College Blackboard on the iPad

[papa8706]

I know that blackboard has released an app for the iPhone that was pure garbage. I have heard better things about the new app for the iPad, but unfortunately most schools don't enable it. I am going to be taking 2 online classes this summer and I thought the iPad 3g could be a great way to keep up to date with my courses.

My question is has anyone used safari on the iPad to use blackboard, and if so does it work well? Thanks!

 

[rorschach]

It works great. The only problem is that you can't download documents, but that's a limitation of the iPad/Mobile Safari. It'd be nice if there was an option when you click and hold a link to a file to "Open Link in xxx" (like you can with Mail attachments).

 

[AppleMatt389]

It works great. The only problem is that you can't download documents, but that's a limitation of the iPad/Mobile Safari. It'd be nice if there was an option when you click and hold a link to a file to "Open Link in xxx" (like you can with Mail attachments).

I hated this limitation, so it drove me to create a workaround. I've created a bookmarklet that extracts the document and opens it in another tab as a regular document. So it can be sent to other apps.

Want me to share?

 

[kuwisdelu]

Can you download documents with iCab/Atomic/etc.?

 

[AppleMatt389]

Can you download documents with iCab/Atomic/etc.?

No browser works. I tried every other solution on the iPad till I came up with my own. The problem is that the Blackboard system embeds each UI element in another HTML frame. So by the time you have the document on screen, its 3 levels deep within HTML frames. So the iOS browser doesn't recognise the document and therefore can't open it or give you the option to open it.

 

[ArcAngel66]

Not sure if this helps at all but... Within Blackboard, if you hold down on a link and select "Open in New Tab", it will open it regularly... Not in the stupid embedded window Blackboard likes to use. From here, it lets me save things (ie: in iBooks, etc).

 

[AppleMatt389]

Not sure if this helps at all but... Within Blackboard, if you hold down on a link and select "Open in New Tab", it will open it regularly... Not in the stupid embedded window Blackboard likes to use. From here, it lets me save things (ie: in iBooks, etc).

That seems to work for some people, unfortunately with some versions of Blackboard this doesn't work ie. my version.