Big IDEA

Does Internet Explorer 7 eat your Blackboard visual text box editor?

22 February 2007

This seems to be a known issue. The problem is that after upgrading to Internet Explorer 7, users report that they no longer have a text box available for posting to discussion boards; instead, they just see the WYSIWYG editor tool bar.

Possible fixes

1. Use Firefox
2. Turn off the Visual Text Editor by logging in to Blackboard, clicking on Personal Information (under Tools on the left), clicking on Set Visual Text Box Editor Options, and then setting it to unavailable. This will turn off the editing tool bar, but you will at least be able to see a text box you can type in.
3. Add Blackboard to IE’s list of trusted sites.
   1. Open Internet Explorer 7
   2. Go to a discussion board in one of your courses and try to post a response or add a new thread
   3. Go to Tools > Internet Options in the Internet Explorer menu
   4. Go to the Security tab
   5. Click the Trusted Sites icon (the checkmark icon)
   6. Click the Sites button
   7. IE should add blackboard.zanestate.edu automatically; if not, type *.zanestate.edu
   8. Click Add
   9. *.zanestate.edu will move to the trusted websites list. Click Close to go back to Internet Options.
   10. Uncheck the box Require server verification (https:) for all sites in this zone.
   11. Click Close to return to Internet Options.
   12. Click OK to save your internet options
   13. Refresh the page.
   14. A message will appear in the Internet Explorer Information Bar: “This website wants to run the following add-on: ‘Microsoft (R) Dynamic HTML Editing Control’ from ‘Microsoft Corporation’. If you trust the website and the add-on and want to allow it to run, click here…”
   15. Click the message and select Run ActiveX Control from the context menu.
   16. Click Run in the Security Warning box.
   17. The Visual Text Box Editor is now configured to operate correctly within this browser.

Of the three options, the last one is probably the best solution if you want to use the visual text editor. If you don’t care about the visual text editor, then I’d recommend option 1.

Thanks to Clarion and Virginia Tech for the info.