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I have created an epub3 book which contains an iframe to load content from an external server. It works fine in the ebook readers I tried, but doesn't seem to work in iBooks on an iPad.

Is this an Apple special or do I need to set some additional parameters inside the ebook?

The settings on the iPad for iBooks does allow for 'Online Content'.

I did manage to display the external content in an ebook I created with Apple's iBook Author but I would like to use a different authoring tool (pandoc) for various reasons.

Any suggestions?

max.ott
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You can't use an iframe in the epub itself in iBooks, you have to use an HTML widget and embed the iframe inside that.

Waynn Lue
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    That may be the case for Apple's implementation, but it not true for standard epub itself. My epub book does the right thing in all the ebook readers I tested, but not in iBooks – max.ott Apr 14 '14 at 04:21
  • Do you have a link to a document which describes the security model Apple is using for iBooks? – max.ott Apr 14 '14 at 04:23
  • Oh sorry, I meant specifically in iBooks, not in the EPUB3 spec. I never could find a document from Apple that explained which HTML is whitelisted (if you ever do, let me know!), but in the past when we ran into this problem we used an HTML widget. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5068 – Waynn Lue Apr 14 '14 at 07:51
  • Do you have documentation or examples on embedding an iframe within a widget? Can this be done without iBooks Author? – Justin Putney Jun 11 '15 at 21:34
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As of now, iBooks does not allow any sort of external communication from books in their store. You can do some basic XHR and URL mapping with images/audio/video but they don't support external content when you actually upload to the iBookstore. It is quite sad...

Alex Milewski
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  • Actually, I'm not sure about that. Using the HTML widget in iBook Author I can connect to an external server when the user opens the widget inside the book. My problem is that I can't provide any feedback when the widget is closed - it always shows the same pre-packaged image. My book is an e-learning affair where students run experiments from those widgets and I want to give them feedback on what they still need to do - very simple, but thanks to Apple, very hard – max.ott Apr 15 '14 at 01:09
  • I should add that I only tested this with books I loaded onto the device myself, not through the online store. So I'm not sure if there are additional restrictions imposed at that time. – max.ott Apr 15 '14 at 01:11
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    To clarify: I am talking about generating an ePub3 file from scratch (not an iBooks author file). You can do a lot more with widgets in IA... – Alex Milewski Apr 16 '14 at 20:55