Read To Me Help

Getting Started

Read To Me is a browser plug-in for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 or newer to allow web pages to be read aloud. If Read To Me is not visible in the Internet Explorer toolbar after install close all copies of Internet Explorer. Then open a new copy of the Internet Explorer web browser. Next right mouse click on the Internet Explorer toolbar window where there are no buttons and select the Read To Me menu item as in the image below. The Read To me buttons will then be visible in Internet Explorer.

Read To Me displays four buttons on the Internet Explorer toolbar. You can drag these buttons to any position you like on the Internet Explorer toolbar. Just drag from the left of the first button. (Make sure the "Lock the Toolbars" is unchecked as in the image above).

Registration

You are entitled to use Read To Me free of charge for 30 days to evaluate it. You must then buy a registration code or uninstall the software. To buy a registration code you can click the 'Purchase registration code' menu from the drop down menu button or select Start/Programs/ReadToMe/Register from the Windows Start menu. To enter your registration number click the "Enter registration code" menu from the drop down menu button and fill out your name, company name if applicable and enter the registration code you received.

Reading a web page

To start reading a web page aloud, load a web page and after the page is fully loaded just double click with the left mouse button on the first word you would like read aloud. Read To Me will read all the text below this word to the end of the page or until you click the stop button. To skip paragraphs just double click on a word below where you would like the reading to continue from. You can also use the play, pause and stop buttons on the toolbar to control reading. If you would only like a certain section read, highlight the desired words and click the play button.

Reading a text file

To read a text file aloud, just drag and drop the text file into Microsoft Internet Explorer from Windows Explorer. The text will then be displayed in Internet Explorer and you can double click the first word or click the play button.

Read To Me drop down menu button

The first Read To Me button displays a drop down menu that allows you to control various options.

From the drop down menu you can rewind or forward sentences and paragraphs if you prefer not to double click on the page. There is a "Settings and options" menu that allow you to customize ReadToMe.

Settings and options

Clicking the Settings and options menu brings up the following dialog.

You can select the voice you wish to use from the drop down list. You can install other 3rd party voices to use that are compatible with Microsoft SAPI 5. You can control the voices speech rate depending on how fast you would like the web pages read and adjust the volume.

The default setting underlines spoken words and changes their color to blue. You can configure the color, whether to underline, highlight the whole word or not to select the words. As words are spoken the web page is automatically scrolled when words are highlighted. You can disable this option here. If you scroll the page to a different section Read To Me will wait a short time before automatically scrolling again to allow you to look over other sections of the page you may wish to read.

You can also display tool tips and double clicking on the page to start speaking if you so desire.

The "Words/characters to ignore" tab of the settings dialog is show below.

These options allow you to skip certain words or characters automatically. You need to separate each word or character with a comma. There is also an option to not speak hyperlinks. eg check this option and Read To Me would skip speaking a hyperlink like "http://www.stevefoxover.com/index.aspx".

After 30 days you will need to register ReadToMe. Click HERE to order a registration code. Then click "Enter registration code" menu from the drop down menu button to display the dialog below. Enter you name, company name if applicable and the registration code you will receive in an email after you register to make Read To Me fully functional.

Email steve@stevefoxover.com if you have further questions.