Students using a combination of the new Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7 may have difficulty using Blackboard because of compatibility issues between the two systems, Director of the Center for Educational Technologies at the University, J.Q. Johnson, said.
The problem lies in the Virtual Text Box Editor, a Blackboard feature in the Discussion Board section that allows students to post comments, equations and files.
People have reported various problems in multiple instances regarding the text box editor, Johnson said.
“We have not had an unusual number of complaints, it’s more that there have been reports of issues and comments from other sites that have indicated problems. So we’re monitoring them and urging students to be conservative.”
Johnson posted a message on Blackboard last week alerting students to the potential issues and stating that the University is not recommending that Windows XP users switch to Vista.
He also recommended that to avoid the problem students use a different web browser such as Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or later for Windows and Safari 1.3 or later for Macintoshes.
However, Johnson said, “Be cautious about Internet Explorer but don’t avoid it completely. No matter what browser you pick there’s going to be a problem somewhere.”
University students Aidan Parisian and Taylor Gordon, president and vice-president of the Information Systems and Operations Management Club respectively, said they use Windows Vista and haven’t noticed any problems. However, they both use Mozilla Firefox as their primary web browser.
“I usually run Firefox 2 on Vista when I use Blackboard, and haven’t experienced any problems at all,” said Gordon, adding, “I have tried to use IE7 as well, and it has worked fine.”
Gordon said for him, problems with Blackboard surface while using Safari on a friend’s Macintosh
“I had several problems, including page elements not fitting or sometimes overlapping, frequent browser crashes especially when trying to load things like PDFs in the browser, and flat-out inability to playback standard types of videos.”
Johnson said according to Blackboard, it’s fixing the problems with Internet Explorer 7 and Blackboard, and that the issues Macintosh users experience are also something they are working on.
“We keep bringing the problems with the Macs up to convince them they’re not doing a good enough job,” he said.
Johnson was uncertain how long it would take Blackboard to work out the kinks.
“One issue for Blackboard is that they have lots and lots of versions of their software so they have to engineer a fix for one version and then do it all over again for the others,” Johnson said. “We run close to the most recent version, so we’ll be the second.”
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