Resource - Pop-up Blocker

Virtual College @ North Seattle Community College

Distance Learning>Technical Information>Courseware Information>WebCT Support>WebCT and pop-ups

WebCT (Blackboard - CE) and pop-ups:
If you are having problems on campus opening items such as quizzes, email or accessing any part of your WebCT classroom it may be the result of a pop-up blocker. The pages in WebCT are recognized by your browser as pop-ups and by doing the following procedures you will be able to turn off the blockers to allow for WebCT to function properly. This may also correct a problem you are having on your home computer.

Tool Bars and Pop-ups:
Please beware that any special toolbars you may download such as: Yahoo, Google, MSN, AOL, Pop-up Stopper Professional, and Pop-up Cop contain Pop-up blockers automatically and you will need to disable them to access your WebCT class. Some companies including WebCT as well as others use the pop-up technology to deliver their course materials.

In addition to pop-up blockers you may have problems opening a quiz if you are accessing the quiz outside of the time frame indicated by your instructor. Instructors grant access to quizzes within specific time frames and you will not be able to open a quiz that is not yet available or you have missed the deadline. Another issue that may come up is that the page may be either minimized or hiding behind a more recently opened window. Please see the task bar on your computer to insure that the correct window is open.

MAC Users
Activate and deactivate pop-up control by holding the CTRL Z key while clicking on a link. For more information about using MAC's Safari browser please go to their web site.

Windows Users
Activate and deactivate pop-up control by holding the CTRL key while clicking on a link. In addition to this keyboard shortcut, you can also add sites to an allow list by right-clicking on your Pop-Up Stopper icon and go to Preferences / Allowed Pop-Ups.

You will have an icon in your system tray next to your clock, indicating pop-up control is enabled. Double click Pop-Up blocker's icon to bring up the options window and turn it on/off. Remember, you can always hold the CTRL, Shift or ALT keys while clicking a link to allow that window to open.

To allow popups for WebCT in Foxfire

Go to the Tools menu and click on Options, this will bring up the browser Options dialog box.
Click on the Content tab and you will see the following dialog box. You will be able to uncheck the "Block Popup Windows" box or you can check the "Allowed Sites" and enter the WebCT Classroom URL as an allowed site.

Firefox - Pop-up Window

To allow pop-ups for WebCT in Mozila

Go to the Edit menu and click on Preferences, to bring up the browser Preferences.
At the top of the window under the Category field, click on the arrow for Privacy & Security, this turns the arrow downward; click on Popup Windows. On the right hand side, under Popup Windows, uncheck where it says Block unrequested popup windows, this is checked by default.

Mozila Pop-up Window

To allow pop-ups for WebCT in Internet Explorer (IE 7 or SP2):

We have recently discovered a conflict with our version of WebCT and those who have recently updated to IE7. To correct this you will need to add WebCT to the list of trusted sites for popups to consistently function as expected. Earlier versions of IE seem to work with WebCT. If you have difficulty with IE and WebCT using Firefox may correct the problem. Please see the links below to access a free download for Firefox.

For more information about disabling Pop Up blockers in Internet Explorer please follow this link to the Microsoft website.

If you are unable to get WebCT to work on your home computer using Internet Explorer or AOL you can download the Firefox browser for free and follow the instructions above to disable the pop-up blocker. We have discovered that by simply changing to a different browser WebCT will work even with your current computer settings.

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