HOW DO I OPEN A LOCAL WEBPAGE WITH LINKS TO IPAD2?

Question

Level 1

4 points

HOW DO I OPEN A LOCAL WEBPAGE WITH LINKS TO IPAD2?

I am very new to the iPAd and this forum, so please excuse if this sound like s silly query!

I am a musician and would like to use my iPad2 on stage to display my lyrics sheets and scores (chords).

So what I have done before is to setup a local webpage index with hyperlinks to all the lyrics and scores in htm/l format. Theis was done on my desktop PC and copied across to my stage laptop. When I used my laptop on stage I could open the main index webpage in the browser and just click on any link which would then obviously also open in the browser. To return to the index you just click on the back arrow to load the next required page.

How do I transfer this webpage and subsequent links to the iPad via iTunes, and then open it in Safari?

I appreciate your help.

iPad 2, iOS 5.1

Posted on Mar 31, 2012 1:15 AM

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Answer 1

ddkilzer

Level 2

344 points

Mar 31, 2012 7:43 PM in response to Midinut

You could create an offline web application by creating an HTML manifest file, referencing it from your main web page, and then listing all the other resources loaded by the main page. Saving this page to the home screen via the "Action" button in Safari would then cache all of the resources and let you access it offline (e.g., in Airplane mode).

The challenge of creating offline web apps is that the main web page may only be loaded once, and the other web "pages" need to be loaded by XMLHttpRequest (XHR), or you could put all content in a single HTML page, and hide/show the content by modifying CSS properties. The main web page may not be replaced by another web page (e.g., when tapping on a link), otherwise the web app will open the new page in Safari.

Note that to initially set up this web app, you'll have to serve it from a local web server on your Mac or PC. On OS X, you may use Web Sharing from the System Preferences > Sharing pref pane. You can put the files in the "Sites" directory in the home directory on your Mac, and you can access the web pages from your iPad if your Mac and iPad are on the same local network.

More information here, although there are probably tutorials if you search Google for them:

https://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/Safa riJSDatabaseGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html

http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/offline.html

I know there is a lot of technical information here, but I hope that helps. It is possible to do what you want to do, although it's not simple.

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Answer 2

Mar 31, 2012 6:02 AM in response to Midinut

If I understand you correctly, you can't. This would require the iPad to be running a web server to serve the html pages like your computer. There is no web server for your iPad.

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Answer 3

Mar 31, 2012 6:04 AM in response to Midinut

One alternative would be a single web page (or PDF, perhaps) with internal links.

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