Mobile / tablets can't download files from E-junkie

[ashburton]

About a year ago I tested downloading a particular .zip product (18MB) to an iphone and ipad and it worked fine (with the help of an app to extract the .zip file). I put screen captures and instructions on my website for my customers.



Since then I've had quite a few customer complaints about the download page coming up blank (after the click on the 'click here' to download link). I thought these customers were just a little on the slow side and couldn't use technology. But after getting frustrated at the amount of emails regarding this, I tried again today. They are right, a blank page is opening when I click on the link. And sometimes, nothing happens at all.



Strangely enough, if I email the .zip, they can open it fine.



It just seems to be the product on E-junkie's server.



I hope all of that makes sense.



Does anyone know of a solution to this?

[E-junkie_Guru]

Unfortunately, Web-based downloads directly to mobile devices (e.g., smartphones or tablets, including iPads/iPhones) can be a bit of a mixed bag, depending on the particular device and what software the buyer has installed on it -- i.e., there's no way we can force a device to download something from us if it has no such download capability built-in or installed.



Apple iOS devices in particular require the user to have an app already installed that can open the type of file being downloaded -- e.g., downloading a .zip file to an iPad won't work unless the buyer has already installed an app that can open .zip files. Email attachments can be different because they aren't downloading the file via a Web browser, and the email app may have a built-in way to open .zip files which doesn't declare that ability to the OS or other apps on the device.



Part of the reason for that is because iOS has no general-purpose user-accessible storage; each app has its own, dedicated storage allocation, which can only be used to store file types that app can use. Another reason is just Apple being over-protective of their users; they doesn't want users downloading arbitrary files from the Web that they can't use, which could be malicious or just wind up taking up precious storage space if the user doesn't think (or know how) to delete them.



These other discussions here in our forum cover the topic in more detail:

http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/6281

http://www.e-junkie.com/bb/topic/5683



If you expect to have a lot of mobile buyers, you may wish to customize your thank-you/download page with instructions for those buyers in case they have trouble downloading; this help page explains thank-you page customization:

http://www.e-junkie.com/ej/help.custom.thankyou-page.htm



Buyers should normally have no trouble downloading from our system to an actual computer (including laptops and netbooks), and they should be able to sync the file to any mobile device from there, if the device allows it. If your download link works on a regular computer, it should work just as well on any mobile device that's actually capable of downloading from the Web.