As of July 31st 2009 WebCT was no longer be available at Brock University. Learn more about Isaak, Brock University's Sakai-Based LMS here. This wiki is available for others using WebCT Vista & CE versions 6 through 8 but is not maintained by Brock University.

Allowing Blocked Downloads

From WebCT Wiki

<Rating> Was this article useful? 1 Inaccurate 2 Not very useful 3 Satisfactory 4 Insightful 5 Excellent resource </Rating> The latest version of Internet Explorer contained in Windows XP service pack 2 and IE7 in Windows Vista blocks a lot of things that might be a security risk. Internet Explorer alerts users to this phenomena with the alert pictured below:

Check for this message at the top of the page, click the message to allow the download.

This is generally a good development, but does have unintended consequences. One example is downloading files like PowerPoint files and Word documents. Instructors should consider using PDF documents instead, but if this is not possible students and instructors can re-enable file downloads in Internet Explorer. Another solution beyond the fixes below is switching to Firefox.

This is a limitation introduced by Internet Explorer, not WebCT. Certain MS Office file formats have been used as vectors for computer viruses and newer versions of Internet Explorer are trying to protect users from this. The example files found at http://ctlet.brocku.ca/documents/ , outside of WebCT, demonstrate this.

[edit] Allowing Downloads Temporarily

When the content you are trying to access is block an alert should appear at the top of the web page. To allow the blocked content, right-click on this information bar and select "Allow Blocked Content" or "Allow Blocked File". You may need to log out of that course and log back in for the change to take effect.