Hello folks,

¿Have you ever had a client ask you to be able to navigate his/her virtual tour offline from an iPad/iPhone? Well, I've just found a partial solution to this issue and I want to share it with you. I think this must be a common headache among all of us which often find clients to be very happy with their virtual tour, wanting to take it everywhere on their IPAD/IPHONE device, even though there isn't any internet connection, but, as we know, because krpano is mostly intended to be an online viewer, there isn't that simple to install our virtual tours to be viewed offline, less onto an Apple device.

Here's the tip, because Apple doesn't let users to upload files to an IPAD/IPHONE as easily as it would be with an usb (like it SHOULD be) restricting all file transfer to be done through their beloved iTunes, I've found some apps in the Appstore, known as "document managers", which can be used to sync our tour files with the iOS device and also to view them later offline. This apps work like a local file manager that can also read and display distinct file types, like pdf, jpg, and many more, the marvel with this apps is that they can read HTML files as well, and of course, that lots of them are free.

The detailed steps to "install" our krpano javascript/HTML5 tour into an Apple device with my tip go like this:

1) Open App Store in the IPAD/IPHONE, search and install the app "Documents by Readdle" (I like this one but there are plenty of other free file manager apps, you can find them by "documents" keyword)
2) From your computer ZIP all your tour files into one only file leaving tree structure as it is (remember you'll just navigate this locally from your iOS device)
3) Connect IPAD/IPHONE to computer, open iTunes and select your device from the DEVICES category in the left menu
4) Click onto Apps tab almost at the top of the window and scroll down the main window and search the File Sharing section
6) Select your document manager app from the list and drag and drop your tour ZIP file into the window to the right of it
9) From your IPAD/IPHONE open the document manager app and search for your zip file
10) Click to unzip it
11) Open your HTML initial file (index.html for example) and if everything went well you'll see your virtual tour is loaded from the iOS device like if it were online.

Hope to have been clear enough with this explanation, in a few words the tip is to use a "Document manager" app to read the html files locally into an IPAD/IPHONE device.

I haven't had the chance to test this method with iPhones, my 3G iphone is quite outdated and doesn't run any of the document manager apps I've tried, but, because the tour display is done by this apps I guess that this method should work without any problem onto newer iphones, if you can try it with this phones please share your results.

Tell me your experience with this method, if you know of other way to browse offline a krpano virtual tour please share.

Best regards

Luis

Nupsi: I'm glad it helped you, and you're right about the hiding-bar menu, that one doesn't come one it disappears, the good part of it is that when it goes away leaves an almost fullscreen viewing experience (in other apps I tried that bar was present all the time) which is kinda eye catchy, but yes, the bad side is that app must be restarted to return the menu bar. The only turn around I've found for this problem is the obvious one, which is to reset the app, which ain't that complicated either. Something must be colliding between the viewer and the three finger command of the app which blocks the menu bar.

Hans: Thanks for sharing all those other apps, as you say there are plenty of them which make the same function. Some time ago I used to work with ReaddleDocs which worked just fine but you had to pay for the app (65$ by now on the app store), that wasn't a very good option to give to my clients because it implied an extra cost. Now that I have to deliver a work that can be seen on ipad devices offline I searched again for free apps which could substitute that one and got very surprised to find out lots of free document managers which offered the same offline navigation function needed for virtual tours, I've got specially interested in "Documents by Readdle" because is like a diminished version of ReaddleDocs, but this time cost free, and has a very nice GUI and intuitive interface, an excellent option for me to recommend to my clients which often want to be able to carry their virtual tour everywhere on their iPad.

Best regards

Luis

By the way, another option for iPad or iOS devices offline viewing would be of course to develop an App for iOS and to offer it through the App Store. I've got a few requests to do this but I really don't know what is the way to develop an App. I've seen before this app: "360plus" which contains selected works of Ignacio Ferrando, a famous 360º panographer, I think that it must be using some commercial 360 viewer to display all the scenes but it doesn't give any reference at all. ¿Do any of you know how to, or what would be the way to develop this kind of apps? ¿Could they possibly be integrated with krpano javascript viewer?

Luis