multiple ipad app conflicts and cache problems

Question

I have created a series of ipad web apps using in5. We are running into 2 problems:
1. When running ipad offline some web apps are unable to be run even though we have made sure that "cache all" is selected in the options. This creates the manifest.appcache file - which we've checked to make sure all resources are listed and available but still some of the apps don't work offline.  Is there something else we should check?
2. Some apps seem to overwrite ones that have been downloaded previously. As an example, I can download a couple and they work good, then download another and one of the previous has replicated itself and replaced another....

Anyway, we are at a loss to figure this out - could there be an issue with the in5 file structure being the same for each web app? Or, anything else we should be checking?

Answer 1

Re: the cache not working

See this answer:
https://ajarproductions.com/pages/products/in5/answers/710/application-cache-problem?show=774#a774

Also, note that many devices have cache size limits by default (25mb on iOS). If your app exceeds this limit, some or all content may not get cached.

Not sure about #2. Will probably need more info. Do you have URLs that we can test?

Comments

Hi Justin
Yeah, we'd seen that thread about the cache...

Found this to be very helpful
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20045643/how-to-use-create-a-manifest-handle-appcache-events-errors-and-the-use-of-swapc
Safari web inspector invaluable. All the best.
Andy

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Also, for #2 -  We solved this by renaming the apps to individual titles. Some had the same name.

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Are you finding any specific errors?

I tested one of the links you posted earlier. The cache succeeded in Chrome, but it took a very long time to load. I'm wondering if it exceeded the default iPad limit of 25mb...?

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I have things working except for a warning  "Resource interpreted as Font but transferred with MIME type application/octet-stream." in www.thegalaxy.com/apps/two
All around 13-14mb.

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I believe that you can resolve that by adding a mime type for the font to your server.

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yeah, had done. Was just one app though so I think there was a stray font in there somewhere. Love in5 BTW. A

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Thanks! Glad to hear it.

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Hi Justin. #2 seems to be still happening. What happens is after downloading all apps (12 in total) 7 seem to have been overwritten with 1 of them . It seems to be quite random in which app overwrites another. Try it and see.
All the apps:
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/one
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/two
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/three
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/four
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/five
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/six
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/seven
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/eight
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/nine
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/ten
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/eleven
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/twelve

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Please can you help on this one Justin? Or point me in the right direction.

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By "overwrite," do you mean, for example, that when you open #3 from the home screen, you actually see #6?

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After downloading say 9, the next one will decide to overwrite 4 or five of them - it actually replaces them with itself, it's random, not 1 particular app doing this...

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Hmm...I wonder if this is an iPad bug. You might try making the folder structure a bit deeper (apps/folder1/one/, apps/folder2/two, etc).

I'll run some experiments over the next few days to see what I can find.

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They are now at:

http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder1/one
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder2/two
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder3/three
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder4/four
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder5/five
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder6/six
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder7/seven
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder8/eight
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder9/nine
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder10/ten
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder11/eleven
http://www.thegalaxy.com/apps/folder12/twelve

Trying again....

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They are still overwriting each other...

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Okay so this could be an iOS7 bug. See:
http://www.infoworld.com/t/html5/bad-news-ios-7s-html5-full-of-bugs-227685
"...if you store more than four Web pages as home-screen apps, iOS 7 often replaces icons of existing home-screen apps with the newly saved ones -- you get that errant replacement once your device has four home-screen Web app icons on it."
So, now I'm off to find a solution....
I still stand by In5. Good work Justin.

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Nice research, Andy. I'll post an answer with details and a suggestion.

Answer 2

Given this iOS 7 bug:

Firtman said that any URIs in the Web address -- the portion after the domain name -- is ignored, so a home-screen Web app can't invoke any functions in the URI when opened...Also, if you store more than four Web pages as home-screen apps, iOS 7 often replaces icons of existing home-screen apps with the newly saved ones -- you get that errant replacement once your device has four home-screen Web app icons on it.

Possibilities to try:

1. Check for an OS update. This bug was posted last September, perhaps it has been resolved in an update.
2. The replacement issue may be connected to 4+ web apps of any domain. But if it has anything to the apps being on the same domain, you could try linking to them with subdomains (which most hosting services provide for free), e.g. http://appone.thegalaxy.com