WebCT Campus Edition™ 4.1 Service Pack 3 Release Notes

Revised July 16, 2004

Contents

About WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3
Supported Configurations
New Features and Enhancements
 Issues Resolved in WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3

About WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 | 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 3 provides all of the fixes (including hotfixes) available since the release of WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2. To obtain these fixes, you must install WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 over your WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 2 installation. Important: You must reboot the WebCT server after you have installed WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3.

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 3, 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 3, these files will be replaced with the default files.

Supported Configurations | Top

Server Operating Systems

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 supports the following server 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 Service Pack 3, the WebCT IMS Content Migration Utility is now part of the WebCT Campus Edition software and is included with the 4.1 Service Pack 3 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 Service Pack 3. Perl 5.6.1 is bundled with the WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 distribution file. Installing WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 also installs Perl within a WebCT directory. For information on Perl, go to the Perl web site at www.perl.com.

Warning for Windows server operating system users: Because WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 uses a newer version of Perl (version 5.6.1), do not install WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 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 Service Pack 3 use the same version of Perl and can be installed on the same Windows server operating system.

Apache™

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 includes Apache 2.0.49 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

Browsers

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 supports the following browsers:

Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows 2000, and Windows XP operating systems:

Mac OS 9.x operating system software:

Mac OS X v.10.1.x operating system software:

Mac OS X v.10.2.x operating system software:

Mac OS X v.10.3.x operating system software:

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:

Language Plug-Ins

WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 is compatible with all WebCT Campus Edition 4.0 and 4.1 Language Plug-ins. It 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 3 includes the following new features and enhancements:

Issues Resolved in WebCT Campus Edition 4.1 Service Pack 3 | Top

TOOL/AREA
FIX DESCRIPTION
Accessibility
  • In certain cases, the high contrast color scheme displayed incorrect colors in Content Module pages in the student interface. This has been corrected.
  • Fonts can now be successfully resized using built-in browser settings. Note: This fix applies only to courses using English. In non-English language plug-ins, fonts cannot be resized properly in all browsers.
Administration
  • Single sign-on requests with an invalid course parameter will now take the user to myWebCT.
  • When uploading records to User Management, records for existing users may appear more than one time in the uploaded file, with different courses in each line. All courses are now correctly merged into the user's record.
  • LDAP user authentication now also supports LDAPv3 servers.
  • On some Windows servers, Apache reported a large number of "AcceptEx failed" errors. For these servers, the new "Win32DisableAcceptEx" directive can be used in Apache's httpd.conf file to work around the problem. For more information, see http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/mod/mpm_winnt.html#win32disableacceptex

Assignments
  • In certain cases, assignments that students uploaded but did not submit were available to designers. This has been corrected.
  • Designers and teaching assistants were unable to download zipped submissions using Netscape 6.2 or 7.1. This has been corrected.
Authentication
  • If Kerberos was used as an authentication source, under certain circumstances, the WebCT server stopped responding. To prevent this, Kerberos has been upgraded to Kerberos Version 5, Release 1.3.2.

Calendar
  • In certain cases, editing a calendar entry containing HTML would add blank lines between each existing line. This has been corrected.
Chat and Whiteboard
  • In certain circumstances, it was possible for the Chat applet to cause the browser to freeze when switching to another WebCT tool. This has been corrected.
  • The certificate used to sign the Chat and Whiteboard applets expired on April 23, 2004. While the applet continued to function correctly, students may have received warnings after this date. The applet has been resigned with a certificate that is valid until February 25, 2006.
Content Module
  • In certain cases, action menu links in the content module of a course that was created based on another course sent students to the login page. This has been corrected.
  • In certain cases, HTML anchor tags pointing to files on the WebCT server worked only when written in lowercase letters. This has been corrected.
Course Backup
  • In certain cases, failed course backups reported that they had been successfully created. This has been corrected,
Cross-Listing
  • In certain cases, the instructor name displayed to students did not reflect changes made by the designer. This has been corrected.
Discussions
  • In certain cases, punctuation following a URL entered in the body of a message was included in the link when the message was viewed. This has been corrected.
  • With Microsoft Windows servers, attachments to messages with international characters in the file name could not be displayed. This issue has been corrected by upgrading the Apache server to version 2.0.49.
Enterprise API
  • Web-based Enterprise API export requests had extra lines before and after the XML response. This has been corrected.
  • Blank spaces are now removed consistently before and after all sourcedid.source and sourcedid.id values.
HTML Creator
  • The certificate used to sign the HTML Creator applet expired on February 5, 2004. While the applet continued to function correctly, students may have received warnings after this date. The applet has been resigned with a certificate that is valid until February 25, 2006.
Import and Export
  • e-Packs can now be successfully imported and exported.
Internationalization
  • A number of internationalization fixes and improvements have been made.
Mail
  • Forwarding a message from a user's Outbox now shows the user as the original author, not as the previous recipient of the message.
  • In certain cases, punctuation following a URL entered in the body of a message was included in the link when the message was viewed. This has been corrected.
  • With Microsoft Windows servers, attachments to messages with international characters in the file name could not be displayed. This issue has been corrected by upgrading the Apache server to version 2.0.49.
Manage Files
  • Renaming files from upper to lowercase letters and vice versa works correctly now.
Manage Students
  • When graphing results, overridden letter grades are displayed correctly now.
  • When an institution is integrated with a student information system (SIS), the grade export transaction could be initiated by a teaching assistant even though the SIS will only accept grades from designers. This has been corrected.
Quizzes/Surveys
  • When designers viewed student submissions, the question titles did not display. This has been corrected.
  • When designers view student submissions, paragraph questions with a column width setting will be formatted correctly now.
  • In matching questions with short answers for the right-hand column, HTML entities are rendered correctly now. For example, &eacute; is rendered as é. HTML tags used in the right-hand column are not interpreted. For example, <b>Bold text</b> will not appear as Bold text.
  • Quiz icons with links to a set of quizzes did not reflect the deletion of some of these quizzes. This has been corrected.
  • When submitting the password for a proctored quiz, pressing Enter to submit the form caused a JavaScript error. This has been corrected.
  • Calculated questions using the significant figures setting were not graded properly. Student answers are now evaluated to ensure that the correct number of significant figures is entered.
  • Downloading quiz results when the statistics were out of date led to an HTML message being included in the downloaded file. This has been corrected so that quiz results cannot be downloaded until they have been updated.
  • Under certain circumstances, students saw a blank screen when trying to view their quiz results. This has been corrected.
Security
  • A cross site scripting vulnerability was discovered in tools that allow student input. This has been corrected.
  • OpenSSL has been upgraded to version 0.9.6m. This version of OpenSSL addresses security vulnerabilities found in previous versions.
  • The WebCT Apache server has been upgraded to version 2.0.49. This version of Apache addresses security vulnerabilities found in previous versions.
Track Students
  • Discussion messages posted by students are now counted correctly under Articles Posted.