Issues and Quirks
Known Issues and Unexpected Behaviors
Contacts (formerly Staff Information)
Issue: If you upload a photo and input a lot of text in the Office Location, Office Hours, or Notes areas, the photo may overlap the text, especially on smaller screens.
Work Around: Keep text to a minimum, or create a new content area to replace the Contacts area.
Course Files
Issue: Uploading of multiple files to the Files area of course sites does not work on Macs.
Work Around: Use the Single File upload option.
Course Menu
Issue: When you add new items to your course menu, they may not appear to "stick" at first.
Solution: Click the refresh button at above the menu title. View image.
Issue: The course menu has disappeared. This can be caused by three different actions.
1. The menu heading has been clicked, causing the menu to collapse.
Solution: Click the menu heading again to expand it. View image.
2. The menu frame has been hidden, either by clicking the "hide" icon, or opening a section of the course that demands the entire content frame.
Solution: Click the "unhide" icon to restore frame. View image.
3. A document has been opened.
Solution: To return to the full course view, click the course name in the breadcrumb trail at top. View image.
Issue: When you download a document your browser can display (such as a PDF or image), it opens it in the content area of the course, but the menu disappears.
Solution: To return to the full course view, click the course name in the breadcrumb trail at top. View image.
Issue: When you download a document your browser cannot display (such as a MS Word doc), it opens in the native program, but the course site seems to disappear.
Solution: To return to the full course view, click the course name in the breadcrumb trail at top. View image.
Issue: When you attempt to open a document in the Internet Explorer browser, instead of the document opening, a yellow warning bar appears above the top frame of Blackboard.
Solution: Click the yellow warning bar, which will turn it blue and open a dropdown menu. Select Download File from this menu. View image.
Issue: When you attempt to open a document in the Internet Explorer browser, you are prompted to open, save or cancel. If you select Open, nothing seems to happen.
Solution: Minimize your browser and look for a login prompt. Click Cancel. The document should open. Or instead of selecting Open, select Save.
Issue: Recent versions of both Safari (ver 5) and Firefox (ver 5) for the Mac are unable to display PDF files when set to display in a subframe within the browser window (such as is usual in Blackboard content areas). The problem does not affect blackboard items where the PDF file appears as an ordinary attachment (such as in the discussion board).
Solution 1: Right click (Control+click) and open in a new window. (You may still be prompted for a plugin, in which case, see Solution 3.)
Solution 2: Right click (Control+click), save and open file from desktop.
Solution 3: Install this plugin: http://www.schubert-it.com/pluginpdf/. After it is downloaded and installed, quit your browser and open it back again. You may be prompted to 'Order PDF Browser Plugin 2 license.' Select Educational Use only and click OK.
On Mac OS X 10.6 with Firefox 11, if you install the latest Adobe Reader v10.1.3, it installs an Adobe Acrobat NPAPI plugin which does not display PDFs. See http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/925055
Unfortunately, if you have installed the Schubert PDF browser plugin to display PDFs in Firefox, then it isn't the one launched. If you disable the Adobe Acrobat NPAPI plugin, then Schubert will launch and display PDFs. Firefox > Tools > Add-Ons > click on the Disable next to Adobe Acrobat NPAPI plugin.
Issue: In a course you are visiting as a guest, files in the Syllabus area will not open.
Solution: This is an issue for files added since the upgrade in June 2011, as they are now being stored in the new Course File system, which does not grant permission for access to the public. This will be changed in the next version of Blackboard, but for the time being, if you are a graduate student you can enroll in the course through SCORE, then later drop it if it is not to your liking. Otherwise, you can look up the syllabus in an older version of the course, or contact the instructor for a copy.
Dropdown Menus
Issue: When you click an item and a dropdown menu opens, sometimes the menu does not go away.
Work Around: Slide your cursor from the bottom of the dropdown menu up to the top.
Grade Center
A number of on-going areas of confusion with the Grade Center can be found here.
Groups
Issue: Students are able to change the name of the group as it displays in the header of the group page, and not just for themselves, but for others in the group. It will not, however, change the name of the group in the menu panel where one's groups are listed. Groups create by the Sectioning Tool
Solution: When creating groups, uncheck the box Allow Personalization under section 3, Module Personalization Settings. Groups create by the Sectioning Tool have this solution built in.
Site Editing
Issue: You are creating a content item and the cursor is in the title box or in the text box, yet you are not able to type.
Work Around: Click outside the box and then back in it. Also, you may need to wait a few moments for the text applet to complete loading when you first attempt to create an item.
Issue: The Control Panel menu items are not visible.
Solution: The Control Panel menu has been collapsed. Click on Control Panel to expand it. View image
Issue: You cannot edit course content through the Control Panel.
Solution: Turn Edit Mode ON. View image.
Issue: You cannot keep the format on text pasted into a content area text box.
Solution: Turn Visual Editor ON. View image.
Wimba Voice Boards
Issue: User gets error message that the Wimba Voice server is down.
Solution: First, make sure you have the latest version of Java (http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp) installed on your computer.
Do not use the Internet Explorer or Chrome browser - Wimba does not get along well with IE, and Chrome is not a supported browser for Wimba (though it is for Blackboard). We recommend Firefox.
If Firefox is giving you problems, again, make sure your Java is up to date (http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp) and Enabled - type about:addons in your address bar and then click on Plugins and you should see a list of plugins. Check to make sure Java is enabled.
If all else fails, try a different computer.
