does Opera have an extension (or widget?) that narrates selected text?

does Opera have an extension (or widget?) that narrates selected text?

I would like to be able to have the computer narrate text (speak it aloud), specifically for the body of an email or an article.

I'm running Windows 7. I've tried using Windows 7's Narrator, but it isn't obvious how to select text for it to read. (In fact it's confusing.) I just want it to read selected text, not everything on the screen.

The goal here is to be able to work, browse, etc., on my computer, and in the background the computer reads aloud the items of interest to me from emails and news feeds, drafts I'm working on, etc. If I could queue up such items that would be fantastic. Or even better, via voice recognition if I can speak to tell the computer which item in a queue to read that would be niftier.

I know Opera has cleanPages, which is a good start for such a text-to-speech narrator, for the purposes I'm outlining here.

Does Opera have an extension or widget that does this?

Is there any other browser that has this capability?

Thanks!

Opera does have voice browsing built into it, but if I recall correctly, the voice library it uses is no longer in development so getting it to install and work properly can be difficult. Go to Preferences > Advanced > Voice and check "Enable voice controlled browsing". Opera should then ask if you want to install the voice libraries, and if you're lucky, it will install correctly.

A description of Opera's voice capabilities is available on Opera's help pages.

Thanks. Sounds like Opera's a ways off from providing what I'm looking for here.

For the time being I've decided to try out a freeware application called Document Speaker.

Document Speaker reads text files. So I've placed a Word document on my desktop into which I paste the various text contents that I wish to be read aloud by the narrator. This does then require the step of copying/pasting all the various things I wish narrated. Each time I use it I just paste the new text into it that I want to hear.

Document Speaker uses the 'Anna' voice from Microsoft's Narrator. The speed is adjustable, and slowing it down just a little from the default setting helps. The narration is understandable, although at times a bit choppy.

All-in-all this accomplishes my main goal. For longer emails and articles it provides a way to ensure that they get full attention, rather than just skimming them. And it lets me multi-task as such pretty comfortably.

The voice activation part of this sort of functionality I guess may have to wait.

(Note: I have tried Dragon. But I removed it after finding that Dragon insists on installing a particular application that substantially hogs the computer's RAM, noticeably slowing it down. Maybe Dragon has fixed that with subsequent upgrades. But I was so annoyed by it around Christmas time that I haven't yet bothered to check since. That said, I'm not even sure if Dragon can be use to instruct the computer what to do.)

Anyway, a feature of this sort would be nice to see offered by Opera.

Originally posted by rogbngp:

Sounds like Opera's a ways off from providing what I'm looking for here.

No, it does exactly what you are talking about. You can select text to listen to it.