Ibooks - download website link not working

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Level 1

0 points

Ibooks - download website link not working

Hello guys,

I create a nice book for my company with all the rules we have. We want all our staff with ipads can download it from our website.

So I create a link on our website that links to a ibooks file (.ibooks)

If I send the file to an email, a person can clik the file and download it to the iPad. However, the simple link to file, I created, does not work.

www.mycompany.com/bookname.ibooks

When I open safari and click in download button, gives me an error.

Any thoughts about this?

I had check some topics with the same kind of problem here in this website but didn't really solve mine.

Also for your references:

1- I don't want to use dropbox

2- i don't want to send the book through email to our staff

3- JUST want the staff go to our webiste and click on download button so thjey can download directly in their iPads.

Appreciate your help! :-)

thanks a lot!

Vic

iPad 2, iOS 5.0.1, All our iPads got ibooks 2

Posted on Mar 24, 2012 9:11 AM

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Answer 1

K T

Level 7

23,877 points

Mar 24, 2012 9:41 AM in response to v76yo

When I open safari and click in download button, gives me an error.

Which says?

3- JUST want the staff go to our webiste and click on download button so thjey can download directly in their iPads.

They may need to save the file from that link to/on their computer, then load it into iTunes, then sync, then read.

If it is sent via email, they should be able to tap on it and have iBooks 2 open it on their iPad.

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Answer 2

v76yo Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 24, 2012 10:23 AM in response to K T

Hello KT...thanks for your quick reply!!!

It says this:

Can not find the page

The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Please try the following:

Make sure that the Web site address displayed in the address bar of the browser is spelled and formatted correctly.
If you click on the link to reach the page, please contact the site administrator to inform them that the link is incorrectly formatted.
Click theBackbutton to try another link.

HTTP Error 404 - File or directory not found.
Internet Information Services (IIS)

Technical Information (for support personnel)

Go toMicrosoft Product Support Servicesand search for "HTTP" and "404" title.
Open IIS Help (accessible in IIS Manager (inetmgr)), and then search for topics titled "Site Settings", "Common Administrative Tasks, and About Custom Error Messages" topic.

I think the issue with the emial thing is not nice from Apple, right?

I mean, it could be so great that people can put their ibook file as a website link so people with thier iPads can download directly, nice!

The way of sync iTunes is not good for us.

Is this the only choice?

The file is in my server and I just create the button link to file. Is there any special code I should use for this?

:-)

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Answer 3

Mar 25, 2012 8:52 AM in response to v76yo

Putting ibook on web does work but the issue I found is more of a web site issue. I had one site that I had alway used to let client download .zip but it would always fail & give an error when I tried this with .ibook (like the page did not exist) - I switch to another site/host (on goadaddy.com) and it worked - It seem like old site did not understand .ibook and fail. (maybe it a meta tag/sorce issue).

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Answer 4

v76yo Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 25, 2012 5:45 PM in response to DigitalSummitTV

Well, that sounds interesting.

I will try use another host and let's see.

Really anoying.

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Answer 5

v76yo Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 25, 2012 7:55 PM in response to v76yo

I got it!!!!

I solved the problem!!! hahaha!!!

This is what is happening......

Anybody that has a website and make a link to file (in this case .ibooks) and cannot download the ibooks file is because the server options didn't setup the option to let the ".ibooks" be downloadable.

What you need to do is to change the MIME options and add the .ibooks

in the MIME box area you have to add the "application/x-ibooks+zip"

You can ask your server provider (whoever they are) (I live in china so I hava a local one) to add this option for you...it takes a minute and it works!!

That's it!

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Answer 6

Ren S.

Level 1

4 points

Jul 18, 2012 6:59 PM in response to v76yo

Hi there,

How do you do that? Were is the MIME box that you mention?

Do I do that in Dreamweaver or in the server side?

Thanks

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Answer 7

sbhans

Level 1

0 points

Aug 1, 2012 8:09 PM in response to Ren S.

This is done server side.

For IIS7

Click on your website. Select MIME Types Icon. Select Add from Actions panel.

file name etension: .ibooks

MIME type: application/x-ibooks+zip

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Answer 8

Ren S.

Level 1

4 points

Aug 2, 2012 3:26 PM in response to sbhans

Thanks,

I already did it on my server DOMAIN.COM but for some unknown reason it's not working...
Anyhow, the workaround that I found that is working like a charm is using Dropbox.

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Answer 9

rjhogue

Level 1

0 points

Sep 14, 2012 9:03 AM in response to v76yo

I have a similar but different problem.

I can successfully download the iBook on my iPad (iPad2), but get an undefined error on my original iPad (after having installed iBooks2).

I'm finding that some users have no trouble - they click my link and get the window to open in "iBooks", but others just get an undefined message in Safari, even after they have installed iBooks 2.

Any suggestions?

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Answer 10

hbruinsm

Level 1

0 points

Feb 6, 2013 11:01 PM in response to v76yo

The response of IIS is not conform RFC-2045. If it doesn't know the mime-type, it should return application/octet-stream.

Also HTTP 404 error is also incorrect here.

Good to hear, you can solve this by setting a mime-type. Where did you find it though? As it isn't registered with IANA.

Thanks anyway!

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