Mark Wescott wrote to a Blackboard Learn 9 list,
Imagine a world where Bb Inc. provides browser checkers for each Rev/SP combo, and all we (aka “The Customers”) have to do is place a link on our Bb logon page to the browser checker that matches our production environment…. mmmm serenity.
Said browser checkers would:
- be GREAT customer service; EVERY institution that uses Bb would benefit
- be relatively simple for Bb Inc’s staff to create
- be branded with Bb’s logos and marketing
- be up to date
- be released commensurately with each SP
- have a static, publicly available URL
- be found on the Course Sites logon page
- eliminate a topic that appears about every 6 months on this board
Sadly, we Blackboard Vista clients have Mark’s “imagine a world”. Yet still the topic appears in our email lists every time a new web browser or version of Vista was released. Why?
- Telling a user their web browser may have problems is not a deterrent. Their (correct) opinion is Blackboard should fix the product so the browser they use every day will work. Students and instructors should not have to become a computer geek to take or teach a class.
- Blackboard only checks a small amount of browser and operating system combinations, so potentially fine web browsers were marked “not tested”. Blackboard has better things to do than test the long tail of browsers. So users have stopped trusting the browser checker because untested browsers often do work. The browser checker has cried “Wolf!” too many times for people to believe it.
- The browser checker is not consistent with the official supported browser list. Oh, and that is intentional. Browsers which used to work are nor removed from the list unless clients make a stink about them not working. Blackboard stopped testing them, so they are clueless whether it continues to work, but users are not alerted to the problems.
Imagine a world where Blackboard products work in every web browser because it does not reply on coding for specific browsers. You know… Web Standards.
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