Mac Safari and the Chat Tool

On April 24, 2007, we reported to Blackboard support that the “Chat tool and Private Chat from Who's Online Fails with Safari 2.04.” We added the additional detail that: “Chat does not work on Safari 2.04 when testing 4 out of 5 Macs. When you click on the Chat tool's "go to chat room" link or try to use private chat from Who's Online, it fails to operate. Occasionally a small popup window shows up on the top of the screen, but it is empty. Other than that, nothing happens. In all cases we were using Safari 2.04. Three of the Macs used Intel processors, two were not. Only one of the non-Intel Macs would work.”

In December, 2007 we retested the problem with an upgraded version of Safari. We found that the Chat tool still didn’t work using Safari Version 3.0.4. The only change was that sometimes the Chat window appears but the user cannot type anything (a message) to the recipient, then it closes on its own. Other tests had varied results (everything worked okay on a MacBook running OS 10.4 and Safari V 3.0.4 but failed on a MacBook Pro running OS 10.5 and Safari V 3.0.4. We reported to Blackboard that “We cannot determine if the problem is fixed with Safari 2.04. We can't test that version since when the Mac OS is upgraded it automatically upgrades the browser and we no longer have anyone on Safari 2.04. So the basic issue remains, you can just upgrade the browser number that doesn't work to 3.0.4.”

On February 18, 2008, Blackboard support responded with: “As of right now, Safari 3.0 with Mac OS 10.4, on AP2SP3 (that is; CE 6.2.3, JCCC is on CE 6.2.2) is the only certified support browser for Mac configurations. As our QA department continue with their testing and validation of browsers, OS and Vista versions, we will update the Support Browsers page. This is found through the 'Check Browsers' link.”

Bottom line: If any of your students are using Macintosh computers and Safari, don’t rely on the Chat tool.

What's the Difference between a Discussion Board, Blog and Journal

Tracy Newman has provided a short definition of the differences in Blackboard between these three similar tools:

Threaded Topic in Discussions Tool

Users post and reply to messages. Replies that are associated with the same post are grouped together, creating message threads that can be expanded and collapsed.

Blog Topic

Participants post a chronological series of entries on a particular topic. Participants can add comments to any blog entry. Newest entries come first in the list.

Here is the comments screen for the Second Post entry:
Journal Topic

A place for students to write. Journals can be kept private between the student and instructor or shared with the class.

Here is a screenshot of what the journal screen looks like for the instructor. In the left panel, you can choose which student to review. Clicking on a name gives you that student’s journal in the right panel. It looks like a blog except that oldest entries come first. You can add comments, just like a blog.


Any of the three tools can be added to any Blackboard CE 6 course.

SafeAssign Update

Blackboard has indicated that the SafeAssign central service successfully updated the system and fixed some problems within the past couple of days.

The Blackboard CE issue resolved is as follow:

• “On CE6/Vista, when Gradebook columns associated with a SafeAssign assignment were deleted, access to the SafeAssign assignment [is no longer] lost”

Blackboard further stated that “many SafeAssign users with open requests with Blackboard Support regarding SafeAssign should find that their issues are now resolved. We encourage users who have open SafeAssign issues to check whether or not they are still occurring and to update Blackboard Support on the results.”