So I caved and bought Dragon naturally speaking professional 16. It’s the most supported and most recommended dictation software; and it’s been around for decades. So, I naïvely thought that it would be a straightforward and professional experience purchasing installing and setting up the software but no, absolutely not, it’s incredibly infuriating to deal with their website their online store customer support just the works. There are no built-in user facing notifications of any kind for failed purchases due to inaccurate credit card information, there is multiple versions of the site that all require their own login, and it turns out they haven’t even updated pages that offer deprecated add-ons. So you just sit there trying to figure out why the button doesn’t work, because there is no visible reason it shouldn’t.
Anyways, once I do get it purchased downloaded and installed, I’m reminded that to use full functionality in a browser I need to install that browser’s Dragon extension. About a year and 1/2 ago I took the time and switched my entire Internet life professional personal etc. over to Firefox. Fun fact! in July this year, Nuance who created Dragon, and Mozilla who created Firefox, had big breakup where neither supports the other any longer.
So right now my options are turn off Mozilla’s add-on block list and use the glitchy and deprecated extension file that other users have mercifully uploaded online; use Firefox without the extended support for verbally navigating and editing text; or switch everything in my life back to Google fucking chrome.
Infuriatingly I suspect that I will be back in chrome by the end of this, because however glitchy and deprecated this extension file is now at four months old, it’s going to only get worse.
I’ve already gone far enough to call and find out what’s going on which is how I found out that Nuance officially does not support Firefox-I have yet to find anywhere in their web documentation that would tell me that ahead of time- and as far as I can tell there is no intent to change that situation. The vicious little rage being in my head assumes that because Microsoft recently bought nuance, I should be grateful that it even works in chrome.
Anyways this is not a call for help or advice, I just needed to share this absolutely infuriating update with people who also care about what browser they use and spend a lot of time setting it up carefully just for themselves.
RIP my Firefox life; it was great while it lasted.
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