Blackboard upgrade sadness

Recently, the school upgraded the Blackboard server, and I’m kind of cranky with the new version so far. In the older version, I didn’t have any problems using Firefox 2.0. However, it seems that there is something incompatible between Firefox and the new version. If I try to fill out a survey (like the one asking about what time is good for my genealogy class to meet each week) or start a new thread on a discussion board, Firefox freezes. If I then close it, I also have to go to the task manager and kill the process.

It looks as if it’s freezing when creating the text box. I poked around on the web a bit, trying to find a solution. I found a reference to the VTBE (Visual Text Box Editor) and thought that might be the problem, so I disabled it in my preferences on Blackboard. That didn’t seem to have an effect. For now, I filled out my survey and posted my introductions using Internet Explorer, but I’ll keep fiddling to try to get it to work with Firefox.

I’m also not very into the new layout for the discussion forum. I think it’s harder to scan and use. For example, before, I could browse the list and quickly see that there was a new message because of the yellow “new” image. Now, I have to scan a column of numbers. I also found, in looking through previous courses, that the list of forums is now paginated, so you don’t get all of them in one big list. That will make it more difficult to browse, I think.

So far, the experience for me has been less than stellar.