Hi Everyone

Have been trailing a few things related to viewing OpenVPMS on an iPad over the last few days and have encountered some problems and solutions. The main issue that I encountered was when viewing the iPad in landscape, pop-up lookup windows and the like would have the buttons along the bottom cut off. The only way to seemingly get access to them was to change the iPad to portrait to extend the screen downwards to show the buttons. As it turns out, there is a way around this using the iPhone configuration utility (free from Apple, runs on windows and mac) that allows you to create a configuration profile.

A configuration profile allows you to setup things like email accounts, wifi networks, VPN access and most importantly, web clips. Web clips are website shortcuts that appear on the home screen, so they look like a regular app. The trick to fix the issue of the buttons in landscape is to create a web clip with the "Full Screen" setting ticked. This opens an isolated safari window with none of the regular browsing options (address bar etc) and adjusts a few other things, with the result being a fully functional OpenVPMS interface on a very portable device.

Another thing wee found was how attachments are displayed. The use of a pop up window triggers mobile safari's built in pop up blocker. This can be turned off through settings -> safari. Unfortunately you get a pop up asking if the popup is okay, but it is better than it not working.

Hope this helps anyone looking to use iPads. I also can't recommend the iPhone configuration utility enough. It makes managing a fleet of devices much simpler. We are also looking into using iPads for out-calls over 3G, making it easier to do billing in the field.

Cheers
Dave