Tech Forum

I ran into a problem that has been mentioned before, which is that selecting some text at Scriptures.LDS.org doesn't bring up the annotation / highlighting tools. I'm on Safari on an iPhone.

The regular solution is to use the Gospel Library app instead of the browser, but in this case I'm trying to embed an LDS.org page in an iframe on another web page and I'd like people to be able to access the annotation tools on LDS.org within the iframe. I can't embed Gospel Library in an iframe.

Any suggestions? Do you think this is a limitation imposed by the LDS.org programmers, or a limitation with iOS? Does it work on other touch-screen devices, like Android (I don't have an Android device to test)?

sbradshaw wrote:I ran into a problem that has been mentioned before, which is that selecting some text at Scriptures.LDS.org doesn't bring up the annotation / highlighting tools. I'm on Safari on an iPhone.

The regular solution is to use the Gospel Library app instead of the browser, but in this case I'm trying to embed an LDS.org page in an iframe on another web page and I'd like people to be able to access the annotation tools on LDS.org within the iframe. I can't embed Gospel Library in an iframe.

Any suggestions? Do you think this is a limitation imposed by the LDS.org programmers, or a limitation with iOS? Does it work on other touch-screen devices, like Android (I don't have an Android device to test)?

If the annotation tools don't appear on a section of content on LDS.org, then it really doesn't matter which browser or device you're using -- they just won't appear. And it doesn't matter whether you are embedding an LDS.org page in an iframe -- that won't make any difference.

It's not so much a "limitation imposed by the LDS.org programmers" but rather it's a matter of content which is not yet prepared with the proper styles and formatting to be compatible with the annotations scripts.

I should have clarified; it's an area where annotations do work on a regular web browser. For example, 1 Nephi 1 in English – annotation tools show up on my computer's web browser, but not on my iOS device's web browser. I made sure I was logged in to LDS.org on both devices.

sbradshaw wrote:I should have clarified; it's an area where annotations do work on a regular web browser. For example, 1 Nephi 1 in English – annotation tools show up on my computer's web browser, but not on my iOS device's web browser. I made sure I was logged in to LDS.org on both devices.

Sorry I misunderstood at first.

In any case, I can confirm that on my Android devices, when I am signed in to LDS.org and viewing scripture content pages, the study bar does NOT appear, nor are annotations an option when I select text within the content pages. And I made sure that I was looking at the exact same content where those options work on my computer's browser.

I'm not a front-end developer, but I wouldn't be surprised if the way that text selection is detected is controlled differently by the mobile operating systems. I tried to examine the scripts involved, but there is a lot going on in a huge set of scripts, and it quickly exceeded my capabilities. My guess is that the Church's developers would have made this work on mobile browsers if they reasonably could have done so, but the mobile operating systems make it very difficult or impossible to do.

This is frustrating, because I can easily search all of LDS.org content and find what I need, but as soon as I want to highlight or annotate in any way, I have to go into the Gospel Library app, find my source, download the content, find my quote in the text, then annotate it. Then I have to delete the source off my app, since I don't have enough memory on my device to keep the February 1973 Ensign ... or anything else... downloaded in my app. It would be so nice to be able to annotate on LDS.org on my devices and have it connect with my notes I've made in my account/in my app.