WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2 Release Notes

WebCT Campus Edition™ 4.1 Service Pack 2 Release Notes

Updated February 27, 2004

Contents

About WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2
Supported Configurations
New Features and Enhancements
Issues Resolved in WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2

About WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2 | Top

WebCT Campus Edition™ is a course management system offering a complete set of easy-to-use teaching and learning tools for course development, course delivery, and course administration.

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2 provides all of the fixes available since the release of WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 1. To obtain these fixes, you must install WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2 over your WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 1 installation.

Important: If you have customized the login page, login error pages, and/or logout page, before you install WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2, we recommend you back up the login.html, error.html, and/or logout.html files in <webct_install_directory>/webct/webct/generic/ticket. When you install WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2, these files will be replaced with the default files.

Supported Configurations | Top

Server Operating Systems

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x supports the following server operating systems:

Windows® 2000 Server SP4 operating system, Windows® 2000 Advanced Server SP4 operating system. Warning: Because WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x uses a newer version of Perl (version 5.6.1), do not install WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x with WebCT 3.6.x or earlier on the same Windows server. WebCT Campus Edition 3.7.x, 3.8.x, 4.0.x, and 4.1.x use the same version of Perl and can be installed on the same Windows server operating system.
Red Hat® Linux® 7.3 (Kernel 2.4.18-3) operating systems for Intel® processors
Important: If you are running Red Hat Linux 7.3, you need to install the Red Hat Linux 6.2 libstdc++ compatibility package. At the time of publication, the most recent version of this package was compat-libstdc++-6.2-2.9.0.16.i386.rpm.

To find out if the package is installed, run the following command:
rpm -q compat-libstdc++-6.2
If the package is installed, the package name displays.

To install the package:
1. Download the file from:
  http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/redhat/7.3/i386/compat-libstdc++-6.2-2.9.0.16.i386.html
2. Log in as root and type:
  rpm -i compat-libstdc++-6.2-2.9.0.16.i386.rpm

Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1 (Kernel 2.4.9-e3) operating system for Intel processors
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES 2.1 (Kernel 2.4.9-e3) operating system for Intel processors
Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 3.0 (Kernel 2.4.21-4.ELsmp) operating system for Intel processors
Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES 3.0 (Kernel 2.4.21-4.ELsmp) operating system for Intel processors
Sun™ SPARC® Solaris™ 8 and 9 operating systems

These operating systems are supported at the time of the release. Additional configurations may be added to this list after the release. For the latest information, refer to the WebCT Support Knowledge Base. Go to http://help.webct.com/knowledgebase and search for "server operating system."

IMS Content Migration Utility

With WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x, the WebCT IMS Content Migration Utility is now part of the WebCT Campus Edition software and is included with the 4.1.x installation; administrators do not have to install it separately.

Perl

Perl is the primary scripting/programming language for most of the programs and program modules in WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x. Perl 5.6.1 is bundled with the WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x distribution file. Installing WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x also installs Perl within a WebCT directory. For information on Perl, go to the Perl web site at www.perl.com.

Warning for Windows operating system users: Because WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x uses a newer version of Perl (version 5.6.1), do not install WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x with WebCT 3.6.x or earlier on the same Windows operating system. WebCT Campus Edition 3.7.x, 3.8.x, 4.0.x, and 4.1.x use the same version of Perl and can be installed on the same Windows operating system.

Apache™

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x includes Apache 2.0.47 web server software. WebCT installs the Apache server within its own installation (<webct_install_directory>\webct\server\) and does not overwrite or modify any existing Apache server included with your operating system.

Client Operating Systems

Windows® 98 (2nd edition) operating system
Windows 2000 operating system
Windows XP operating system
Mac OS® 9 operating system
Mac OS X v.10.1.x and v.10.2.x operating systems

Browsers

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x supports the following browsers:

Windows 98 (2nd edition), Windows 2000, and Windows XP operating systems:

Netscape Navigator® 6.2.x, 7.0, and 7.1 browsers
Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.0, 5.5, and 6.0 browsers. Note: Internet Explorer 5.5 SP1 is not supported.
AOL® 7.0 and 8.0 browsers
Mozilla 1.5 browser

Mac OS 9.x operating system:

Netscape Navigator 6.2.x browser
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 browser

Mac OS X v.10.1.x operating system:

Netscape Navigator 6.2.x, 7.0, and 7.1 browsers
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 and 5.2 browsers
AOL for Mac OS X browser
Mozilla 1.5 browser

Mac OS X v.10.2.x operating system:

Netscape Navigator 6.2.x, 7.0, and 7.1 browsers
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 browser
AOL for Mac OS X browser
Mozilla 1.5 browser

Mac OS X v.10.3.x operating system:

Netscape Navigator 6.2.x, 7.0, and 7.1 browsers
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 browser
AOL for Mac OS X browser
Mozilla 1.5 browser

Note: For the most current information on supported browsers, go to WebCT's Browser Tune-up Page.

To optimize your browser for WebCT Campus Edition, we recommend the following browser settings:

For all browsers, enable JavaScript™.
To use Chat, Whiteboard, the edit-on® Pro HTML editor, and the WebEQ™ Equation Editor, enable Java™.
To use ticket-based authentication, client browsers must allow cookies.
To use all features in Content Module, client browsers must allow cookies.
For all browsers, enable cascading style sheets (.css).
For all users, set cached pages to update "automatically" (Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Netscape Navigator 6.2.x), or "when the page is out of date" (Netscape Navigator 7.0).

Language Plug-Ins

All WebCT Campus Edition 4.0 Language Plug-ins are compatible with WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x; however, some minor changes to the interface were introduced in this release. New screen elements and phrasing will not be translated and will appear in English in all localizations. WebCT Campus Edition 4.1.x is not compatible with any Language Plug-ins released prior to 4.0.

New Features and Enhancements | Top

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2 includes the following new features and enhancements:

Apache web server software is upgraded to version 2.0.47. This version of Apache addresses several security issues found in earlier versions of Apache. For more information, go to http://httpd.apache.org.
OpenSSL software is upgraded to version 0.9.6l. This version of OpenSSL addresses several security issues found in earlier versions of OpenSSL 0.9.6. For more information, go to http://www.openssl.org.
Performance has been improved when entering cross-listed courses for users registered in a large number of courses.

Issues Resolved in WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2 | Top

TOOL/AREA	FIX DESCRIPTION
Administration	In certain cases, if a course was used as a template to create another course, the designer's mail messages appeared blank in the new course. This has been corrected.
API	See Enterprise API or Standard API.
Assignments	In certain cases, designers were unable to view files that they submitted on behalf of students. This has been corrected. Assignments with Available From and Available Until dates with different years could not be edited. This has been corrected.
Authentication	In certain cases, authentication against a Windows Domain Controller failed. This has been corrected.
Content Migration Utility	Course packages containing titles encoded in UTF-8 could not be be imported properly. This has been corrected.
Content Module	Some versions of Internet Explorer did not allow Microsoft Word documents in a Content Module to be saved successfully. This has been corrected. In certain cases, multiple files could not be added properly to a Content Module. This has been corrected. Content pages containing a <basefont> tag used a lot of server resources. This has been corrected. Content pages containing an empty HTML tag used a lot of server resources. This has been corrected. Linking from one Content Module page to another page containing a space in the file name caused the target page to open in a new window. This has been corrected.
Discussions	File attachments with the hash character (#) in the file name could not be downloaded successfully. This has been corrected. A security issue was found and has been corrected. When resetting the Discussions database, message index numbers did not restart at 1. This has been corrected. On a Macintosh OS X operating system, posted messages sometimes did not contain message text. This has been corrected.
Enterprise API	In certain cases, warnings caused by invalid import data stopped subsequent data in the same import from being processed. This has been corrected.
Homepage	In certain cases, upper and lower textblocks containing HTML with a background attribute caused an internal server error. This has been corrected.
Index	Index entries containing a single quotation mark (') caused a JavaScript error. This has been corrected.
Internationalization	When viewing the Question Database in some languages, not all column headers fit on a single line. This has been corrected.
Manage Students	Importing data for students whose User IDs begin with an underscore corrupted student data. This has been corrected. In certain cases, grade export for students enrolled in cross-listed courses did not work. This has been corrected.
Quizzes/Surveys	When viewing quiz results as a student, the page layout did not display properly. This has been corrected. Clicking More Answers for a multiple choice question that uses the Equation Editor corrupted the questions. This has been corrected. When a quiz was set to not release the score, under certain circumstances, students were able to view their quiz results. This has been corrected. When students enable the static timer for quizzes, the color of the timer did not change as time ran out. This has been corrected. Editing calculated questions did not allow both the units to be set as required and the percentage of the questions value to be set as 0. This has been corrected. When the answer choices for a multiple choice question are set to display in random order, the order of the answer choices displayed in quiz details could be wrong. This has been corrected. A security issue was found and has been corrected. Calculated questions using negative exponents were not always evaluated properly. This has been corrected.
References	When creating references for the first time in a course, selecting nonexistent resources could trigger a JavaScript error. This has been corrected.
Restore Course	Restoring courses from previous WebCT versions with a Content Module file containing an underscore in the file name did not function properly. This has been corrected.
Standard API	In certain cases, records without a value in the WebCT password field could be imported. This has been corrected.
Student Homepages	Student homepages containing only a lower textblock could not be viewed by other students. This has been corrected.
Student Presentations	In certain cases, students were unable to access sub-folders created within their presentation area. This has been corrected.
WebDAV	There were some WebDAV compatibility issues between WebCT and Macromedia® Dreamweaver® MX 6.x. This has been corrected. Due to an issue in Windows 2000 and Windows XP, when WebCT is running on port 80 or 443, a folder created via WebDAV would appear to be infinitely nested within itself. This folder actually occurred once, so the folder could be deleted by deleting any one of the the instances. We have found a way to work around this Windows issue without affecting other clients.