673714 - "Angel" Learning Management Suite recommends downgrading to Firefox 3.6

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Tech Evangelism Graveyard :: English US, defect)

Description

[Andreas Gal :gal]

The West Valley Community College District uses angellearning.com as their online learning portal. It recommends students to downgrade to Firefox 3.6 from Firefox 4, and downgrade to IE8 from IE9 (it also doesn't work with Safari and Chrome, according to the site).

They link to old out-of-date downloads, asking you to replace your current browser with that. This message was posted June 20, 2011 on their site.

http://wvmccd.angellearning.com

Comment 1

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

Empire State College: https://techinfo.esc.edu/kb_article.php?s=43110a4bef5d0f8847d72a51eb6e1822&ref=8208-EPHK-1052

Comment 2

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

Penn State: http://kb.its.psu.edu/cms/article/6

Comment 3

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

Washington State University: http://angel.wsu.edu/

Comment 4

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

In Support: https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/881932

Comment 5

[[:Cww]]

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/880978
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/882761
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/883157
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/881615
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/882801

Also.  (It seems like it's really popular in state/community colleges)

Comment 6

[LegNeato]

Angel is blackboard:

http://www.blackboard.com/Platforms/Learn/Products/Blackboard-Learn/ANGEL-Edition.aspx

And looks like it is EOL.

Comment 7

[Andreas Gal :gal]

Its still in use by West Valley and every student has to downgrade. I don't think we can sit this one out.

Comment 8

[[:Cww]]

I'm told by a student at Ohio State that the IT dept pulled Firefox from all campus machines in the latest image to avoid this problem.

Comment 9

[Andrew McCreight [:mccr8]]

reddit post on this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/l1quu/this_is_what_the_home_page_of_my_universitys/

some people report it working fine, others say it is fine until you try to send a message, then it freezes.

Comment 10

[Josh Matthews [:jdm]]

Angel by PeopleSoft only claims to support versions 2 and 3 of Frirefox.

Comment 11

[Andreas Gal :gal]

What are we doing about this? Chris?

Comment 12

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

I'm going to spend some time on this this afternoon.

Comment 13

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

Comment on this on reddit.  Please upvote?

Comment 14

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

http://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/l1quu/this_is_what_the_home_page_of_my_universitys/c2r11fo

Comment 15

[Aakash Desai [:aakashd]]

Yep, Santa Clara University does it too: 

They're asking folks to stay on Firefox 6; though, that's end of life'd, so I'd assume other groups are going to mention to downgrade to 3.6 as a result.

https://camino.scu.edu/default.asp

Comment 16

[Aakash Desai [:aakashd]]

They're saying that the Angel E-mail system isn't working.

Comment 17

[Aakash Desai [:aakashd]]

I tried sending an e-mail and did not hang, but there was a run-away script being run.

Comment 18

[Aakash Desai [:aakashd]]

Attachment: script in question. run away script at line 9

Comment 19

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

Can we test this at the office?

Comment 20

[Aakash Desai [:aakashd]]

Sorry, it did hang, but Firefox asked to stop the script on submission of the e-mail. Steps to Reproduce:

1. Go to a class site
2. Click on "Check Inbox"
3. Click on "Compose message"
4. fill out the e-mail with a "To", subject and body of the e-mail; press "Submit".

Actual Results:
Run-away script with Firefox hanging for the short-term until the stop script dialog pops up. After stopping the script, the e-mail is sent. If I continue, the hang persists until the stop script dialog pops-up again.

Expected Results:
E-mail is sent without any issue.

Comment 21

[Aakash Desai [:aakashd]]

(In reply to Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard) from comment #19)
> Can we test this at the office?

Yeah, sure. We can log into it tomorrow.

Comment 22

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

I wish I knew you could reproduce.  This will make things far more interesting.  Are you reeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaady to debug?

Comment 23

[Aakash Desai [:aakashd]]

I GOT MY DEBUG BUILD READY AND PRIMED; CAN WE GET ON A CALL WITH A POOR UNSUSPECTING STUDENT IT PART-TIME WORKER FROM SCU TO DEBUG WITH US?!?!?!!?

Comment 24

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

No, we just need some firebug.

Comment 25

[Aakash Desai [:aakashd]]

Sigh, fine.

Comment 26

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

Attachment: minimized test case

Hangs in Firefox 7, returns MouseEvent in Firefox 3.6.

Comment 27

[Andreas Gal :gal]

Awesome! Lets get someone on this.

Comment 28

[Andrew McCreight [:mccr8]]

Waldo already has an r+'ed patch.

Comment 29

[Aakash Desai [:aakashd]]

Worked for me with Waldo's try build.

Comment 30

[Christopher Blizzard (:blizzard)]

Firefox 8 is out and it contains a fix for this bug.  Thanks, everyone!