Is download essential? Ways to display content without opening in separate apps.

[Marina Blake]

Hi LibraryBox community,

I have been so impressed with this idea, only discovered it yesterday. I'm based in England working on a project where we are partnering with local shops and businesses to transform a disused alley into a public garden, recreation area and digital library, harnessing local knowledge and connecting people within the community. 

For people coming into the alley/garden/library with their smartphones, is there a way that they can view, read or listen to the content that we have available on the LibraryBox without downloading it and opening up separate apps?

Just for people who have stopped by, it's a large commitment to trust the exhibit and download a file onto a device which, for the majority of people, will not have much available memory. We're concerned that this obstacle might prevent people from really engaging with the content, and therefore limit the effectiveness of the project. People would probably be much more open to reading, watching or listening to the content if all they had to do was log onto the LibraryBox Wifi, go to their web browser and from there just browse the files, having them open in the browser. 

Also, is it possible to make modifications that prevent chat? Just anonymous chat in a totally open environment might be something we'd want to avoid. 

Thanks very much for your help. 

Marina x 

[Jason Griffey]

Marina,

How the client deals with content is completely up to the client...if you load HTML ebooks onto the LibraryBox, it will display in the browser. If you are sharing EPUB files, unfortunately there isn't support in-browser for ePub, so there has to be a secondary app involved. Same with any other media type...it's not LibraryBox that's in control of how the client handles those.

For example, MOST mobile phones will stream an MP3 rather than download it. But not all, and not all browsers do it exactly the same way. It's totally dependent on how the browser deals with that particular media type.

The chat is easily turned off in the Config settings, info can be found on the "Build your own" page: http://librarybox.us/building.php

Jason Griffey

Creator & Director

The LibraryBox Project

http://librarybox.us

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[Marina Blake]

Hi Jason, 

Thanks so much for the response, it's made it much clearer in my mind! Will post again in the correct place when we have some usage to report, we're excited to move forward with it. 

All the best,

Marina

[Matthias Strubel]

Hi,

LibraryBox has a simple directory listing, which main puropse is for downloading. Some browsers are bandwith/disk friendly and stream the data over downloading it.

You can increase the chance for such a behavior with creating a custom entry html page and use html5 tags for linking your content. These tags make the browser to use a player of doing a download.

http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_video.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_audio.asp

Matthias

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