Blackboard, FF, rekonq, Chrome

[woodsmoke]

The latest and greatest Blackboard(tm) 9.1 interacts with browsers in surprising ways.

Apparently, as much as I can tell, the Blackboard "interface" is built using what look like the old "frames".

I just logged into BB and for the first time:

FF does not render the whole interface correctly.

Chrome renders "most" of it.

Konqueror renders "most" of it.

rekonq....renders it all and correctly! : 0

As the saying goes..."what's up with that!!

This is a Raring install with FF 22.0.

Again, FF rendered BB correctly up until today...

So...it would seem that BB did an "upgrade" at the school.

The school's website renders correctly.

??

just comments, I don't know that there is an "answer" or fix.

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

please see this post about the behaviour of FF 22 (Saucy) and BB.

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

There is now a warning on Blackboard that it is not interacting correctly with FF and Chrome.

When one tries to right click, to copy there is a popup from Blackboard that says that the function "is not compatible with the present version of your browser".

One is given instructions for Ctrl+c etc. but the functions do not work.

A student reported that The latest Mac browser does not render correctly.

One of the IT people, when this was reported said SMUGLY, "everything works here at the college right?"

Meaning to moi.......that MS / IE and BB have a synergism going on that is not being disclosed.

HERE IS A POSSIBLE FIX:

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/957619

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Sooo I tried all of the advice at Mozilla, none of it worked.

I did notice two things, one previously stated and one today.

a) When one first "enters" Blackboard, all of the menus etc. render correctly and then the top panel expands and there is a "box" that appears in the left column that shoves things down and then all of the menu items below that are in greatly expanded boxes which are sometimes interactive and sometimes not.

b) When i changed to "edit mode off"(I am the "administrator" for my particular BB., then everything renders correctly.

Soooo that means that there is some kind of script running that only is invoked in edit mode.

In searching for "BlackBoard does not work in edit mode Firefox" I got a college site which said this;

We have received reports of inconsistent course menu behavior where links on the menu will simply disappear and reappear. We (and other institutions) have submitted this problem to Blackboard. They are aware of the problem, and are researching the cause and a solution. In the meantime, a work-around that has been effective is switching to “Folder View” for the course menu.

http://www.uvm.edu/ctl/?Page=blackbo...20101001151816

The above "fix" does, indeed, indeed, work, but then one is stuck using a "squeency" set of icons that are...well hard to work with!

The PROBLEM IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN< that the whole system is built on a decade old "flatfile" database! They bought the competitiors which were relational databases.

The program is so cumbersome and cludgy that it does not "do" attendance" without very tedious "entry" of EVERY SINGLE DATE FOR THE CLASS seperately by the teacher.

The college uses Pinnacle Systems for attendance, and many also use it for grades and then upload into BB.

But that doesn't solve the problem with creating announcements etc.

So the cut to the chase is that FF is not the problem it is BB itself, and it's possible nefarious interaction with Microsith.

woodsmoke

[dmeyer]

BB 9.1 and previously 8.x works/ed perfect on my side with Firefox 23 on openSUSE 12.3. Strangely, with my math stuff only Firefox works. Now, IE9 and IE10 do not work even just for correct rendering. Rekonq is about the same as Chrome and both are perfect except equations. Konqueror is rather terrible as a browser without the webkit engine and if you are going to use a webkit browser then you might as well use Chromium/Chrome or Rekonq.

My university IT department even recommends Firefox. They support Chrome and IE9 as well but when you have an issue they always say, "Have you tried Firefox."

[woodsmoke]

lol, amazing!.

woodsmoke