We implement software solutions to help us become more productive. These pieces of code allow us to do more through creating efficiencies. Bad software hinders our ability to do the work. Normally I would call this unproductive, but I had a weird thought fighting a human resources program this morning. Unproductive software is both disruptive and…
I am going through my software installed on my work computer in order to transfer to a new one. This came to my attention as something potentially relevant to others. A common problem we hear doing web-based learning management system is the web browser crashed before the user could submit a form. The complaints we…
The below text is from a ticket I opened with Blackboard this morning. I used this unix command to dump a list of all supported browsers from the browserchecker.xml. grep -A 1 ‘supported=”true”‘ serverconfs/browserchecker.xml | grep descript | awk -F\> ‘{print $2}’ | awk -F\< ‘{print $1}’ The list of supported browsers does not match…
After Firefox just upgraded, I noticed it did a check to on the compatibility of the Add-Ons I have. Should any be incompatible, then the add-on gets disabled. The rationale being, “Add-Ons which do not work under the current version should not be enabled.” Seems like I as the user of the software really ought…
I was excited to read today a Google Chrome Beta is now available on Linux. Gmail and Google Reader have weird font issues for me on both Linux and Window Firefox. So I tend split my browser load based on where the sites work best for me. Making the Linux switch meant leaving Chrome behind…
Rather than depend on end users to accurately report the browser used, I look for the user-agent in the web server logs. (Yes, I know it can be spoofed. Power users would be trying different things to resolve their own issues not coming to us.) Followers of this blog may recall I changed the Weblogic…
Was using this RSVP form with Google Chrome and found the reCAPTCHA was telling me I repeatedly failed the Turing test. After the sixth time, I decided it might be my browser, so I tried it in Firefox which worked fine. Curious, I went looking for a possible problem between reCAPTCHA and Chrome. According to…
Apparently LinkedIn.com let their SSL certificate expire this morning. Assuming they really let it expire, this is a big oops. Hopefully, someone in their Production Operations Group has been alerted to the problem and is working on getting a new one. The screenshot is from Firefox 3. In the old days, Firefox or Netscape used…
Image via Wikipedia Apparently the official launch of Firefox 3 is tomorrow. So we get to look forward to 4+ months of students and faculty members asking why Blackboard Vista doesn’t recognize Fx 3 as supported. Every week’s call with Blackboard will have the conversation: Us: Is it supported yet? Bb: Not yet. We are…