Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

    Hi all

    I have web based application - non-phonegap - that we mostly use on Microsoft Surface and Android devices. This app creates several PDF forms that we either print or email to customers. We are testing iPads and having difficulty.

    1. Downloading PDF. In both the Windows and Android environments when we ask for a PDF of the report it is downloaded to the device and we can email, store, print, etc. On the iPad I get a "working" message and then nothing. I did read the threads on here that I could find but it seems the fix is very technical and Alpha is supposed to be a no or low code tool. Any suggestions?

    2. Printing. If we try to use the PRINT HTML function a tab or window opens and I can see the print screen for about a second and then it closes. This does not happen on other devices. Again any help?

    We are about to go live with new iPads with Cell connectivity but if we cannot print the invoices, they are nothing more than paperweights.

    Thanks

    #2
    Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

    Do you have a PDF viewer application installed on the ipad?
    NWCOPRO: Nuisance Wildlife Control Software My Application: http://www.nwcopro.com "Without forgetting, we would have no memory at all...now what was I saying?"

    Comment


      #3
      Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

      Thanks for the response - Yes I have the Adobe app. I can view and print PDFs from other sites with no issues.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

        Ok, yeah that is odd and probably much harder to figure out WHY. I was hoping that you had a really crappy PDF viewer or none at all which might be the issue.
        NWCOPRO: Nuisance Wildlife Control Software My Application: http://www.nwcopro.com "Without forgetting, we would have no memory at all...now what was I saying?"

        Comment


          #5
          Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

          I have read in other places online that if the fonts are not embedded properly the PDF turns out garbage or blank pages, perhaps it is a font issue?
          NWCOPRO: Nuisance Wildlife Control Software My Application: http://www.nwcopro.com "Without forgetting, we would have no memory at all...now what was I saying?"

          Comment


            #6
            Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

            Thanks again Charles,

            I tried with a very simple list report with no font or formatting changes. Same issue. Also have tried to two different iPads and an iPhone they all behave the same.

            I PDF does not download and if I hit the Print HTML button it opens for a second or two then closes.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

              What about sending the PDF file to the printer more directly from Alpha Web Server rather than routing it through the iPad?

              Some printers can be associated to an email address through an account, such as the HP Envy series, and you can send emails with attachments and the printer will print just the attachment part. Well, at least that is what happened just now when I sent an email with a "TO:" part, a PDF attachment and no "Body" section.

              Factoring costs into this might be a problem, though. For me I pay per page anyway, so it doesn't matter if the page comes from a local computer or from a file it received from the Internet.

              Comment


                #8
                Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

                I have the same issue, I have given up trying to solve it for the time being but would be interested if you find a resolution.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

                  Have any of you guys attempted to find the crash logs on your iPad or iOs devices? I have read a bit on this and it seems like you're not the only ones having this issue. It seems like it can be an expired developer cert. - too large a PDF, embedded fonts and or images as well as gradients. I don't think this is an AS issue as much as it is PDF and iOs.
                  NWCOPRO: Nuisance Wildlife Control Software My Application: http://www.nwcopro.com "Without forgetting, we would have no memory at all...now what was I saying?"

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

                    I have been struggling with this as well. The HTML-Paged option does work, but there are issues with that as well. First, while this will render the report on the Ipad, it does not provide an option to print the report from the Ipad, as you already mentioned in the first post above. Second, the HTML-Paged optin does not lokk all that great on a laptop or desktop.

                    The a5w_report_saveas function DOES allow for viewing and printing PDF reports on Ipad AND on laptop and desktop, but I am finding it difficult to work out all the filtering needed to render reports correctly. I have succeeded so far with some simple reports, but those based on complex joins are stumping me at the moment.

                    It would be great to have a discussion on this thread about this as I am sure that a solution that allows for viewing AND printing PDF's and reports on Ipads, droids, and windows based devices is of interest to many.
                    Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

                      I don't think Apple is being difficult, in this case. What all of you are trying to do is fit a square app into a round iPad. You're trying to run a web app, built with buggy and less than standard tools, on a current, sophisticated device... with one main purpose of the iPad being not to let you do stuff that may hurt you. There are many ways to work with PDFs in Alpha... but they all fail on the iPad in a web app. Only one XBasic process seems to get part way there. This alone is a clue that something is wrong... and it's not on the iPad side.

                      You all know that if you want full control over your PDFs that you should build a Phonegap Build App. Instead, inordinate amounts of time is spent trying to do something that is a hack, at best... and could easily break on a subsequent release of iOS.

                      That Android lets you do this easily is not a good argument in that Android will let anyone do anything, good or bad, in any of their 10+ currently running releases, which may or may not work depending on the hardware used and how Android was implemented on that hardware. Android is a free for all. Nothing wrong with that... it's just that it's not buttoned up like iOS.

                      And where is Alpha is all this. They've seen the many posts about PDFs and web apps and iPads. Where's the "here is the solution you all need for this issue"? Here is the one path you need to follow. Instead, they don't seem to mind watching people languish trying to use half a dozen potential dead-end paths.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

                        Hi David,

                        Thanks for responding and as always, for your expertise in so many of these issues. I am not sure I agree with you on this issue though, that a device, any device, should not be able to surf to a web site and download a PDF from it. I do that from my bank web sites, etc to my Ipad all the time. Maybe I am not understanding the point, but it seems to me this is different than a mobile app. It is just a web site and downloading a PDF should not be a problem. As I have said though, a5w_report_saveas does work. Heck, that is the way I did this on a previous app before Alpha built in ways to do it with little or no code.

                        I am still trying to figure out the filtering part though so if you or anyone has any help with that I would greatly appreciate it.
                        Gary S. Traub, Ph.D.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

                          You could potentially create a small app that is just for the PDF viewing part. You can launch the app using the ability to launch from link. You might be able to pass in a variable that would tell the PDF viewer app to find the appropriate file. I haven't tested this, but it's an avenue I would go down if I was in your shoes. The overall issue is security of IOS, as David suggests. There is no way around it that will work consistently.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

                            A follow up question: Are you trying to download to the device first, or just view it? Not 100% clear on the request.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Re: iPad Woes - why does Apple have to be so difficult?

                              Originally posted by WebDesignShop View Post
                              A follow up question: Are you trying to download to the device first, or just view it? Not 100% clear on the request.
                              As the original poster - I need to do both. View and download. Neither works.

                              Your suggestions may work - but I went down the Alpha route for a "No Code / Low Code" development environment. That is what I was sold and what I have paid very good money for and I should be able to do something as simple as view or print a PDF on an IOS device...

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X