Soft keyboard activates on iPad for every button

edited April 10 in Problems and Issues

I have a usability issue when accessing any KiwiSDR (and OpenWebRx SDR for that matter) on an iPad. Every button I press on the display causes the soft keyboard to jump up and fill the screen. This obviously makes the UI very difficult, but not impossible, to use.

The UI works fine on Android.

I am using the IOS 16.7.2 on an iPAD pro V1.

Update: I just tried this on someone's iPhone and it is OK. So currently, I have only noticed this problem on a iPad.

Comments

  • I gave up trying to write code to cover all the changes Apple kept making to every iOS version they released. It was like herding cats. I had more important things to be working on.

    Someday, if I ever have time to write a proper mobile interface, this might get fixed.

  • edited April 10

    hello,

    for a connection to the iPad, I use the mobile option: .../?m

    and it works very well with many versions of IOS.

    I always use my iPad to connect to the KiwiSDRs and also to manage mine. kiwisdr is excellent on Ipad.

    exemple : sdr.autreradioautreculture.com:8074/?m

    Best regards, Philippe

  • I also use an iPad and select the browser 'mobile' option, and for most things on the KiWi this works really well.

    A 'two finger tap' will also bring up many of the options that are not otherwise assessable.

    But I also wish Apple would stop adding 'features' that just make it harder to use the interface without inadvertently triggering some other function that is not required.

    The original concept was to have a simple, intuitive OS, but IMHO the more recent updates have strayed from this.

    Also, have a look at some of the 'web kiosk' browser applications in the App store. These are intended for use at exhibitions where a full screen, but locked down browser, is used to provide an interactive display of products or company websites in a seamless and secure manner, without folks being able to browse elsewhere.

    Regards,

    Martin

  • jksjks
    edited April 10

    Well, maybe this is a problem. Devices running iOS shouldn't respond any differently when the mobile (.../?m) URL option is used. But the detection of iOS depends on the browser correctly reporting iPad (or iPhone) in the user agent string from the browser.

    You can check this by going to my.kiwisdr.com?dump and seeing if iPad appears in the HTTP_USER_AGENT string.

    Nice cat!

  • Hi John,

    Good job you included a CAT control interface to the KiWi :-)

    Regards,

    Martin

  • :)))), excellent idea. Thanks John.

  • jksjks
    edited April 10

    Okay, please someone let me know what you find on the my.kiwisdr.com?dump site using an iPad running iOS 16. And also if /?m fixes the problem or not.

    The only iPad I have is an ancient gen 3 from 2012 running iOS 9 🙄

  • I did a bit more testing. I also tested an iPad Pro 2022 using the latest IOS update, 17.4.1 and that also behaves the same.

    It is not all the buttons that cause this behaviour, it is specifically anything that modifies the frequency such as the +/- tuning buttons.

    I have only just read most of this thread so I will check the my.kiwisdr.com?dump side a and /?m this evening on the iPads.

  • I'm using an iPad, and with both Firefox and Chrome browsers, if I go into the browser settings menu and choose the mobile site option, the KiWi controls behave OK, and the keyboard only pops up when alphanumeric entry boxes require input.

    Regards,

    Martin

  • The /?m option also selects the mobile site version.

    PATH => /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

    PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN => 16

    PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS => 500

    HTTP_CONNECTION => keep-alive

    HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING => gzip, deflate

    HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE => en-GB,en;q=0.9

    HTTP_USER_AGENT => Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_13_5) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/120 Version/11.1.1 Safari/605.1.15

    HTTP_ACCEPT => text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8

    HTTP_UPGRADE_INSECURE_REQUESTS => 1

    HTTP_HOST => my.kiwisdr.com

    SERVER_PROTOCOL => HTTP/1.1

    REDIRECT_STATUS => 200

    REQUEST_METHOD => GET

    QUERY_STRING => dump

    REQUEST_URI => /?dump

    DOCUMENT_ROOT => /www/pages/kiwisdr/my/php

    SCRIPT_FILENAME => /www/pages/kiwisdr/my/php/index.php

    PATH_INFO => 

    SCRIPT_NAME => /index.php

    REMOTE_ADDR => 81.155.175.152

    REMOTE_PORT => 54009

    SERVER_ADDR => 50.116.2.70

    SERVER_PORT => 80

    GATEWAY_INTERFACE => CGI/1.1

    SERVER_NAME => my.kiwisdr.com

    SERVER_SOFTWARE => lighttpd/1.4.35

    FCGI_ROLE => RESPONDER

    PHP_SELF => /index.php

    REQUEST_TIME_FLOAT => 1713170070.3651

    REQUEST_TIME => 1713170070

  • Okay, but my question still is: If you don't use mobile mode (/?m in the URL) on an iPad running iOS 16 does it behave the same as if you do?

    And on an iPad running iOS 16 what does my.kiwisdr.com/?dump tell you for the HTTP_USER_AGENT value?

    Thanks

  • If you don't use the mobile mode or /?m the keyboard pops up on almost any action.

    Desktop

    HTTP_USER_AGENT => Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_13_5) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/120 Version/11.1.1 Safari/605.1.15

    Mobile

    HTTP_USER_AGENT => Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 16_7 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) CriOS/120.0.6099.119 Mobile/15E148 Safari/604.1

    Regards,

    Martin

  • jksjks
    edited April 15

    Wow, so that implies that the browser themselves on iPad/iOS are detecting the use of /?m in the URL and switching into the "browser mobile mode" thing?

    That's not something I knew about. And that's not something I can force in my code I don't believe. I guess you'd always have to use /?m ???

    I suppose I'm going to have to get ahold of a newer iPad so I can debug all this..

  • Hello,

    for information, I use an iPad Pro (2022) with IOS 17.4.1. You must put the /?m option. The result of the DUMP command on this Ipad is as follows:

    HTTP_USER_AGENT => Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/605.1.15 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/17.4.1 Safari/605.1.15

    best regards, Philippe

  • After only a little Googling I am finding that this is a well-known (except to me) horror show: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/119186

  • Personally, and despite owning one, I hate the iPad, the built-in or enforced obsolescence that makes reuse impossible, plus all the associated proprietary interfaces and accessories.

    They are forever messing around with stuff in updates, that usually just ends up making things worse.

    But your mileage may vary...

    Regards,

    Martin

  • jksjks
    edited April 15

    Someone in my family has an iPad that runs iOS 16 that they use heavily. So I think what I'll do is buy them a new one and I can inherit the old.

    Then I can try some of the workarounds I've been reading about to do iPad auto-detection. I can do an HTTP redirect to the mobile URL (/?m) which hopefully should solve this problem.

  • /?m fixes it for me. Unfortunately I haven't been able run my.kiwisdr.com/?dump yet because the KiwiSDR is deployed in another building.

  • Okay, well that's a good thing.

    But once again iOS has gotten away from me and I need to spend some time catching up. I really need to be automatically detecting all iPads and doing the equivalent of the /?m in my code somehow. So many other things I'd rather be doing, sigh..

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