Vista Failing "Blackboard" College Courses

writertype writes "Although Blackboard is used to communicate between students and professors at virtually all of PC Magazine/Princeton Review's top 20 wired colleges, when run under a Vista environment users can see glitches. Moreover, IT departments told PC Mag that if Blackboard is used with Vista plus IE7, students can't communicate via the software. When asked why, Microsoft ... waffled. Blackboard says they'll have a fix in place by summer. Meanwhile, are there any other common college apps that Vista fails to work with?"

Comments

It was really late for me..

[Adambomb]

Many academic IT departments are suggesting that students and teachers either use an alternative browser such as FireFox or Opera, or disable the feature altogether. but I'm somehow not shedding many tears over this issue.

Re:It was really late for me..

[paeanblack]

but I'm somehow not shedding many tears over this issue.

It's really a mess in educational software land. About 2/3rds of the web based edu apps we support on campus work in one browser, and one browser only. Sometimes it's Firefox, sometimes it's IE. Some apps are even pegged to a specific version for no apparent reason. We have to fake different UA strings in different labs just to get this stuff to run.

Don't get me started with the Adobe DRM crap that every edu app has fallen in love with. It's really easy on the users when they need to use two different browsers to get to different parts of the same frickin' website. Ugh.

Re:It was really late for me..

[jimicus]

We have to fake different UA strings in different labs just to get this stuff to run.

Wouldn't it be easier just to have a web proxy rewrite the UA string? I'm 95% sure squid can do that.

Back on the topic of educational software though... ughh. I worked in a school for just one year and it was enough to convince me that the way to sell software to schools is to send every school in the country a flyer proclaiming yourself to be "specialists in the education market" - that way you could make a bunch of sales without having to actually produce a half-decent product.

I was later told that there's a reason for this. Educational software - certainly in the UK - is generally split into two camps.

On the one hand, you've got stuff written by computer people. It's generally reasonably easy to manage, can be rolled out across a network and is not too much hassle. But it's also generally lousy at getting a point across, so it's not very popular with teachers. Bit of a problem when ultimately it's the teachers who are going to work with it.

On the other hand, you've got programs written by teachers who happen to have an interest in computing. It's generally quite good at getting a point across (and is thus popular with teachers) but it was usually written by someone who's never had to think beyond the PC on their desk. So the installation instructions say "Go to every PC, insert the CD and type D:\setup". In extreme cases, you find all sorts of annoyances: like parts of the setup program have been hardcoded to assume it's being installed from CD and the CD-ROM drive is drive D. Calling the software manufacturer and pointing out that this isn't terribly practical when the software is to be installed on a few hundred workstations generally results in an answer of "Oh. Never thought of that. Never mind, it only takes 5 minutes to install."

Multiplying that 5 minutes by the number of PCs which need the software installed is left as an exercise for the reader.

In the interests of fairness, I should point out that this was a few years ago - before XP was released and MSIs became as common as they are today. But I would be astonished if you were to tell me that things have changed that drastically.

Re:It was really late for me..

[leenks]

My mother is a senior teacher at a British primary school, and my father is now a lab technician in a comprehensive secondary school (after a long career in electronics). Both of them experience the same things you describe, even now. However, rather than teachers battling with these things, many bigger schools have their own IT technicians and smaller schools buy in support - not cheap, but it is cheaper than the teachers time usually.

Many schools still rely on Windows 98 machines for some programs, especially primary schools, as the software will only run on old versions of Windows. Some schools still make use of Acorn Archimedes computers because the software was that good. New computers are expensive, and schools in the UK simply do not have the budget to spend on luxuries such as Vista or XP. Schools, certainly in my county, do not get the advantages of Microsoft discounts because the educational authority appears to be sleeping with computer giants such as RM Nimbus or Viglen. The school is only allowed to buy its computers through these suppliers, and do not get a very good deal. The same companies also provide (well, resell I guess) broadband internet access - at an extortionate rate.

There is a third case with software - some software is written by ex-teachers that are very good programmers. Sherston software (http://www.sherston.com/) is one example of quality educational software that does things this way.

Re:It was really late for me..

[azrider]

FTFA:

Wascha said that collaborative work takes care of the vast majority of compatibility issues with devices and applications, which, according to Microsoft, were resolved before Windows Vista shipped.

(emphasis mine) Is it just me, or are graphics and wireless cards

• devices

?

Re:It was really late for me..

[Anonymous Coward]

Well this definately isn't the case at my school in suffolk.
It has roughly 1000 students. There are 3 full time IT technicians, plus all the IT teachers as well. All machines are now sourced from Dell, and every machine in the school runs XP with the same software etc. on it. We all log on using an active directory domain, so all files are stored in the user's private space on the fileserver.
There are 2 main computer rooms, one with 30 Dell Optiplex GX620s - Pentium D 3ghz with 1gb ram I believe, the other with 30 older Optiplex's with P4 2.4ghzs and 512mb ram. All have 17" flat panels. The design block has its own computer suite with slightly older Elonex machines, still P4s but not sure what speed. Then there are many classrooms around the school that have 10-15 or so older machines around the outside of the room, so they are just an addition to the normal classroom. These are the old Elonex P3 700 ish machines.
In addition to all of this, each department has at least 2 rooms with active whiteboards, which are run with Optiplex machines and ceiling mounted Sanyo projectors. Also, most teachers in the school now have their own laptop, all dell latitudes.

Re:It was really late for me..

[WhyDoYouWantToKnow]

Not all schools have the resources available to purchase that kind of hardware. Many schools are struggling to provide the barest minimum of technology to their classrooms. Please consider a donation program that supplies schools with your refurbished old kit. That computer that's three years old and to out-of-date to run anything worthwhile to you is a boon to our ailing schools.

Re:It was really late for me..

[chugadie]

This is sort of hillarious to me. People choose Windows as a platform, have an IT department, but then get confused as to how to deploy software on all their machines that they're supposedly experts of. Why not have the IT department create a solution to send out that software to all the PCs, or buy something.

Ahh... Windows people.

Re:It was really late for me..

[line-bundle]

I few days ago I had the mispleasure of running into something called sealed[media].

It insisted on Adobe Reader 7.0. Not Adobe Professional 7.0 which I had installed, not Adobe Reader 8, which Adobe had on their website, not Adobe 6 Reader on my laptop.

I hope sealed[media] gets eaten by a grue.

Re:It was really late for me..

[Anonymous Coward]

Try moodle. It works fine in every browser. Many schools are switching. http://www.humboldt.edu/~bboard/ and https://ilearn.sfsu.edu/login/ilearn_provost.htm

Re:It was really late for me..

[jimicus]

Maybe I could have made my point clearer.

Even when the problems with deploying software on Windows are well-known and mostly solved (eg. with MSI files, repackaging products etc), there are pieces of software which seem to go out of their way to make deploying in an automated fashion almost impossible.

Yes I know "there are ways around it". Believe me, I've been there and tried almost every one of them. I've had varying degrees of success. It is not helped by software which is so convinced it's going to be running from a CD that it's hardcoded all its paths to the root of the directory it's running from (so you need to map a drive specifically for that piece of software - so you either need to run it from a wrapper script which uses subst to simulate this or you need to spend a precious drive letter on just one piece of software. ).

Re:It was really late for me..

[jimicus]

You should consider yourself very lucky indeed.

But it's not XP with Active Directory I'm talking about. It's third-party software sold for educational purposes. I'll place money on it that your techs have spent their fair share of time wondering why the heck some piece of software that's been foisted on them by some teacher refuses to run if it's deployed using any method other than "Go to each PC in turn, insert CD and type D:\setup, click next next next".

By the way, does your school collect Tesco Computers for Schools vouchers? Did you know that you need at least 750 vouchers before you can get even a simple piece of software, and that software will generally only be licensed for use on one PC?

Re:It was really late for me..

[jimicus]

Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Fortunately I was working at a private school so it had rather more leeway in terms of what it could do. But even then, you'd be amazed (and rather disappointed) at the rubbish that's foisted on our schools.

I'm generalising hugely here, but IME most teachers are working to teach. Not to run a computer network. To compound the problem, many teachers haven't spent much time working outside of a school so they've not developed the same degree of cynicism when faced with claims made in sales literature. The end result is that they genuinely have no idea of how badly they're being ripped off, and when a slick sales leaflet appears announcing some company to be a "specialist in education", they're often all over it - thinking "Ah, this looks ideal".

They'd go nuts if they knew that they could probably employ another teacher full-time for the amount they get ripped off every year.

Re:It was really late for me..

[toadlife]

hardcoded all its paths to the root of the directory it's running from (so you need to map a drive specifically for that piece of software What's better is the software that expects to run from d:\ (because everyone's CD drive is d: right?)

Or software that specifically checks that "d:" is a CDROM drive - so that even if you map a drive to d: it still asks you to "please insert the CDROM".

I've found that if you talk to the vendors (if they are still in business) and explain to them the troubles that are caused by not being able to deploy and run software from a central location, they are sometimes very receptive to suggestions. One vendor got very excited after I explained to them the concept of UNCs and being able to run software from them.

We have a few software packages that will run completely off of a UNC path, which is awesome, because deploying them mean making an 80kb msi that throws a shortcut onto the start menu. Others, as you know, are not so friendly.

Re:It was really late for me..

[CAIMLAS]

Here's the thing I don't get about that. My school uses Blackboard, and Firefox doesn't work properly with it. Most of it does, but uploading files doesn't work because the JVM (granted, Sun fault) locks up while using the upload dialog. IE works fine, however.

Granted, not with Vista - with XP.

Re:It was really late for me..

[Nimey]

Last I checked, you could still get AcroRead 7.0.9 from Adobe's website.

Failing that, Oldversion.com has 7.0.8; however, that's vulnerable to the website security bug discovered last month.

Re:It was really late for me..

[Raenex]

3 year old machines are a great deal. CPU speeds stopped dramatically increasing about 5 years ago. It's really easy to get a nice machine for $200 on Ebay these days.

What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[davmoo]

When asked why, Microsoft ... waffled.

They shouldn't have waffled. They should have given the answer this deserves...how the hell is this Microsoft's problem to correct?

Vista was in beta forever and a day. Beta 3 was out and the API was locked down for at least several months before RTM. In cases where any third party software does not now work under Vista, it is *entirely* the fault of that software company. Holding Microsoft responsible to any degree here is just plain stupid.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Detritus]

It is Microsoft's fault if Vista broke existing applications without a very good reason for doing so. The rest of the world isn't obligated to follow Microsoft around like a circus dog, jumping through all their hoops.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. New OS out, minor problems with some apps that haven't been tested on it before -- news at 11.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[belmolis]

I don't think we can tell from this article whose fault this is. If Microsoft really did lock down their changes several months ago and documented them properly, it is Blackboard's fault not to have adapted. On the other hand, if Microsoft has kept changing things, has failed to document the API properly, or has failed to see to it that their code actually conforms to the documentation, it is Microsoft's fault.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has a long history of new versions breaking competitors products. Anyone know if Microsoft has a competing product for this or is working on one? Some of the most glaring examples were with Netscape, Word Perfect and Norton.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh really, is OS X held to the same standard? Do you have any idea the completely absurd lengths Microsoft goes to to insure compatability? There are people running software 20 years old on modern version of windows. And everything in between. Much of it obscure, and badly written. If Blackboard had properly constructed their applications in the first place, as opposed to using a sledge and a prybar to force their code to barely get by, odds are they wouldn't even have a problem at all. You want OS's that fail to deliver not on promises, but even improvement, hold makers to this standard.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[batkiwi]

So whose fault is it that the nvidia headers for binary drivers have to be recompiled every kernel release due to incompatabilities for no good reason?

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Detritus]

Sounds like a driver interface design problem.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Venim]

completely agreed even though i'm normally a m$ basher :)

this isn't even remotely microsoft's responsibility to make sure that every program ever made works for their operating system

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Detritus]

Did you even bother reading my post?

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[swilly]

Vista was in beta forever and a day. Beta 3 was out and the API was locked down for at least several months before RTM. In cases where any third party software does not now work under Vista, it is *entirely* the fault of that software company. Holding Microsoft responsible to any degree here is just plain stupid.

There is a lot of software that worked with the release candidates but don't work with RTM. I have some video software like that. What would be nice to know is if Blackboard worked with the release candidates or not. If it did, then the problem lies with Microsoft. If not, then the problem lies with the makers of Blackboard for not being ready with an update.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you didn't read what you wrote. It's not Microsoft's job to make sure everyone's badly written software works as intended on a new platform (yet they generally do). That you don't have the same expectation for presumably any other OS, and certainly not Apple, is telling. You think ANY of my Apple II GS software runs in Mac OS X? Bandit Kings of Ancient China 1989 Koei runs on Vista Ultimate.

You're an asshat, and an idiot.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[hdparm]

You are absolutely right although there might be a bit of guilt on the other side, if MS didn't break functionality between last beta and vista release.

I mostly blame schools though. They are the ones who let the vista in without going through enough testing, Like they haven't experienced exactly the same with previous windows releases.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[aaronmarks]

I have been amazed by the IT community's/press' reaction to Vista and Internet Explorer 7. This case with Blackboard is the perfect example of the complaint I have been hearing all to often recently, "Why doesn't website/program X work with IE7/Vista?", which is generally followed by, "I can't believe Microsoft did this, they must have a huge problem on their hands!".

The thing is though, this isn't Microsoft's problem. Vista was in beta for a very very long time. As a result, all of these businesses that develop website/program X should have started testing about a year ago (maybe even more) for compatibility issues. Vista was pre-released to IT professionals and Developers like all Microsoft beta products. I think that Microsoft's openess to developers and IT pros is one of their best qualities; it is definitely a compelling reason for why their latest software been so stable and feature packed (Exchange 2007, Office 2007, Windows Vista, etc.)

On the other hand, I do find it completely irresponsible that developers have not fix their webites to work with Vista. If you run a major software application like Blackboard, one can assume that it is going to be running on unmanaged PC's. Whenever a softare application is developed for an unamanged environment, all majority platforms need to be accounted for. Vista is more than just another platform, it now comes on every manufacturers shipping Home & Home Office PCs and in 2 years it will become the primary OS in nearly all environments.

For a business like Blackboard to make the statement; "If your PC breaks tomorrow and you need to go buy a new one, TOO BAD! We don't care enough about Vista so we aren't going to modify our software to work with it." That is just poor judgement on their part because the way I see it, many companies like Blackboard are just being lazy. They figure that because they are the standard of their industry/field, they can get by without supporting major new platforms. In reality they are just trying to save on developement costs at the consumer/end-users expense.

Vista is a great stable operating system and their should be absolutely no reason for any major softare or website to not work with it.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[AdamKG]

Nvidia's, and also the people who choose to use their binary-only drivers.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is Blackboard?

        * Learning Management System (LMS) software partially owned by Microsoft

http://www.humboldt.edu/~jdv1/moodle/all.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_ by_Microsoft_Corporation

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Dunbal]

this isn't even remotely microsoft's responsibility to make sure that every program ever made works for their operating system

      Especially not when they SELL access to the information so that you can keep your software current, in the form of MSDN subscriptions (which are not cheap, btw).

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Dunbal]

if Microsoft has kept changing things, has failed to document the API properly, or has failed to see to it that their code actually conforms to the documentation

      Oh, shudder, you evil person you. How dare you suggest that Microsoft would do something like THAT? /sarcasm

      It wouldn't be the first time.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Aqua OS X]

It should be noted that, with or without Vista and IE 7, Blackboard is absolute GARBAGE.

I'm sorry, but after experiencing Blackboard in grad school, I would tend shift my suspicion to the incompetent developers and designers behind Blackboard, not the incompetent developers and designers behind Windows.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[cheater512]

Works in every browser (including IE 6) but not IE 7. Microsoft fucked up.

Everyone else shouldn't be doing Microsoft's job for them - making it work.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[mr_matticus]

If the rest of the world commits to supporting Microsoft software and forcing users by extension to HAVE Microsoft software, it is no longer MS's fault. They chose to put their customers/users in Microsoft hell, so they damn well better keep up.

Law school exam software is a prime example. George Washington refuses to release the OS X version of the software (even though it exists), because their IT department has chosen to go all-Microsoft. All students are required to have a Windows notebook, and the IT department WILL NOT provide any support for Macs, even Intel Macs.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your forgetting something

The thing is though, this isn't Microsoft's problem. Vista was in beta for a very very long time.

there was a long sabbatical between last VISTA Beta Release and VISTA Final Retail. and there were numerous changes in this time. including even tighter security measures in IE7.

1 example i have is many companies sell wireless and wired internet to travellers.
This system involves a computer connecting via DHCP
any Internet requests are forwarded/redirected through to a transparent proxy and requiring authentication. (confirm pre payment)

IE7+Vista blocks this redirect and give absolutely no warning rsulting in a page can not be displayed
and what appears to be a non functioning connection.

Firefox does Not suffer this issue on VISTA. current solution is to use Firefox to authenticate and optionally use IE7 later.b

Disabling Phishing filter
Reset Security to low
do no fix it either.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[stebbo]

Uhh... Microsoft?? ;-)

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Reznor7]

No, but you did just describe Apple and Apple fanboys perfectly.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[ticklish2day]

The APIs are documented on MSDN. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ is free. Have you heard of a little something called the internet?

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Splab]

I'd just like to point out that blackboard is an online web application (at least here), so the guys making it probably tested it on XP with IE 7.0 and assumed it would work under Vista if it worked under XP.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[drsmithy]

It is Microsoft's fault if Vista broke existing applications without a very good reason for doing so.

No, it's Microsoft's fault if the application was written to documented APIs and following their recommended practices.

Given that 99% of software problems in Windows are caused by applications that *don't* do this (Exhibit A: any application released in the last ~8 years or so that needlessly requires Administrator privileges), this is probably something Microsoft deserve the benefit of the doubt on.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[BrokenHalo]

So whose fault is it that the nvidia headers for binary drivers have to be recompiled every kernel release due to incompatabilities for no good reason?

How do you know it's for no good reason? If you've seen the source code, then perhaps you might enlighten us.

In any case, who cares? nVidia does it, and does it very promptly when required. Which is more than we can say for the majority of hardware producers, who as a rule are content to leave Linux/Solaris/FreeBSD users completely unsupported.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Raven42rac]

Upgrading for its own sake isn't a good idea, especially if you don't know if you'll be able to complete coursework. If Microsoft had not changed certain things, everyone would jump their shit, they change certain things, everyone jumps their shit. Make up your mind.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[tsajeff]

I agree. How is Blackboard the standard for apps that work all the time anyway? I have used it at two different universities and it is still buggy in XP. Specifically, assignments turned in through the Assignments tab (forced because Dropbox is no longer supported) do not always show up as read or completed when they are.

If they can't make Bb work in an environment that has existed for years, why would we expect them to jump on Vista development?

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Vexorian]

I kind of not agree, I think this is the colleges' fault for jumping into vista without actually testing their main applications.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[spikedvodka]

Oh, You mean like Office 2k3?
here's the scenario:
1) Fresh install of Windows XP Pro SP2
2) All 75 Critical updates, plus the 3 required updates to get the latest version of windowsupdate to run (Watch Star Wars)
3) install MS Office 2k3 Enterprise edition
4) Install Office SP2 & all critical updates (Read War and Peace)
5) Create users, including 1 Limited user
6) Fire up MS Word
6.5) "Preparing to install Microsoft office"
7) Put in my name & Initials, Word is now ready to use
6) log in as said limited user
7) fire of MS Word
7.5) "Preparing to install Microsoft Office"
8) spit and cuss because it failed becuase it couldn't edit the registry to "Set user settings"
9) put in name & initials

now until I've gone back changed the account to an administrator account, fired up word in said account, and then set the account back to limited, repeat steps 6-9 every time you want to use MS Word/Excell/Powerpoint/etc...

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Cameroon]

Are you kidding? We use XP Pro SP2 and Office 2k3 at work and have no such problems deploying at all. You might want to try creating an administration installation point. We do our computer deployment with ghost and sysprep, so we don't install Office each time, but we never run into a problem launching any Office app as a limited user (unless Office breaks in really strange ways, like thinking it hasn't been installed).

1% of our users are Admins (mostly in IT), everyone else is a limited user account. Mostly only older software (*shudder* HomeSite) causes problems with the lack of Admin rights and those mostly just want write permission to the application's directory. Not great, but better than making the user's admins

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Dunbal]

The APIs are documented on MSDN. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ is free. Have you heard of a little something called the internet?

      Sure. You can get free versions of the SDK. Usually a few months AFTER the OS/Program or whatever is released. If you pay, however, you get in early. My point stands.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Helios1182]

Blackboard is a Web App -- it doesn't rely on the OS. MS screwed around with IE7 so much that it broke. It still works fine in Firefox.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Helios1182]

This is a web app, so anyone using it from their personal computer at home (the purpose of the web app) can't use Vista. I doubt the universities have upgraded yet.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you are right in a sense. The rest of the world doesn't have to do anything. But they do if they want to sell their crappy software. Hmm... Put food on the table or don't follow Microsoft around. Tough one there. These guys just screwed up - like the OP said - Vista had been in Beta forever and MS had a HUGE ISV outreach program. To have not been aware of it says they had their heads up their proverbial asses.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[dhasenan]

There hasn't been a good reason so far to provide a consistent ABI for Linux kernel drivers. But the nVidia installer automatically recompiles the shim when necessary, so it doesn't make a real difference.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to agree that Blackboard is garbage....unless you are using the enterprise version, which few schools do, because it means tons of $$$. My school has run versions 6 and 7 of blackboard during my time here, and both ran like garbage and were a pain to use. However when they upgraded to the enterprise version for this semester it runs like a charm...especially under Vista w/ IE7...

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[TechForensics]

May I take a guess at the name of your employer?

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[bhtooefr]

Agreed... besides, I thought parts of HKCU were OK for users to write to, even if they weren't admins?

And that's definitely an HKCU-type entry.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Viper Daimao]

The article is sparse on technical details, so I've have to guess that the problems is with Vista's new user account privlidge setting where you're running as a standard user all the time (similar to sudo), combined with IE7 running in protected mode. The workaround probably involved moving the blackboard domain to trusted sites and maybe making some changes with the security settings.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[honeymooner]

It should not be assumed that all applications will be backward compatible. History tells us that. It is the application developer's responsibility to ensure that their apps work with the latest OS. It is the school's IT guys who have the responsibility to ensure that the applications they deploy work with the OS's in use and if not, they then have the responsibility to mitigate any compatibility issues.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you can sign up for the beta releases of new SDKs and get it early for free. Call your MS sales rep (even small 5 man companies that keep their copies of Windows legal have sales reps) and ask how you can get a connect.microsoft.com login so you can sign up for beta testing.

So your point doesn't stand, sorry.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[DavidTC]

Blackboard isn't a windows program.

Blackboard is a web application.

However the fact it doesn't work in Vista is almost certainly entirely Blackboard's fault, because they're morons who don't know how to code to web standards, instead making all sorts of custom crap that required lowered security and only worked on one browser. Yeah, only supporting IE6 was fun and saved you idiot a good 5% of the work, but now you're fucked.

I'm glad all the people who decided to write custom shit for IE6 the last five years are being left out in the cold with IE7 and/or Vista incompatibilities or added security. It couldn't happen to a nice bunch of fucktards.

And now yet another bunch of developers will have 'Microsoft does not care for you, so coding specifically to one of their products instead of an open standard is the stupidest possible move imaginable' burned into their brains. The HTML and Active X coders working in IE6 can go stand with the J# and VB6 people.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Phillup]

When asked why, Microsoft ... waffled.

They shouldn't have waffled. They should have given the answer this deserves...how the hell is this Microsoft's problem to correct?

Vista was in beta forever and a day. Beta 3 was out and the API was locked down for at least several months before RTM. In cases where any third party software does not now work under Vista, it is *entirely* the fault of that software company. Holding Microsoft responsible to any degree here is just plain stupid. As someone that has been around the block a few times, there is no way in hell I would spend one minute changing my code to work for a MS product that isn't actually shipping yet.

Hell, you can get burned by MS by coding to work with *shipping* code!

Maybe others have been around the same block...

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[NtroP]

[sarcasm]Of course, it's not even remotely possible that the problems are because IE 7 on Vista doesn't properly implement web standards.[/sarcasm]

Remember, It works on FF and Vista...

MS has fscked over developers and standards for decades. If I had a well-established web application that worked on browsers that properly implemented web standards and MS came along, changed things in their browser and arrogantly expected companies to join the circle-jerk and waste time writing *more* custom work-arounds for their broken software, I'd be very likely to say "Fuck-'em. Have users run it in a real browser."

That being said, I'm not a fan of blackboard. If the reason things are broken is because they are still detecting IE7 as "generic IE" and trying the old IE hacks on it, then they should change it or not do browser detection at all. However, I'm more inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to a company whose product works on a standards-compliant browser than Miscrosoft.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[a.d.trick]

Actually, if you talk the kernel devs, they'll tell you it's a feature, not a bug. They'll tell you that the problem is with Nvidia and that they need to release the source code to their drivers. The kernel devs haven't gone to any lengths to stop people like Nvidia from violating the GPL (they wanted to, but Linus put a stop to it), but they have stated time and time again, that they're not going to go to any extra effort to play nice with closed source drivers.

Nvidia doesn't really have much of an exuse in this case. All they can do is mumble some nonsense about IP. The Linux devs even offer free driver development with NDAs and all that jazz.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[DarkManaX]

Yeah... I know of one university close to me that has developed their own replacement in-house. When a university, a highly beurocratic entity, decides that maintaining and paying licenses is worse then developing and maintaining your own... well... I really don't know what to think. I've used Blackboard in college, and sometimes it appears to be nice and friendly, but more often then not it's either down or acting up... I hope they get what's coming to them, personally.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[thejynxed]

Uhhh, MS owns part of the company in question. So, competing product? Doubtful :)

Then again, this could be a left hand right hand situation, where MS actually DOES have a competing product lined up somewhere and one subsidiary has no inkling on what the other is doing...

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[dhasenan]

A webapp like that, they code for particular browsers. It's more likely that they haven't removed special code for IE6's idiosyncrasies yet, or that they have code for IE6, Firefox, and Opera, but IE7 doesn't work with the default.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[jrockway]

Blackboard does absolutely nothing special. It's a web page with some links to other HTML pages. There's no reason why it shouldn't work in IE, other than really really really really invalid HTML.

Guess what, Blackboard... there are standards (and QA teams) for a reason!

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[York the Mysterious]

As a student of Humboldt State (where you pulled that link from): Most students and staff thought Blackboard was a giant pile of dog shit (which is really is). Looks like crap, runs like crap, and has pretty poor compatibility. We've been migrated over to Moodle (open source) for the last few years and are finally ditching Blackboard at the end of this semester. I doubt anyone will miss it. Certainly not the people the cut the yearly check for the app.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

QFT. Bad coding is at fault here, not Microsoft.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

People want an operating system that WORKS. That is why it's Microsoft's fault. Either that or the college switches to another operating system. Sound like good business for Microsoft? Nope. Microsoft left much of it's operating system a mystery to vendors wanting to create drivers and software for the new Vista so how is it not the fault of Microsoft?

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[toadlife]

Is security not a good enough reason?

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[toadlife]

I run a blackboard server and have done so for around five years. Blackboard has moved from a pure perl based app to a pure tomcat driven app over the years and now they make heavy use of client side java applets. I suspect their poorly written java applets are the cause or all the problems with Vista.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[ozmanjusri]

You think ANY of my Apple II GS software runs in Mac OS X?

All of it will: http://kegs.sourceforge.net/

It's Microsoft's job to supply a stable API for developers to code on. If they change enough of their OS between versions to break applications, they should make sure there is a downgrade path to older versions of their OS and to support those older versions.

You're an asshat, and an idiot.

Winshill.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[DavidTC]

Um, I don't recalled Blackboard working in FF at all.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, that's a load of shit. Even Linus himself has said that he doesn't believe what nVidia does to violate the GPL.

The Linux kernel devs are just shitty people that don't give a rat's ass about developers or users.

If they actually cared about users, they would so something about the shitty experience developers having maintaining drivers.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if a 3rd party making an emulator for OS X is good enough for Apple users, it should be more than sufficent for Blackboards users, no?

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[NtroP]

Um, I don't recalled Blackboard working in FF at all. This is from the front blackboard page (in big red letters) at Cincinnati State:

Attention students using the Vista operating system:

Some major Blackboard functions do not work properly when using an Internet Explorer browser on a Vista operating system. Using the Firefox browser will allow you to use all Blackboard functions.

If you have further questions you can call the helpdesk 513.569.1234

I guess that's what mislead me into thinking that it worked on FF.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[SageMusings]

Not all devs play by the rules. It's easy to write lame code that will not work properly from one version of Windows to the next.

I am in total agreement that it is not Microsoft's fault. This software should have been tested not only by the company selling it but ALSO BY THE DAMNED IT DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY before deploying it live.

You do not have to be a MS fan-boy to appreciate the fact you ALWAYS test before production.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[SageMusings]

I suspect their poorly written java applets are the cause or all the problems with Vista.

  But Java is write once, run everywhere

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[toadlife]

This software should have been tested not only by the company selling it but ALSO BY THE DAMNED IT DEPARTMENT AT THE UNIVERSITY before deploying it live. Where I work we have not deployed IE7 or Vista due to Blackboard and a couple of other apps, but it really doesn't matter with blackboard, because a high number of online students don't use school computers to access blackboard. They use their own. And it doesn't matter if you tell them ahead of time that Vista doesn't work with Blackboard because they never pay attention to announcements anyway.

Blackboard should have seen this coming and should have been ready. They had a ton of time to test with the BETAS, RCs and even the RTM version before Vista was RTM for consumers.

But it's Blackboard, so I'm hardly surprised.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Nimey]

My uni /doesn't/ allow Vista. On faculty and staff machines[1]. What are we supposed to do about new student-owned PCs, though?

We have Blackboard for the time being but are switching to something called ANGEL for the fall semester.

[1] Modulo unofficial installs on tech PCs so we can learn about the poxy thing.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Nimey]

Tell that to the twinks who wrote one of our apps against MS's Java runtime. Works great in IE6 with MS Java (it's a frontend to mshtml.dll). Fscks up if IE7 and/or Sun Java are installed.

There's a fallback browser interface that works fine with Firefox or Safari plus the Sun Java runtime, at least, but it doesn't have some reporting features the users need.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[darkonc]

The only problem with that is, if you use only the documented APIs, then Microsoft products (which use the undocumented APIs which sometimes produce much faster/prettier results) are going to eat you for lunch.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[hdparm]

Let them know that Vista is not compatible with Blackboard yet? Or as you do already, replace blackboard (moodle comes to mind).

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have a Dell PC and want to pretend Linux is "Windows but without the suck", then to you it looks like it's a driver interface design problem.

If you have a PPC, or Alpha, or Sparc, or PA-RISC, or any other kind of computer for which they haven't decided to compile their driver, you realize it's a "dorks think a proprietary driver for a free kernel makes sense" problem.

For Windows, the driver interface is binary; thus, shipping binary drivers is the right solution. For Linux, the driver interface is mutable-source; thus, offering source for drivers would be the right solution. Shipping binary-only drivers for Linux makes even less sense than delivering source-only drivers for Windows.

When companies port to Linux, people expect a Gtk+ or Qt interface; if you simply say "you can run our app under Wine", people say "that's not how things are done on Linux, and you're missing out on all the benefits!". This is no different.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[drsmithy]

The only problem with that is, if you use only the documented APIs, then Microsoft products (which use the undocumented APIs which sometimes produce much faster/prettier results) are going to eat you for lunch.

For example...?

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[DavidTC]

When I had blackboard classes, three years ago, it certainly didn't work in FF.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[bob frost]

Might this therefore be a consequence of MS' notorious history of trying to develop its own in-house "java"? Point of info requested: Does MS software mangle AJAX implementations often? If so, this is only the beginning of the headaches.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[toadlife]

The Java applets have always required Sun's JRE, and Microsoft's JRE has been EOLed for a long time now, so I doubt it. Blackboard has had problems working with IE6 recently, and has a very long history of stupid client side bugs, so it not working with IE7 on Vista is hardly a surprise to me.

From the view of a sysadmin, blackboard is just as maddening. Have a look at this blog for an idea of how I feel.

BTW, your remodeled house looks great. My wife and I are doing a bunch of work on ours ATM.

Re:What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[toadlife]

Firefox does Not suffer this issue on VISTA. current solution is to use Firefox to authenticate and optionally use IE7 later.b Actually I got an email from a former student intern who is taking online classes. He said that he was having problems with blackboard with both IE7 and firefox 2.0 on Vista.

This is why I think the problems with Blackboard are a Java applet problem and not a browser problem. I advised him to turn off UAC and see if that helped, but haven't heard back from him yet.

Well...

[Barkmullz]

It sounds like Blackboard needs to fix their application, yes?

not a MS problem...IEEE isn't new

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML is not rocket science. You can do whatever you want behind the scenes, but at the end of the day HTML is what you send and it's not that hard. Blackboard dropped the ball...

Re:not a MS problem...IEEE isn't new

[Anonymous Coward]

If you consider the amount of money it takes to support Blackboard vs some other online platforms, why would you pay for an app that breaks when a new browser comes out? Wackboard is the new SCO. They made a bad purchase (WebCT), the market noticed, they're screwed, and their magic plan is to sue their way out of it. Good luck! SCO is doing rather well...

It's a feature.

[Jacques Chester]

Blackboard is awful, terrible software. Microsoft have simply filtered it out as part of their quality assurance program.

MySpace is next.

Not so simple

[robinjo]

I've been in the business since before the first Windows versions. Usually I make sure to do software so it works with any Windows version. That should be pretty easy as long as you use standard API.

Over the years I've noticed a trend: If you use Microsoft development tools, you end up having problems with backwards compatibility. Either their compilers so a lot of weird things or MS makes sure to break them so even the programmers have to upgrade.

Re:Not so simple

[PhoenixAtlantios]

I don't suppose you have any code or evidence to prove that Microsoft's tools generate inferior code to the alternatives, I thought the Microsoft's tools were some of the best around? I'd wager a guess that a large portion of the applications available today were created using Visual Studio and they don't all randomly break when a new OS comes out.

I'm genuinely curious to know of any examples of Microsoft's tools sabotaging their users where others would not. It stands to reason that Microsoft, with infinite access to the source code of their operating system, would be able to create better tools.

Re:Not so simple

[Psychotria]

Either their compilers so a lot of weird things or MS makes sure to break them so even the programmers have to upgrade.

I wish I could understand what you're saying; I bet it's insightful.
You for no work for Microsoft yes?

Re:Not so simple

[Mateo_LeFou]

"Microsoft, with infinite access to the source code of their operating system, would be able to create better tools."

But this would undermine the planned-obsolescence/forced-upgrade strategy, which -- if you hadn't noticed -- is a more important piece of their business than "create better tools".

Re:Not so simple

[1u3hr]

Over the years I've noticed a trend: If you use Microsoft development tools, you end up having problems with backwards compatibility.

I recently came across an old CDR with a bunch of games. Most of them seemed to work, whether coded for DOS, Win 3.1 or 95. Except the old Microsoft games. They crashed hard when I tried to run them in current versions of Windows. I assume becasue MS used undocumented hooks to optimise for the then current Windows.

Re:Not so simple

[ticklish2day]

Do you have any documented proof for that claim? Or, are you one of those folks that runs gcc on Windows and calls it a Microsoft compiler?

Re:Not so simple

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right, keep dreaming you whiney mac fanboy faggot. Everything is Microsofts fault! EVERYTHING!

Re:Not so simple

[Anonymous Coward]

No, not everything. I'm fairly sure Microsoft is not to blame for me dropping my coffee cup a few days ago.

Fairly sure, mind you... not completely. You never can be sure with Microsoft around ;op

Re:Not so simple

[SageMusings]

Uh...Microsoft is on the phone for you.....something about being sorry for some kind of spilled beverage the other day? You better take this.

*shrug*

[fabs64]

Hopefully this encourages universities to move away from Blackboard if anything.. it's a steaming pile of crap, really.
Doesn't affect me anyway, as any school of comp sci should be, all our labs are thin x-servers.
The rest of the uni can suffer in Novell hell for all I care, stupid ITS.

Re:*shrug*

[miro f]

you must be an RMIT student...

Re:*shrug*

[fabs64]

:-D Sure am, and I do believe I've heard or seen the name "Miro" around the traps.
My username was/is bfabry, or "FABRY,BEAUJONATHAN" as blackboard likes to call me for some reason.

Re:*shrug*

[MaelstromX]

All the cool universities are switching to Sakai, an open source system. We're getting it next school year at Georgia Tech, but tons of other schools have already begun using it.

Re:*shrug*

[GAATTC]

I have to agree. My university uses Blackboard and some parts of it work with one browser but not others, other parts have different buggy behavior but with slightly different details. I cannot use many important functions using Safari in OSX, others don't work using Firefox in either OSX or Windows. I mainly use IE7 and Windows XP and everything 'works'. By 'works' I mean that this is a crap application that can be made to do what you want in a totally non-intuitive, slow, painful way. There is nothing even close to standards compliant about Blackboard. They have continually kludged a horrible interface onto an application that feels like it was originally developed long before people used web browsers.

This is not a IE7/Vista issue - It is yet another Blackboard issue. They need to rewrite their software from scratch.

Re:*shrug*

[hedrick]

Unfortunately Sakai also has a problem with Vista. The WebDAV interface doesn't work. I've looked in detail at the network exchanges and tried tweaking Sakai. As far as I can tell WebDAV just doesn't work reliably in Vista. There are two known protocol issues with the Windows redirector, but even after working around them on the server and making the registry change on the client that is needed to talk to non-MS servers, in many cases Vista never talks to the server. I don't see anything I can do on the server side to fix that.

The same problem existed in XP. However XP had a second implementation of WebDAV, that was part of "network places." It worked, mostly. That implementation has been removed in Vista. I tried to follow up on this with MS at around the time of the release. However they stopped responding. For the moment we're recommending that people running Vista use a shareware WebDAV client.

There may well be issues that need to be fixed by MS, not the application maintainers.

Re:*shrug*

[complexgeek]

Greetings from another RMIT student. That name does sound quite familiar. I could never understand why Blackboard needs to shout our names though.
The x-term systems are fantastic, as is the Moodle installation some courses now use. The more that migrate there the better. Just a pity that most still use Blackboard.
Sadly this semester I'm taking Web Dev Tech, which means C#/.NET and having to use the Windows labs, which suck horribly.

Re:*shrug*

[bigbigbison]

I don't know about all the "cool" schools but it has been used for a few years here at IU (one of the "most wired colleges" and once labled the "most wireless campus" even though my department's building is apparently not on campus since our wireless is named, "unavailable..."). It has gotten a lot better in the last year, but it still has a lot of quirks and bugs. That being said, it still beats the abomination that is Blackboard.

Re:*shrug*

[miro f]

sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there's a it of a power struggle between ITS and the rest of the University, and I think ITS is going to win.

The result of that struggle, if ITS wins, will be the end of the cs.rmit.edu.au domain, and the migration of all courses to Blackboard.

It won't bother me though, I'll be gone at the end of the year (with any luck)

Re:*shrug*

[complexgeek]

That struggle has been going on since long before my time at RMIT, and ITS only just won the email address battle. I will state that ITS is the most incompetent organization I've ever had to deal with, and considering I'm an RMIT student, that's saying something. However with any luck I too will be gone at the end of the year, one more at the most. It is sad to see the CS school going downhill because of such senseless powerplays though.

Re:*shrug*

[miro f]

It is sad to see the CS school going downhill because of such senseless powerplays though.

Welcome to Earth ;)

Some apps are broken by design

[NewToNix]

"are there any other common college apps that Vista fails to work with?"

Yes, I suspect there are quite a number of common collage apps, mostly things that involve DRM, that collage students will find Vista was intended to fail to work with.

It's good to befriend a penguin.

It's Blackboard's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

And Blackboard are fucking useless. Awful, awful, awful application, and I've heard all-sorts from people having all sorts of problems with it.

This one isn't Microsoft's fault.

Re:It's Blackboard's problem

[setagllib]

How isn't it Microsoft's fault? They've created and continue to fuel a world of poor proprietary software, setting the foundations by not fixing DOS before its release (and consequent requirements for bug-for-bug compatibility, like C:\foo\bar file paths), and continuing to abuse and ignore standards to ensure maximum vendor lockin. Really bad software just doesn't survive in the open source world - either it's changed until it's good, or it's dropped altogether. Moderately bad software like the Mozilla family tree and MySQL become extremely popular and eventually creep towards being acceptable. Proprietary rubbish survives because of vendor lockin, and that's the kind of world Microsoft wants, because it's in the business of selling new lockin.

Re:It's Blackboard's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Proprietary rubbish survives because of vendor lockin, and that's the kind of world Microsoft wants, because it's in the business of selling new lockin.

Don't forget Apple, Microsoft are rank amateurs when it comes to vendor lock-in compared to Apple. Apple are the masters of vendor lock-in and have defined the art.

Re:It's Blackboard's problem

[Goffee71]

I'm vaguely surprised Microsoft didn't add their own version to the software. Then again, they hardly added any proper new features, imagine what Microsoft could have added to Vista to inspire people to use it....

Anything like this would have been welcome

Free flow - A multi-layer desktop. Featuring your personal choice of web, or your company's choice of essential intranet information, flowing in the background. We've got Glass - let's use for more than just fluff.

Cut, paste and flip - When you paste one selection of text over another, the removed text is copied back into the clipboard, ready to be dropped elsewhere. Assign it to Ctrl+Alt+C for ease and employ as a full part of the OS, not just a feature in one program.

PIMP - Passenger Information Mobile Protocol - One for the commuter/jet-set laptop and Smartphone crowd. When you are on plane, train or at the airport, terminal, anywhere in the civilised world - your PC can link FOR FREE into a PIMP (Just branded Wi-fi really) spot and you can grab the latest travel information, offers for hotels, places to eat.

And a few others... http://www.goffee-freelance.blogspot.com/

Re:It's Blackboard's problem

[Carewolf]

At Copenhagen University they evaluated Blackboard and found it inadequate. Instead they replaced it with the result of a 3 week student assignment at the Computer Science department DIKU. The result is much more stable and useable (Allthough the basic purpose and idea of this type of software still makes it useless.)

The icing on the cake...

[zumbojo]

...is that a few months ago in anticipation for the new version of Windows, Blackboard named a new piece of software in its honor: "WebCT Vista." Fast forward a few months, and I get the funniest e-mail from the dept. that handles Blackboard:

"WebCT Vista is not supported on the Windows Vista platform."

*facepalm*

Re:The icing on the cake...

[torok]

That's not true. "WebCT Vista" was out *years* before Microsoft decided on the name Vista for their next generation of Windows. Not only that, but WebCT was a completely separate company, Blackboard's direct competitor at the time, and it was swallowed up by Blackboard just over a year ago.

Internet Explorer 7

[YutakaFrog]

My University uses WebCT a bunch. I was saddened when FireFox 2.0 came out, and it would pop up a window every time I logged in that said the browser was unsupported. Now, they've updated their software and FF2 is good to go. However, the homepage now has the following notice:

The latest version of Internet Explorer does not work well with WebCT. We encourage you to use vesion 6 or download Firefox and use that. We will post a list of knwon issues with this browser once we have them. This will only be temporary until WebCT can resolve the browser issues. Thank you, WebCT Staff And that has been there a LOT longer than the FireFox alert was. :) Thank you, MicroSoft, for helping spread FireFox.

Re:Internet Explorer 7

[BrokenHalo]

...and it would pop up a window every time I logged in that said the browser was unsupported.

Strange. I've had a lot of contact with WebCT at my university since 2001, and I've never seen that message (or any other, for that matter) about Firefox come up. Maybe the IT guys at my campus configured it out...

Ahh.. those students...

[DigitAl56K]

Meanwhile, are there any other common college apps that Vista fails to work with?

Yes, there are some problems with uTorrent ;)

Webapps?

[kripkenstein]

The problem is, both the summary and TFA mention separate issues with both "Vista" and "Vista & IE7". It isn't clear exactly what that means. Does IE7 work on XP with these apps? TFA seems to indicate these are webapps, so shouldn't the browser be the most important component? Flipping things, do other browsers (IE6, Firefox) work on Vista? How about Firefox on any platform?

Without really knowing the answers to all of these, I don't have an opinion on whether this is Microsoft's fault or the app-builder's fault. Yet, if this is a true webapp, ensuring that it works on Firefox should be enough for virtually all cross-platform compatibility issues, shouldn't it? If it doesn't run on Vista/IE7, just tell them to use Firefox for that app. It doesn't cost money; this isn't lock-in.

University of Arizona's Wireless APs

[Anonymous Coward]

Here at the University of Arizona, Vista doesn't work with our encrypted Wireless APs because Vista's PEAP authentication... doesn't.

http://forum.oscr.arizona.edu/showthread.php?t=292 5&page=2 - one of a few threads in the Office of Student Computing Resources forums following broken wifi and vista

As of right now, Vista users wanting to surf encrypted have to google and find a copy of the Vista-compatible Cisco VPN Client 5.0 beta (the UA's sitelicense website still only has VPN Client 4.9, which is not Vista compatible) and connect to the UA's VPN over our unencrypted public wireless network.

Re:University of Arizona's Wireless APs

[agentker]

We have the same problem at my college. I work in the IT dept and I almost feel bad for the people who bring their laptops in about it, but then I remember they bought Vista and suddenly feel like they got what they deserved. Oh, Vista.

Re:University of Arizona's Wireless APs

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for IT at a University with the same problem. We contacted Microsoft they denied the problem saying the computer had to be joined to the domain. So our technician joined his laptop to the domain still no luck. A few days later they called back with a patch that seems to have worked well.

The patch has not been released yet but I was told it would be soon. I was told MS was waiting for someone to decide if it would be a hotfix or bundled in a larger update.

In short I would talk to your school's IT department again and see if they have solved the problem.

Re:University of Arizona's Wireless APs

[AaronPSU777]

Same deal at Colorado State. I couldn't access the campus wireless network with my new laptop until I managed to track down the Vista compatible Cisco VPN beta.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackboard to patent software that is none functional when run on a new OS.

It's great to have a patent system that rewards innovation.

fud

[wwmedia]

blackboard is one big monstrocity of a web app, you wonder how it works at all btw i have no problems using it with IE7?!

oh please

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile, are there any other common college apps that Linux/OSX fails to work with?

Other Apps

[RabidJackal]

Meanwhile, are there any other common college apps that Vista fails to work with?

BlueJ has some problems with elements of the UI when run on Vista under Java 5. Java 6 seems to fix this problem. (Works for me..)

More info here: http://bluej.org/help/faq.html#winvista

So much for Data Analysis

[j_f_chamblee]

It looks like many quantitative applications are currently not going to work on Vista, at least for now. Major statistical analysis, data mining and Geographic Information Systems tools that don't run on Vista include:

SPSS, SAS, MATLAB and SAP and ESRI ArcGIS

Eh, this is no big deal, right? I mean, who really wants to know about facts and numbers? Especially when you are using a *computer*.

Re:So much for Data Analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I have no problems running my masters thesis data analysis on Matlab 7.1 running on Home Premium edition.

Re:So much for Data Analysis

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

The latest release, MATLAB R2007a, is supported on Vista. The previous release, MATLAB R2006b, was released before Vista was released.

Re:So much for Data Analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Virginia Tech is entirely Vista Incompatible

"The $350 software bundle required by the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech will not be entirely Microsoft Vista compatible by the fall semester, forcing the college to individually make the decision that they will not endorse the new Microsoft operating system."

http://www.collegiatetimes.com/news/1/ARTICLE/8809 /2007-03-29.html

Blackboard doesn't work on Vista?

[jez9999]

How is this different from Blackboard on any other OS?

sloppy coding?

[briancnorton]

Writing a Win32/64 app that only works in one OS/browser/java version/etc seems to me to be sloppy coding. Blackboard is a *WEB* app, is it not? Why does the client matter? Usually the answer is because the Devs were lazy and took shortcuts by using the client to do something that the server could just as easily do. (Not necessarily the case here)

Re:sloppy coding?

[RobertM1968]

Because something is a *web app* does not mean it is a "works on any browser" app. MS hardly conforms to any standards when it comes to web anything... html, css, javascript... you name it. I know... I write web apps, and it is usually an "If IE5 then, If IE6 then, If IE7 then... otherwise (assume a browser that comes a lot closer to standards) do..." Which brings up my second point, standards support - or even MS's proprietary calls/parsing/whatever, change between versions, fixes and updates.

rephrase the question correctly...

[ThePretender]

shouldn't it be "Are there any other common college apps that fail to work with Vista?"

Vista = no wireless at Dalhousie

[matrix mechanic]

To use the campus wireless at Dalhousie university in Halifax you have to run their special cisco VPN client for which there's no version for Vista. So Vista = no wireless at Dal. Does the internet count as a common college app?

Re:Vista = no wireless at Dalhousie

[pathological liar]

That's not correct.

I work at the helpdesk at Dal, and while it's not mentioned on the website, there IS a beta version of the 5.x Cisco VPN client available. If you stop by, they will install it for you. It's not perfect, but it's functional... mostly.

Re:Vista = no wireless at Dalhousie

[Nuttyfrtk]

You can find the beta on google as well (not sure if it's a legit public beta, but that's how I got it). Try googling for "Vista Cisco VPN"

Vista == WinME

[erroneus]

I predicted it before and it seems to be coming true. We get stories about how people, organizations and governments don't want to switch. We get stories about exceptionally poor performance. We get stories about compatibility problems. We get the occasional "DRM" interferes with normal/legal use stories too.

The big question is when Vista will be declared a flop?

Re:Vista == WinME

[Slyswede]

If you actually take the time to analyze these "stories" you'll realize that almost all of the problems people blaim Vista for is actually not anything that has to do with the operating system, but the applications that run on it.

Just take the complaints about no wireless access in the above posts for example. Vista has nothing to do with the fact that these universities force people to run a Cisco VPN client to get access. Considering how long Vista has been availible to developers, this shouldn't even be an issue, but apparently Cisco has more important things to do than update their software to work on the new OS. Same thing goes for a lot of other high profile vendors who seem very reluctant to adapt to a Vista compatible world.

The pressure on these vendors to adapt will continue to increase as Vista will slowly but surely replace XP as the Microsoft desktop platform of choice.

Re:Vista == WinME

[Anonymous Coward]

If by flop you mean an OS that will be running on ~90% of PC's within the next couple of years, then yes, you could probably call it a flop.

Thanks for the geek tough-talk though, thats one thing I love about Slashdot. Do you also talk like this when you're not expressing an opinion that panders to your peer group? No, thought not.

Re:Vista == WinME

[erroneus]

Are you counting all the people who got a new PC with Vista and then went back to WinXP?

Re:Vista == WinME

[rtb61]

So we all get it now, Vista with it's (FU)DRM works perfectly as long as you don't run any applications or use any hardware. The same could be said of any other M$ windows operating system, all those versions that seem to have been permanently in beta.

Isn't it funny, the M$ desktop platform of choice, rather than the customer's platform of choice, typical weird M$ thinking. The one great consistency with M$ has been, it is always the customers fault, the software that used to work and M$ broke with the latest upgrade, that is the customers fault, the hardware that used to work and now fails with the latest upgrade that is the customers fault. Cost to those vendors of having to redo their work and the unrecoverable costs generated, M$ message to you, tough luck, your cost's pay for M$'s profits.

All those vendors that are marching off lockstep into paying xbox styled licence fees for anything to do with the the windows (P)OS and it's (FU)DRM, don't say you weren't warned.

Re:Vista == WinME

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you actually take the time to analyze these "stories" you'll realize that almost all of the problems people blame Vista for is actually not anything that has to do with the operating system, but the applications that run on it.

So, it's a great OS, but it has crappy application support. Which is one of the most important things people need out of an OS?

Lovely. Remind me WHY people should migrate to Vista, again?

P.S. I don't think you can pawn off the failure that is UAC onto 3rd parties. And I'm having a hard time not blaming Vista when even Microsoft applications (like, say, Blackboard) are failing, too. Especially when *most* applications seem to work like crap under Vista.

Is there some reason brand new machines, *built for* Vista, shouldn't work right out of the box? Because I haven't seen even one working Vista machine yet, and the Vista machines I've seen were brand new. But the one friend is too much of a masochist to do anything about it. Of course, his last machine *was* running Windows ME...

Heh

[fuali]

How come when applictions don't work with the latest release of windows, or windows service pack it's always: LOOK MS SUCKS!!!!

And when applications don't work with the latest linux distro, it's like: hey give the application dev some time.

If anything since the number of applications for windows probably exceeds the number of linux apps it should be the other way around. That, plus the fact that linux and any OSS has a theoretical pool of dev's to tap where MS only has their handfull of hired guns.

I wouldn't know

[invader_allan]

I have no idea what other sorts of issues there might be. I switched over to an iMac and gave up building PC's partly to avoid dealing with Vista. OS X has it's own personality quirks, but none of the problems I have had with windows. I got an intel mac as soon as boot camp was released and I could run windows if there was an app I really, really needed that wasn't available for OS X. I boot into windows to update it once a month, and hardly use it any more. I used to for the occasional game, but now I play mostly console games when I have time (graduate studies leave little time for games, even when they are a part of my "research" for technology and culture, which is the subject of my interdisciplinary masters). I haven't worked in windows since I got this thing last May.

Vista / Blackboard

[jschmitz]

I thought people smart enough to be in college used macs? = )

WebCT 4

[midian_va]

At USD we use WebCT 4 and i can confirm that it runs like utter garbage on vista/ie7.

Re:WebCT 4

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is different from how it normally runs in what way ?

Having administered WebCT for several years (>5), I can attest to it being utter crap in design. I seriously think that even smelling a book on software design might help the developers a long way.

My definition for WebCT is: Infestation. The distribution of the pest is via the marketing and management divisions of schools, which unfortunately have no clue about the technical aspects of educational software.

History lesson:

[BrokenHalo]

What is Blackboard?

I had to look this up too, since my own recollection (from the early fourteenth century) of blackboards is of large, black-painted surfaces at the end of what was known as a classroom. Peripherals consisted of wooden-backed dusters and slender sticks of calcium carbonate. Both doubled as ammunition for pedagogues to apply, with varying degrees of accuracy, to unruly or inattentive pupils.

Turn that question around, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that better be "Meanwile, are there any other common college apps so poorly written that they only work in environments they were tested on?"

My must have college app

[Anonymous Coward]

World of Warcraft

It's lack of responsibility...

[Marnhinn]

Even though the parent is ranked funny, there is lots of truth to it.

I've worked with and had to support Blackboard before. There are few applications that I think are worse. (I recall a bug that we experienced, where if two people submitted an assessment at the same time, or very close to the same time, the software would lose one of them.)

Also, as crappy as Vista is, it was in beta and development for a long time. At the very least, Blackboard should have issued an advisory stating that under certain conditions their software breaks. (And no sensible IT department at any major educational facility should have upgraded already anyways.)

I guess I would say the root of the problem is the lack of responsibility in the software world. Unlike some professions (for example: Civil Engineering), there is no real regulation or prevailent society to make sure that people develop by a set of standards. Having something like that, would go a long ways toward fixing problems like this.

Blackboard and Webct the same thing nowadays?

[pizzach]

If Blackboard is half as horrible as Webct is ...agh. I could deal with webct until it was upgraded to webct Vista. When the program learned about the concepts of popups and browser sniffing, it crossed the line of being more annoying than useful. Do educational institutions even try out the computer software they are buying?

My webct sessions usually go something like this: Dammit! I just want to press the back button. Why can't I press the back button!?

Big App That Doesn't Work

[iMouse]

Cisco's Clean Access system does not work properly with Windows Vista. Clean Access is used in a lot of college environments in order to help keep student, staff, and faculty machines from being compromised. Clean Access acts as a point of authentication to allow a user access to the network, but that is not its main focus. In conjunction with the Clean Access Agent for Windows, it can also check if Windows Updates, Antispyware and Antivirus packages are installed and up to date. These packages can be set to either be optional or mandatory by the Clean Access administrator.

Clean Access (at this time) detects Vista as an unsupported operating system. However, there are workarounds that allow the agent to be installed and launch on Vista. The workaround does not perform any of the checks to make sure Vista has all of its patches installed or if it has antivirus loaded. So, in a nutshell, it is just acting as a point of authentication to the network at this time.

It seems to amaze me that Microsoft and a huge company like Cisco couldn't get this software Vista ready for when Vista was available. Cisco has been promising an upgrade to Vista compatibility for sometime in April. A little late especially when Vista boxes already are targets of attack from exploits such as animated cursor crap...

Never upgrade unless needed

[Jusma]

This situation affects our college as well. We extensively use web based services such as Blackboard, Centra ("online classes" software), online software deployment, etc. Conversely, some other tools such as Sharepoint, which is ironically Microsoft, and some VPN access tools do not work with any other browser other than IE! However, we really have a very active computer services department which warned everyone ahead to not upgrade to IE7. It's always better to upgrade a software only when it is needed and at least 6 months after it realeases, to give time for developers to correct bugs/issues.

Re:Never upgrade unless needed

[Anonymous Coward]

"Conversely, some other tools such as Sharepoint, which is ironically Microsoft, ... do not work with any other browser other than IE!"

This is actually not true. I work for the central IT department on campus, and run Linux w/ Firefox as my browser. I haven't had a problem accessing my files in Sharepoint in the old version, and the new version works just as well. Active X components do not work without the FF addon, but in general I try not to use these anyways as a good security practice.

Also, the team that implements Sharepoint for us also got it working in Opera and IE/FF for the Mac.

Re:Never upgrade unless needed

[Jusma]

You can view the files and download them directly, but as far as I know, it is not possible to edit it directly off the browser. For my expectation, that is not enough, when I have access to Groove as well.

Examsoft & VPN Clients Affected too

[Ranger]

At our university a lot of students bought or got brand new Vista laptops over the Christmas holidays and lo and behold they could no longer use the Cisco VPN client (4.8.01.0300) supposedly their is a beta that sorta works. We also found out a vendor called Examsoft which allows students to take tests on their laptop also wasn't compatible with Vista and there was no ETA when it would be.

Exam4

[Anonymous Coward]

We were recently told that our law exams cannot be taken on Exam4 under Windows Vista. A new version with Vista compatibility will be out by the summer according to the same email. Few students are running Vista, but I'm sure they're disappointed, since most students prefer taking the long written exams of law school on a computer.

32%

[danheretic]

I work for an Engineering college. Our current Windows build has us install 81 different software package. Many of these are not common elsewhere, but some are standard engineering apps. I recently did a test install on Vista and found that 26 of these simply didn't work with Vista.

Due to the economies of the situation -- some of these apps were one-time purchases of $15k or more that are updated anywhere from every 5 years to never -- I don't see us moving to Vista within the next couple of years at least.

Vista FirstClass problems

[Anonymous Coward]

We've received reports of people having problems using FirstClass on Vista. MIT doesn't use FirstClass but we get many students who encounter a variety of serious problems with Vista on their notebooks. As a result, and in the context of the transition to Linux, IS&T is currently discussing to recommend only Linux and Mac OS based notebooks to incoming students.

Re:Vista FirstClass problems

[chugadie]

Hahah that's good.

"IS&T is currently discussing to recommend only Linux and Mac OS based notebooks to incoming students."

Be prepared to answer questions like:

    How do I turn my volume up and down / Why don't my keyboard keys work
    Where is the blue E?
    Why doesn't hibernate/sleep mode work?
    Why can't I open any documents that anyone sends me?
    Why can't I watch videos online?
    Why can't I connect to the VPN?
    What's i386? I thought I had a Pentium Duo core 8000MX9 52P something something
    Why doesn't my bluetooth work?
    What does mounting mean?
    Etc etc...

Most of those only apply to Linux, but still. I use Linux on a laptop and have been for 4 years. Nothing works, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else, maybe old people that only really use e-mail and Web. But kids these days want to hibernate and listen to music and sync with their phone. Most of these things might be possible, but they don't happen out of the box. And no, just saying "ubuntu" doesn't count for jack. Ubuntu is still Linux, they don't have magical kernels or magical drivers that other distros don't have, it's just Linux with brown wallpaper.

Re:Vista FirstClass problems

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want all of that out of the box buy Linspire or Xandros or a laptop with Linux pre-configured. Didn't you get the memo about Dell?

You can always use a liveUSB to just to access the network apps and use windows for all of your DRM related crap. Use MxSlax creator for windows if you want. Can it be any easier?

Re:Vista FirstClass problems

[Anonymous Coward]

You can solve the entire problem by using VM Player with a light distro and Firefox as the desktop. You bypass all of the issues of the host OS and can run the image on all major platforms plus you only need to update the VMware image.

The school can control the variables within the virtual environment eliminating most if not all of the problems. All can be done at relatively little cost.

Re:Vista FirstClass problems

[Anonymous Coward]

"How do I turn my volume up and down / Why don't my keyboard keys work"

Click on the volume control.. (KDE)
load the package that your keyboard keys use!

        "Where is the blue E?"
ies4linux will fix that or just make a blue ie icon for firefox or opera!

        "Why doesn't hibernate/sleep mode work?"
Cause the manufactors refuse to open up code (probably because the laptop manufactories are at war with each other)

        "Why can't I open any documents that anyone sends me?"
Stop using closed document formats.. Ask the sender of the document to save as to something compatible with your stuff perferably the open document format (or older word format!)

        "Why can't I watch videos online?"
your mplayer is probly not installed or variant.. make sure you have the right codecs installed

        "Why can't I connect to the VPN?"
-Do you even have a vpn client installed? if not find one compatible with your vpn?!

        "What's i386? I thought I had a Pentium Duo core 8000MX9 52P something something"

It represents the Intel architecture. That all the latest and compitition processors are compatible with. You could get a few more bangs for your buck if you use a kernel compiled right for your processor. and yes you do still have what ever processor you mentioned!

        "Why doesn't my bluetooth work?"
Add in a blue tooth package.. probly would not hurt!

"What does mounting mean?"

Means give me access to a harddrive.. or a cdrom.. frig man what are you running.. if your harddrive is not mounting or usb or cdrom is not auto mounting you are running something outta date ?!

I have been using Linux for more then 4 years.. but mainly I been using a debian based distro.. not sure what you have been using! But I don't seem to really have thous sort of problems.. I am enjoying a fast solid OS with nothing like a antivirus program to protect me from the operating system slowing my system down.

Don't buy from a company (manufactor0 if they don't like to share and with hold or do not contrubute to the evolving world of linux if your going to use linx.. Companys only want to sell stuff that sells.. if you stop buying they will listen..

how many problems must we endure till the people understand if its not muilti OS supported they are going to have problems growing and problems with support. The beatings (money lost and aggravated experiences) will continue until moral improves

vpn

[derniers]

vpn doesn't work with Vista here so ITS isn't supporting it (and ITS is leaning towards going to all Macs with Parallels for the few programs that only run on XP- which is a big switch)

Fancy Web 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when people stray away from simple Web apps and start venturing into Ajax/XHTML/Xpath/CSS3 territory. Those technologies and their implementations are unstable and just *happen* to work on the current browsers if you do X, Y, and Z to get them running. Then developers get comfortable with those hacks and think that's the way things are supposed to be. When a new browser comes out that doesn't allow certain Javascript functions or has enhanced security, the developer's original *hacks* don't work.

I've always felt that logicampus is out of touch with cutting-edge Web 2.0 functionality, but then I remember that there are schools that still use win98, IE4, and other very old technologies. I like not having any fancy ajax stuff in there, it forces the UI design to be solid in the first place.

Re:Fancy Web 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, AFAIK there isn't even really any "Web2" AJAX type stuff or anything of the like in Blackboard - its just a shitty excuse of a webclient to submit homework/papers and the instructor to communicate back. Many of my instructors have blatantly said that its crap and is really only for the new instructors that can't figure out anything else (how can you not figure out something, then be able to work something as annoying as Blackboard)...

MATLAB works with Vista with no problem

[WARM3CH]

MATLAB is the main program I use in Windows at my office everyday and since Feb. when I've upgraded my system to Vista I never had a problem with MATLAB.

@ Virginia Tech

[scubanator87]

Here at Virginia Tech The College of Engineering (COE) Is requiring fall freshman for the '07 school year to meet these requirements. Platform: Tablet PC Convertible OS: Windows XP Pro Tablet Edition w/ SP2 (Vista Info)* PC Processor speed: Core 2 Duo (dual core) 1.83 GHz or higher Memory (RAM): 2 GB Hard Disk Drive: 100 GB or bigger ; 5400 RPM spindle speed or better Video RAM: 128 MB CD/DVD drive: DVD+-R writeable DVD Input/Output Ports: USB 2.0 Wireless: 802.11 a/g NIC/Ethernet Card: 10/100/1000 Ethernet Card Warranty: 3 Year onsite with accident coverage (recommend 4 years)** External Backup Drive: USB external hard drive of 160GB or more; one touch/push-button backup capability *** The requirements are so outrageous for XP, for Vis+a however they will be just above minimum. The school also says that if you upgrade to vista your on your own as far as getting help from the university trouble shooting. This is all because Autodesk Inventor and Matlab don't yet fully work with vista and are required. Whats more is our school is attempting to move entirely on line (now about 70% of all things can be done online) and we use blackboard extensively. Whats more, On our blackboard login pages, they say not to use IE7 because of compatibility issues. On another online admin interface, they tell students to upgrade to FF 2 and IE 7 for better protection. This is one reason why there is building momentum to get FF 2 on our start of the year "Get Connected" CDs which install AV, activate windows Firewall, turn on auto updates, and check network settings.

Blackboard

[loconet]

I'm a professional web developer. I've worked in the field for 5+ years and can tell a decent web application by just using it for a while. I have recently gone back to University and have gotten the chance to use Blackboard. My school uses it for everything from general announcements, to posting marks, posting of assignments, etc. While it does the minimum necessary job most of the time, it is a mediocre package IMO. The interface is very inconsistent, very confusing to navigate, glitches are experienced by students and teachers alike every term. I have yet to experience a single term in which profs do not have problems posting assignments, documents, etc. Somehow Blackboard always manages to leave half of the class out. The smarter profs make use of their own University web space to create a simple html page where they post their information. Whenever blackboard is involved, it is generally a messy experience.

That being said, why the hell does a web application break with an Operating System update? Is Microsoft at fault here? Did they mock around with how POST/GET variables get sent to the server or how the browser accepts server responses? Are cookies randomly getting erased from IE? CSS/HTML glitches in the new IE rendering the pages useless? Or is this Blackboard's own code depending on some obscure ActiveX/IE functionality that is no longer there in Vista and thus violating the #1 reason why web applications are so useful? - They are supposed to work everywhere, no matter what OS we use! I'm thinking it's the latter.

Re:Blackboard

[lordofthechia]

why the hell does a web application break with an Operating System update? "You are about to upload homework 6 due in 8 seconds through blackboard. Cancel or Allow?"

That said, how much does blackboard/WebCT set back universities?

Blackboard Horrors

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former Blackboard admin for about 4 years, I can say without a doubt that Blackboard is a shoddy product at best.

What I remember personally is constant battles to keep all of the servers operational. It was a poorly written java/tomcat app that did not scale, and required 8 running app servers and a dedicated sql box (all dual xeons) just to handle about 250 concurrent connections. (We were testing a Moodle installation, that handled the same load running on an old dell workstation!)

The only reason we used Bb was a *cough* very expensive state contract which we had no control over.

Also lots of instructors arent very computer savvy, and retraining something even as simple as a web app can be cost prohibitive.

As a matter of fact Im looking for a place to take online classes right now to continue my education, and so far my only requirement is that we NOT use Blackboard.

As for Microsoft waffling, they should have just said "Not our problem", as many others here have noted.

They need to just take Bb out back and shoot it anyway.

The issue.

[JKConsult]

In particular, the Visual Text Box Editor--which offers controls for entering and formatting text, equations, and multimedia files--in the Discussion Board and other areas of Blackboard does not work properly for those with Vista and IE7 in some cases. Many academic IT departments are suggesting that students and teachers either use an alternative browser such as FireFox or Opera, or disable the feature altogether.

I work at the Help Desk for the University of Texas, and was actually the first person to field a complaint from a student on this issue. Someone looked into it, and we did isolate it to only those computers running Vista and IE7. IE7 on XP works fine. It seems that the VTBE uses an Active X control to install itself. On XP, IE7 asks if you want to allow the ActiveX control. On Vista, the UAC takes over, but for some reason, doesn't even ask "Allow or Deny?" It just silently kills it, with no notice. (Note: someone much more knowledgeable than me worked on this and explained it to me, so this is second-hand. Don't crucify me for something erroneous.)

We haven't issued an advisory yet, and it's actually been surprising how few people have called on the issue. None of my classes use the discussion section, and it seems that the vast majority at the University don't, else we would be seeing a lot more calls.

My imprecise language

[j_f_chamblee]

MATLAB is the main program I use in Windows at my office everyday and since Feb. when I've upgraded my system to Vista I never had a problem with MATLAB..

What I should have said is that the following programs are not supported under Vista, rather than stating that they don't run. The program I spend the most time with is ArcGIS. Mostly, I simply *hate* performing upgrades. I have been using the two terms interchangeably to help justify my decision to wait until ArcGIS is no longer supported under Windows XP before I changing over to Vista. If all goes well, I won't have anything to do for a couple of years.

App compat is 3rd partys responsibility

[crispybit]

While this IS slashdot and I am rather familiar with the typical MS bashings that go on here, application compatibility is the responsibility of the 3rd party ISV. Microsoft has been pushing application compatibility for the better part of the past 2 years, even flying bigger ISVs out to main campus for FREE to participate in the application compatibility labs. Yes MS is an easy target to flame but lets put blame in its proper place.

Works For me Kinda

[DesertBlade]

I use Vista IE7 and blackboard at WSU. It works but, blackboard installed Java 1.5 runtime and it crashed Vista (on a fresh install). I install Java 1.6 and Blackboard works, but gives me warnings on how this version of Java is not supported in Blackboard. I think the prblem is more in the Java and not in the blackboard. PS both suck.

blackboard.... ha

[blueadept1]

blackboard, and its old counterpart webct are absolute shit. takes forever to load, crashes firefox (and sometimes IE7) like nobody's business. uses java like its the next coming of jesus. stupid popup to check your browser. absolute garbage.

Donations

[pogson]

I am in a place where the curriculum is from 1992 (the last millenium...). There seems to be a reluctance to mandate PCs in every classroom because of the costs.

I strongly advocate that every geek drop in at a local school or school division and talk to them about IT. The existing clunkers may make fine thin clients and a few new servers do not cost much to use as Linux terminal servers (see http://ltsp.org/ ). There are several distros that automate the conversion of a reasonable PC with two NICs, some extra RAM and storage into a Linux terminal server so that the old machines or new thin clients have only to show the pictures and receive the clicks. Thus a whole lab gets to log in and run on a single good server. Maintenance is down an order of magnitude this way as only one machine needs a file system. Debian, Ubuntu, SkoleLinux and K12LTSP have reasonable repositories for schools. These system do everything a school may need except allow full screen video to every seat. All the normal click/gawk/click stuff works beautifully. Teachers can easily monitor/control each student using VNC or whatever. I like to log a student out when they wander... or I block their favourite time-wasting sites. These are powerfull payoffs for schools who make a small investment in effort to install such a system. It is useful in a single classroom, a lab, or a whole building.

Schools that have a bit of money to spend can invest in a powerful server that can run a whole school over gigabit/s. A motherboards like TYAN S3992 (see http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid= 235 ) are just made for this with Lots of RAM, dual gigabit/s NICs, and dual Socket F Opterons. The investment in such a server is spread over every seat in the system and the per-seat cost can be $25 or so for the server, free systems donated by government or business ($0) or new thin clients such as NTAVO 6040 ($139) with LCD screen, USB keyboard and mouse really is very cost effective and easy to maintain. Having a single server is a little less reliable as a single point of failure but having fewer parts also saves money.

Sloppy coding, indeed.

[Anonymous Coward]

At the district I work at, we use a web based Student Information System called eSchoolPlus. The first iteration was designed exclusively around Internet Explorer. The salesman told us it would work on Macs, but failed to mention that we'd have to dig up a copy of Internet Explorer 5 for all the teachers. Nothing worked outside of Internet Explorer, and the system was completely useless on the Mac.

Fast forward about 8 months and the company started rewriting the system from ground up. The morons are still using ActiveX controls and coding everything around Internet Explorer 6. Despite claims that this time it really is platform independent, again, 1/2 the functions of the website still don't work outside of Internet Explorer 6 for Windows. So we have to have THREE web browsers on the Macs just so teachers can do scoring, attendance, and grades: Safari, Firefox, and IE 5. There is no one browser that will work all three features.

We got fed up and called Pentamation (the company that owns eSchool) so we could actually troubleshoot the problems in person on a Mac with Safari and Firefox. We explained to them that they need to stop using Internet Explorer 5 because it hasn't been updated in almost ten years. After asking them to find a Mac with a similar setup, they told us they don't have a Mac to test it on.

Pitt

[Seanasy]

The University of Pittsburgh has a site license for Vista but they won't release it to students, faculty or staff until they can work compatibility problems with networks, vpn and common third party apps.

It's not Vista, it's Blackboard

[TheGavster]

Blackboard is the real problem here; it doesn't really work in ANY browser. It sort of works in IE6, except that the back button is usually broken. It continues to astound me how sites that are essentially a list of links to files can break under any browser, let alone the modern selection.

Because Blackboard sucks balls

[Christianfreak]

seriously I can't figure out why they are the largest provider in this area. I guess colleges like software that sucks.

Look, I'm not an MS fan but why should they be responsible if software doesn't work with their new release? The betas have been out for months, plenty of time for BB to test and fix these problems. Besides if your web app relies on the OS then you're doing it wrong! /rant

Incompatibility

[Ant P.]

Meanwhile, are there any other common college apps that Vista fails to work with?
I'd guess there are, otherwise my college would've upgraded IE6 and VS6.0 by now at least...

"Blackboard says they'll have a fix..."

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate this. The implication is that the problem is with Blackboard. It's just like so many people think that when a web page renders well only in MS IE, it is a problem with the web site, or worse "with all other browsers".

When all the cars on the highway are driving the wrong direction, you really have to wonder who is going the wrong way.

When a web site doesn't look right in Firefox, it is most likely more correct to say the problem is with the designer's thinking only in terms of the one, non-standards-compliant browser, i.e., the Microsoft product.

Similarly, that Blackboard doesn't work on top of Vista is probably more accurately thought of as a problem with Vista...

IE7 blows and Vista sucks.

[macdaddy357]

Since Microsoft started pushing IE7 on XP users as a "critical update", all kinds of people who must log into intranets and VPNs from home for work have lost their ability to do so, unless they roll back to IE6. Sadly, Vista users can't do that. Vista, so far is worse than Windows ME. We didn't need it. We didn't want it, and the computer capable of running it well is still science-fiction.

MiniTab doesn't work either.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is used in teaching statistics in every Cal State University in California. Not sure about elsewhere.

Does it have to be anyone's fault?

[DarkOx]

It seems to me that Blackboard released a project that worked correctly(lets pretend ok) on a specified list of operating systems.

Microsoft released a new operating system and never claimed that all your old stuff will still work, just that you most likely can still use your old stuff. That product works(lets pretend ok) as specified. Its also worth noteing Microsoft continues to sell their previous system.

If there are any problems the only people who deserve blame are those working at the IT departments at these schools. Perhaps they should have validated all the software the school depends on when using Vista before deploying it. Just a thought.

I know this is Slashdot (hence the car analogy) but holding M$ responsible for this or Blackboard makes no sense at all. Suppose I order a turbo charger from Eaton, for a 1975 Ford Mustang. Next I get all pissed and acuse Ford and or Eaton of scewing up when the thing will not fit on my 2005 Ford Mustang.

Seriously these is a preschool skill, they give you some pegs and a board with holes. You have some round pegs and some square ones, as well as round holes, and square ones. You are supposed to take away something form the experience of playing with these items. One that they are good for thowing at the kid you don't like, and two that some things don't fit together and others do. Its your task as a human being to study things and figure out how and what they can be used for or combined with.

Blackboard makes the baby Jesus cry

[typidemon]

Overall, I can't think of a way for an organisation to create an application that was worse than Blackboard. I still regard my time having to interact with that piece of shit software as some of my worst times at University. All in all, using Blackboard only made me, and my colleagues, dumber.

If only one University decides that Blackboard isn't worth using, then Vista has now made it into my heart as a successful product.

MathXL

[Anonymous Coward]

...Runs on ActiveX/IE. Still!

ExamSoft's Softest

[eakthecat]

I don't know if this has been already mentioned, but it's been my experience that ExamSoft (a critical program for Law Students) produced by SoftTest is incompatable with Vista. This is causing a lot of problems, at least at the Law School I work at, as we require all our students to own a laptop. While we do have recommendations posted, includign a warning to only buy computers with XP Pro, people don't always read them. If they buy a laptop with Vist installed, they end up not being able to use it for school or the bar exam (their finals and the bar exam both require ExamSoft). Those unlucky students are forced to handwrite their exams - not plesant. It's getting tedious for us as the students keep showing up, yelling at us: "I paid how much for the latest laptop and now you're telling me I can use it at school?!?" To be fair, this is as much problem with SoftTest as it is with Microsoft. What makes it dificult, however, is that we used to have an XP Pro site license, so anyone with an unsupported OS could have XP Pro installed free of charge. Microsoft, in their infinate wisdom, however, saw fit to "upgrade" our site license to a Vista one. Now, we legally are no longer able to downgrade people's machines. When we complained to Microsoft about this, their response was that they wanted to "encourage" their large, volume license customers to upgrade so we can experience all the "benefits" associated with Vista! As a side note, our print-quota software doesn't work with Vista, yet, either. Needless to say, we're very unhappy and sinc Vista was released... the number of Macs in the building has skyrocketed. Granted, the new Mac users still need to aquire a copy of XP Pro, but... they're usually expecting to have to buy it elsewhere and have us install it via BootCamp. The Vista users, however, are pissed about spending lots of money on a new laptop and then having to spend more to "cripple" it by downgrading to XP. While the blame does lie primarially with SoftTest and our printer quota software, it is unconcionable that Microsoft is not willign to work with us and let us continue to offer XP so that the students can use the School-critical software on their new laptops!

Re:ExamSoft's Softest

[eakthecat]

Damn.

It's been so long since I've posted on Slashdot, I forgot that I have hard-code line and paragraph breaks. My bad! Sorry!

I've got the fix for them ...

[i_wanna_be_a_scienti]

Its all on this site here

Haha indeed, but...

[andreyw]

The article summary (no, I'm not reading the article.... after all, I'm on Slashdot) somehow makes it sound as if it is Microsoft's fault or problem, that some third party software doesn't work right. It really isn't. It's the third part software developer's fault.

It really is up to Microsoft to dicate how their next OS will work. If they want to make some changes, which they consider critical from a security standpoint (never mind end result, effectiveness, whatever... after all, the road to hell /is/ paved with good intentions), the third-party developers don't really have a right to complain that /THEIR/ software was broken by Microsoft. It wasn't broken -
                      a) it was not designed well in the first place, to be so affected by the changes
                      b) it has failed to adapt to the changes in Microsoft's OS, given PLENTY of time.

After all, Vista has not popped out all of a sudden, like a mushroom after a night's rain shower. So Blackboard, Inc wants to tell us it couldn't make it's shit work after _5_ years of leaked Vista and Longhorn releases and public and private betas? So who really is the incompetent party here?

Besides, Blackboard sucks. It doesn't scale well with a growing user base and thus needs insane hardware specs to run reasonably. Bah.

Its not Vista; its IE 7

[dfoulger]

Much of this discussion has been predicated on a faulty premise. The problem with Blackboard isn't Vista. Its IE7.

I've been making extensive use of Blackboard this year in teaching two classes. I've been using it as a supplement to readings, in class discussions, and material on my web site. I'm not going to say that Blackboard is the world's greatest software, but it has proved functional enough for the limited purposes I've used it for.

Students have reported a variety of problems using Blackboard, but most students have had no trouble with the system. The biggest source of problems appears to be IE7, which breaks in a variety of different ways. Blackboard doesn't appear to be doing anything fancy in the places where IE7 fails. As best I can tell, this is the direct result of another round of Microsoft not implementing well accepted web standards in web markup. There are actually two levels to the problem. One level is their past incompatibilty with web standards, which caused many web sites to have to identify browsers to know what code to run for Javascript and other purposes. For what its worth, many of the recently reported problems with blackboard and IE7 can be fixed by changing the blackboard code to treat IE7 like Firefox. It doesn't solve all the problems, however.

In the end, the fundamental problem is that Microsoft continues to treat the web as a place where it can do anything it wants. The result are dozens of markup features, from iframes to location attributes in JavaScript, that should be easy to use, but aren't.

I have no great love for Blackboard, but I don't think Blackboard is responsible for this problem. They'll have to fix it, of course, and the sooner they do so the better, but they would be well advised, in the short term, to add a check for IE7 that directs users to other browsers under a banner along the lines of "IE7 engineered not to work with this product (and many others). We suggest you try Firefox or Opera instead."