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?"

It was really late for me..

[Adambomb (118938)]

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 (191171)]

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 (737525)]

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 (906881)]

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..

[line-bundle (235965)]

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.

What's Microsoft got to do with it?

[davmoo (63521)]

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:

[Detritus (11846)]

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?

[batkiwi (137781)]

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 (11846)]

Sounds like a driver interface design problem.

Re:

[stebbo (757730)]

Uhh... Microsoft?? ;-)

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[BrokenHalo (565198)]

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:

[dhasenan (758719)]

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?

[hdparm (575302)]

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:

[Splab (574204)]

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.

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[Viper Daimao (911947)]

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:

[jrockway (229604)]

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?

[toadlife (301863)]

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?

[by Anonymous Coward]

What is Blackboard?

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

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

Re:

[mr_matticus (928346)]

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

Re:

[drsmithy (35869)]

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.

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[Vexorian (959249)]

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

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[belmolis (702863)]

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:

[Dunbal (464142)]

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.

Not so simple

[robinjo (15698)]

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

[1u3hr (530656)]

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:

[Mateo_LeFou (859634)]

"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".

Webapps?

[kripkenstein (913150)]

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-buil

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

[Aqua OS X (458522)]

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:

[cheater512 (783349)]

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.

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[Raven42rac (448205)]

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.

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[Dunbal (464142)]

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).

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[ticklish2day (575989)]

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

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[Dunbal (464142)]

The APIs are documented on MSDN. http://msdn2.microsoft.com/ [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.

It's a feature.

[Jacques Chester (151652)]

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

MySpace is next.

It's lack of responsibility...

[Marnhinn (310256)]

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 c

*shrug*

[fabs64 (657132)]

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:

[miro f (944325)]

you must be an RMIT student...

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[fabs64 (657132)]

:-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:

[MaelstromX (739241)]

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

The icing on the cake...

[zumbojo (615389)]

...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*

Internet Explorer 7

[YutakaFrog (1074731)]

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.

Ahh.. those students...

[DigitAl56K (805623)]

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

Yes, there are some problems with uTorrent [nivmedia.com] ;)

University of Arizona's Wireless APs

[by 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 [arizona.edu] - 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 no

So much for Data Analysis

[j_f_chamblee (253315)]

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 [e-academy.com], SAS [sas.com], MATLAB and SAP [mit.edu] and ESRI ArcGIS [esri.com]

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*.

Blackboard doesn't work on Vista?

[jez9999 (618189)]

How is this different from Blackboard on any other OS?

sloppy coding?

[briancnorton (586947)]

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)

rephrase the question correctly...

[ThePretender (180143)]

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

Vista == WinME

[erroneus (253617)]

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?

Blackboard

[loconet (415875)]

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:

[setagllib (753300)]

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 fam