Apps for public information display

Question

Level 1

0 points

Apps for public information display

I'm wondering if someone can help me. I work in a museum and in one of our display rooms we have a steam fire engine that has recently been restored and put on display for public viewing. I have a large amount of Interpretation material that I want to put on an iPad for visitors to access and I need to find an app that can present this information. The information is a mixture of text, videos and photos with the text contained in Word & PDF files. What I need is something like this - a main page showing a picture of the engine with a title and short description of it. Then under that a list of files containing the information about the engine that the visitor can tap on to open the file to look at. Is there an app out there that will do this? Thanks

iPad Air, iOS 8.3

Posted on Jul 6, 2015 1:07 PM

Reply

Answer 1

rccharles

Level 6

12,957 points

Jul 7, 2015 7:23 AM in response to Penrhyn1898

You could try iBook. You can create link to move around the book and embed videos. Users may be able to annotate book 😠.

Download a book and see if it has the capabilities.

https://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/

Could try pdf.

Reply

Answer 2

Penrhyn1898 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 7, 2015 11:06 AM in response to rccharles

I tried iBooks but there doesn't seem to be an option for preventing users from editing things.

Reply

Answer 3

rccharles

Level 6

12,957 points

Jul 7, 2015 12:59 PM in response to Penrhyn1898

You may want to look into:

-- kiosk mode

icab has a kiosk mode. Just don't know if the web pages are cached.

-- guided access

http://www.webascender.com/Blog/ID/447/How-to-Setup-Kiosk-Mode-Lock-Your-iPad-to -Just-One-App#.VZwkFqGAcQ4

Reply

Answer 4

Penrhyn1898 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 8, 2015 5:19 AM in response to rccharles

I am looking into Kiosk Pro at the moment. I failed to mention that the app will need to link to content that is contained on the iPad as there is no internet connection where it's going to be used. I'm not sure if Kiosk Pro can do this though. It says it can access offline content but I don't know if that means it can link to files that are stored on iPad. Are you familiar with Kiosk Pro or other apps like it that can link to local files?

Reply

Answer 5

rccharles

Level 6

12,957 points

Jul 8, 2015 8:18 AM in response to Penrhyn1898

I'm not an expert on this. Seems like there would be an app for this. It's not like you are the only one wanting to do this.

I was thinking you could install a web server on your ipad and run from a web browser.

I may try:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/serversman/id302133974?mt=8

Reply

Answer 6

rccharles

Level 6

12,957 points

Jul 8, 2015 1:13 PM in response to Penrhyn1898

You found a possible solution!

No Internet? Not a problem.

Kiosk Pro Basic supports storing content locally for offline viewing.

Shift between online and offline content automatically if your device drops its Internet connection.

http://www.kioskproapp.com/tour

Reply

Answer 7

rccharles

Level 6

12,957 points

Jul 8, 2015 1:39 PM in response to rccharles

iCab Mobile July 7th add a feature to store the files locally.

Robert

Reply

Answer 8

Penrhyn1898 Author

Level 1

0 points

Jul 9, 2015 11:56 AM in response to rccharles

Hi Robert, I've looked into Kiosk and the locally stored content it refers to Is web based content that can be stored locally. I need to access local files that aren't Web based.

I will look into iCab. Cheers.

Reply

Answer 9

rccharles

Level 6

12,957 points

Jul 14, 2015 3:59 PM in response to Penrhyn1898

I'm not sure which post your are referring too.

Anyway, you can use any web server you can reach. This would include a web server running on your Intranet or a web server running on you laptop. You can download and install Apache on any computer. It's ease to install and create pages. I had Apache running on my Linux machine in about a minute. Would take a longer on a non-linux mahcine.

R

Reply