Open link in Safari from iOS packaged App

[mkessler]

Hi,
I have a link on my mobile app with a target="_blank" attribute. The app is packaged as a native iOS app. The problem is, the link is not opening in Safari as expected, instead it opens inside the app. It is very important that the link opens in Safari in a new browser window. How can I achieve that?

[jay@moduscreate.com]

I think you're going to have to make a native call to open safari.

[mkessler]

How to do that? Can you point me to the documentation?

[graemlourens]

I would love to know that too.

A part of our app is opening a PDF, and when opened (in webview obviously) there is no possible way of getting back than deleting app from memory.

Has anybody found a hack?
@sencha are you looking into this in any way already?

Regards, Graem

[mkessler]

I ended up using Phonegap (now Cordova) for packaging. You can modify the view controller to allow opening of links outside of the app.

[dawesi]

just for those who might get confused, phoneGap is still phoneGap, Cordova is to phoneGap as webkit is to Chrome or Safari

[svenna]

Opening a PDF from a native package app is really important.

There is many people asking about open links (external pages or pdf files) so Sencha, please recognize it's importance and look for a solution for 2.0.x

I still have 3-5 weeks before production, but for now it looks like I should abandon the sencha packaging av look for PhoneGap/Cordova.

I've looked at a few solutions, some people try the iframe support. Many get problems scrolling but it looks like making a really, really, large iframe that includes the PDF can be a "solution"

Also, there is a ux for using target: _blank on a click event, but I can't see that this would be better than target="_blank" in the a tag. (read: not working)

Refs:
http://www.sencha.com/forum/archive/.../t-174759.html
http://www.sencha.com/forum/archive/.../t-129038.html

[jhoweaa]

This is definitely something I'm very interested in. Displaying PDF's is critical to our application and if we can't do it from Touch we'll have to use a different solution.