Mobile output not working

[Zauberlehrling]

Hi,

I have looked around, here, on the MadCap help site and generally on the internet but can't find what I am looking for. So I try it here.

At the moment we use HTML output on Desktop for our Flare project, but we also want to have it on tablet/mobile.
I tried it and downloaded the output files onto my phone, but the page stays empty. I open the homepage by going to the folder I saved the files and opening the same file as I would if using it on the Desktop. The address looks weird as well, because it comes up with "content://media/external/file/1000000092" and not with the expected address.
Our project is not online for access from the internet, but only internally/locally.

I was just thinking, as long as they have internet and can connect via VPN tunnel to the company's intranet, the project can be provided via a localhost on the intranet. But since it used by engineers when they are in the field, and in many cases are not able to connect to Wi-Fi, it needs to be available for them "kind of" offline.

Is that possible and if yes, do they need to download the project output onto the phone into a specific folder? If yes, can you point me to it, please?

Thank you,
Zauberlehrling

[Zauberlehrling]

Is nobody using Flare projects on mobiles/tablets, or does just nobody know the answer to my question? Or is it badly explained? (Sorry for that, English is not my native language).

[RStreets]

I think your description is fine. What you're trying to achieve is opening a locally-stored copy of an Flare HTML output on a mobile device--and it's not working. I feel your frustration.

My suspicion is there are no answers because many folk publish to the internet (I do! ) with any mobile and tablet users accessing content that way and so they have never tried what you're doing (though I could be wrong).

[robdocsmith]

I'm a PDF kinda guy so not likely to help.
My thoughts are that you probably won't be able to browse a network folder on the phone and view the help from there. It would open an individual file and not render it as HTML because it isn't opening the file in a browser. You'd need to push the content onto an internal web server I think to make it work. Happy to be proved wrong or corrected!
Rob

[Zauberlehrling]

Yes well, the issue is our engineers are working quite often in offline environments, so that even an internal webserver (accessible via VPN tunnel) wouldn't be an option. We are moving away from PDF because HTML is more handy when looking for different parts of the document.

Since the HTML doesn't have any dynamic PHP or database and I am able to open the HTML output on any PC I am sure there must be a way to do the same on a phone or a tablet. I just don't know why it's not working. I appreciate any idea and help. And if I find something out, I will make sure to post it here first.

[Nita Beck]

This MadBlog article by Neil Perlin might offer some ideas. It's several years old, but still might point you in a direction:

https://www.madcapsoftware.com/blog/con ... obile-app/

[Zauberlehrling]

Thank you, Nita. Fingers crossed.

[Zauberlehrling]

Hi Nita,

the link is not working anymore. The whole domain is down. I read the article and the comments from other users.
Unfortunately it didn't help much. I will need to look further.

Thank you for your help,
Zauberlehrling