Discussion Messages Not Staying "Read"

There has been an issue in some classes with discussion messages reverting to an "unread" state after leaving the discussion. Students and instructors can't tell which messages are new and which they've already reviewed. While D2L is trying to locate the cause of this issue, it has been noted that the problem appears to be occurring with the Internet Explorer (IE7) 7 browser, but not with Firefox.

D2L recommends that if you encounter this problem, you should try one of the following:

  • Use a supported browser other than Internet Explorer, e.g., Firefox.
  • If you are using Internet Explorer 6, clear your Browser cache and set your browser to factory (standard) settings.
  • If you are using Internet Explorer 7, reset your Internet Explorer settings to the defaults (using Internet Options -> Advanced tab).
  • Disabling any browser add-ons may also help.

So far, the best option we’ve seen is downloading and using Firefox, however, there some separate issues here.

The current version of Firefox is 3.0, which is not yet a D2L supported browser. Firefox 2.0, which is the recommended browser, can be downloaded at mid-December 2008. After that, or if you just want the latest version, you can get Firefox 3.0 at

Cut, Copy and Paste

With either Firefox browser, you'll need to do some setup, and you will experience issues with the cut, copy and paste buttons in the rich text editor in D2L.

In order, the buttons are Cut, Copy, Paste, Paste as Plain Text, and Paste from Word. Clicking on any of the first three buttons will result in the following warning:

In either version of Firefox, you should be able to use the shortcut keys Ctrl-X (hold the Control key and press X) to cut, Ctrl-Cto copy and Ctrl-V to paste instead of these buttons.

The last two buttons do work. They open a pop-up window and ask you to use Ctrl-V to paste your text in the window. You should use these buttons if you’re pasting formatted text, e.g. copied from Word, another word processor, a web page, etc. When you copy from a source that has formatted text, like bold, italics, colored fonts, bullets, etc., and paste it directly into the rich text area, you are pasting hidden codes that can cause problems with web pages. This is especially true with text copied from Word. If you paste using the Paste from Word button, you will retain the formatting of the text while eliminating codes that are not needed and can create web page problems. If you’re pasting text copied from another source, it’s best to use the Paste as Plain Text button. This will remove the formatting, but will also remove all of the other hidden codes. You can use the other rich text editor buttons to reapply any formatting needed.

Setup Options

Any time you set up a new browser, you may need to change some of the default settings to get things to work the way you want, and Firefox is no exception. Once the browser is installed and open, you should go to the Tools menu and select Options…

This will open the Options dialog. On the Main tab, under the Downloads section, notice that the default file location for saving files is the Desktop. If you have a folder to which you normally download files, use the Browse button to locate it. If you don’t want all of the downloaded files in the same folder, click the Always ask me where to save files radio button. Finally in this section, you should either uncheck the Show the Downloads… checkbox or also check the related checkbox Close it when… Otherwise the Download pop-up window will stay open on your screen.

Next, click on the Content tab...

then click the Exceptions… button across from Block pop-up windows.

Add to the Address of website box then click Allowto allow pop-ups when you’re in Learn@UW-Stout (D2L). There are many tools that use pop-up windows in D2L, so this step is necessary to operate effectively.