader that can be placed on a removable media such as a CD, a jump drive, an external hard drive, or even a shaired network resource. You have the option of downloading NVDA in a zip folder which you can unzip to the removable media you have, and you'll be ready to go. You can also download NVDA in a pretty nice talking installer that will put NVDA on your computer, a group of shortcuts in your start menu to interact with it, and map the keystroke ctrl+alt+n as a shortcut with which you can launch NVDA. That's not all! You could also run the source version of NVDA right on your computer! Be aware, however, that a source version of NVDA that is not compiled is not portable to another machine. The only reason you should use a source version of NVDA is if you want to be on the front line, trying out new things as they are added, rather than waiting on a snapshot compilation to become available or for a new full release to become available. We'll review all of these options in as much detail as possible and explain how to do each and every one of them.
Choose one of the below links to skip to the subsection associated with it. For example, if you want to skip directly to snapshots, click the link for that below and you'll be jumped to the info on snapshots automatically.
Also, as a note, you should be able to press the letter H, for heading navigation, if you're running NVDA or JAWS, to be able to skip to the sections one by one.
Which type of NVDA?
You have options reguarding which type of NVDA you download and use. You may use all different types of NVDA on the same system if you like. This section will explain in detail about all of the different types of NVDA, and discuss in which situations it would be best to use each type of NVDA.
Likely the most popular type of NVDA is the installer version. The installer version consists of a single file that you will download from the website. You can activate this file to have it start speaking to you immediately. The voice will guide you through the process of installing NVDA on your system. Once installation is complete, the installer will automatically kill the voice that is currently reading the installer and launch the newly installed NVDA for you. This is likely to be the most popular way of obtaining NVDA because the installer uses a better compression system than *.zip zipped files do, making the installer actually smaller than just downloading NVDA in a zipped folder. In addition, after running the installer, you can safely navigate to the folder that the installer just put NVDA in, and copy that folder where ever else you like, a jump drive or a compac disk, for example.
The second way NVDA can come packaged in is a *.zip zipped folder. You would simply download the zip folder from the internet onto your computer. After that, you simply extract the contence of the zipped folder where ever you like, on your hard drive, your jump drive, or on a compac disk, for example. To launch NVDA you would just navigate to the extracted folder that you got from the zipped folder which you downloaded from the internet and open the NVDA.exe file.
If you are aware or curious of new changes to NVDA, and you just can't wait to try them out, download a snapshot of NVDA onto your system. You can safely run a snapshot on the same system as a full release, as long as you keep them separate. Snapshots are available in zipped folders or installer packages, just like full releases. Be aware that snapshot versionf of NVDA are not proven to be stable, so if you want to insure a stable version of NVDA is available to you, keep the snapshot version of NVDA separate from the full release that you have. Basically, stick it in a different folder and run it from there. Warning, if you grab a snapshot of NVDA packaged in an installer, installing that snapshot will replace the start menu shortcuts andshortcut key combinations that were placed on your system for a previously installed copy of NVDA, making it more difficult to access the previously installed copy of NVDA.
Finally, adventurous users are welcome to run the source version of NVDA. People running source have access to updates much more frequently than snapshot users and of course full release users, but source users may well update right in the middle of a change that might have broken something else. NVDA's developers use an SVN archive. This allows the NVDA developers with the right credentials and know how to upload changes to a sentral location. The testers who are running source NVDA can then retrieve these updates from that sentral location using what is sometimes called an SVN Client. The SVN client simply grabs the changes that were made since when ever the folder for the source NVDA was last changed, and the user can activate the file NVDA.pyw to launch the source version of NVDA. There are several things that are required to run NVDA source on your system, this will be discussed in greater detail later.
Full releases
NVDA full releases are versions of NVDA that have been more strictly tested by the developers and contributing users. Full releases are more likely to be stable, less likely to have things that don't work properly, etc. Full releases get a version number. The current full release version number that is available right now as I write this up is 0.5. The next full release might be 0.51 or 0.6, don't know until we get there. At any rate, if you're just wanting to use a stable copy of NVDA, you can download the latest full release. The webpage on which the latest full release is available can be found at the destination of the following link
Click here to go to the NVDA full release download page
Full releases are the most rarely updated type of NVDA that is available, but each release is more likely to be stable and cooperative.