My institution recently switched to the latest version of Blackboard (version 9, I assume). For six weeks I've experienced major frustration with the formatting in Bb messages.
Specifically: How do I get a blank line to show up between paragraphs in a Bb message I'm creating? I can hit the enter key a couple times (as you would in most email systems) and the blank line will show up while I'm drafting the message. However, when I send the message, Bb eliminates the blank lines and I end up with all the paragraphs following right on top of each other -- i.e., no spaces at all between paragraphs. That's what my students see, and that's what I see in every one of their messages as well.
This makes for tough reading over the course of a week, and it looks pretty sloppy too. Is there any simple way for me to fix this, or could Blackboard work on fixing this as a default setting for messages? Thanks for any advice.
Ilse,
if you toggle the text editor into HTML mode (with the "<>" icon), do you see line break (<br>) tags between the paragraphs, pr paragraph (<p>) tags? if you're seeing paragraph tags, do you know what theme is being used on your school's server? The theme is the CSS stylesheets being used to control the formatting in effect on the server, and it will determine how the HTML formatting codes are displayed.
Mike
Hi Mike,
I don't see any line break tags, only one paragraph tag. I don't know what theme is being used on our server. We are upgrading this week and I'm still working on the testserver. I will pass your question on to the person who knows the answer to your question.
Thanks,
Ilse
Hi Ilse,
Different themes do end up with different formatting, but it can also be customized if there's something you don't like. Also, is this text you're creating part of a Learning Module, by any chance? I've noticed that the Learning Module formatting seems to override a lot of the other formatting, perhaps to make it fit into the Learning Module format....
No, it's "items", "Announcements", everything. We also tried it out on another computer in the office. Same story. I didn't pay attention as to the browser etc. on that machine. But this makes me think that your suggestion about different themes and css styles might be the clue.
Thanks again,
I don't know if it's already been suggested, but one simple workaround is to enter a space on the lines you want to be blank. So you enter to drop down, hit the space bar on the line you want blank, enter again, and start writing the new paragraph. Then it doesn't matter that it's a div tag and not a paragraph tag. I'm using Chrome, too, and it's a pain in the butt. Why the different responses from different browsers? Is it the way the browsers are set up or the way Bb is? Who knows. I hope the upcoming update fixes it.
Cheers.
Because of the "Browser Wars", CSS is interpreted differently on the different browsers and even on different platforms. Adding themes and options to choose from can complicate the mix, especially if the themes are not set up with all of the CSS quirks that will override some of the defaults and interpret styles for the various browsers. Even then, I have had a couple of computers that show pages differently than 50 others with the same OS and browser, which makes absolutely no sense to me at all.
This issue is resolved in SP10.
I've run into the same issue. I use shift + enter twice when I move to a new paragraph. It forces a line in-between.