Fix gl3D on iOS

[etpinard]

fixes #280 (as far as I know)

Big ups to @dfcreative for the gl-plot3d patch -> gl-vis/gl-plot3d#6 🎉

Reviewers that have access to iOS devices are encouraged to check out http://codepen.io/etpinard/full/vxYezj/ to double check that the fix works as desired.

[rreusser]

Works for me on iPhone 5.

[etpinard]

Ok, 3 👍 Let's try this out!

[ityoung2016]

Does NOT work on iPad 4 running iOS v10.3.2. I tried the latest versions of both Safari and Opera. And as I am somewhat new to this game, assuming a fix is found, where will I be able to access (download) the patch? Thanks for your help.

[rreusser]

@ityoung2016 Are you able to get information about the specific error? Sometimes that means plugging the device into the computer so that you can access the js console via Safari (if on mac). That would be a huge help. Thanks!

[ityoung2016]

Thank you for following up on my question. I hooked my iPad to my iMac - both of which are running the latest Apple operating systems and software - and followed the instructions here <https://blog.idrsolutions.com/2015/02/remote-debugging-ios-safari-on-os-x-windows-and-linux/>. Sure enough I could look at the Javascript console associated with the html/javascript page being loaded on my iPad. Although Safari reported that there were no errors (or anything else) on the console, the 3D graphics refused to load with the message “Webgl is not supported by your browser - visit http://get.webgl.org <http://get.webgl.org/> for more info”. I went to the indicated website which displayed a rotating cube and the message “Your browser supports WebGL”. This problem has been reported on GitHub and solutions have supposedly been uploaded. See <#1411 <#1411>> Unfortunately, it does not work for me. I am trying to display a surface and that involves 3D graphics. I am using "plotly-latest.min.js” v1.27.1. Other html/javascript examples that I have prepared that use 2D plotly.js graphics - scatter, histogram - work fine. Any help you can bring will be greatly appreciated.

[rreusser]

Thanks for the extra info! There are a number of extensions webgl is able to take advantage of, so it may be a matter of compatibility of specific features used by the surface plots. Sometimes the solution is a simple fallback or even that it was an artificially imposed limitation in the first place. So it'll take just a bit of debugging, but the report is greatly appreciated! If we're able to pin it down and fix it, it will be released in plotly.js probably within a few days of being fixed.

[ityoung2016]

Some additional - I think important - information. As I reported above, 3D surface plotting does not work on my iPad which is an iPad4,2, introduced in October 2013. I am running all of the latest system software (v.10.3.2 (14F89)) and that, of course, includes Safari for the iPad. I continue to get the message that "Webgl is not supported by my browser...".

And this is also the message from the latest version of Opera indicating it may be a problem with a basic iPad resource.

But when I try the same thing on my iPhone 6s (again v10.3.2 (14F89)) everything works fine on both Safari and Opera. Surface plots are properly rendered.

This might indicate that the problem is with iPad-specific resources. Does this help?

[ityoung2016]

This is a followup to my comments and questions of 28 May. Despite a subsequent update to a new iPad and to ALL of the latest software including the plotly.js library (v1.30.0), the problem remains. 3D surface plotting works on my iMac and iPhone but does not work on my iPad. The error message on my iPad is that WebGL is not supported by my Browser (both Safari and Opera). But the WebGL website shows that it is supported. Do you have any ideas of the cause of this problem or how fix it or work around it?

Thank you for your help in this matter.

[bg23]

I fixed this problem in my code (where I am using a local copy of plotly) as follows for version 1.31:
When using
https://github.com/plotly/plotly.js/tree/master/dist/plotly.js
then replace "preferFloat: !isMobile" by "preferFloat: 0".
When using
https://github.com/plotly/plotly.js/tree/master/dist/plotly.min.js
then replace "preferFloat: !y" by "preferFloat: 0".
NOTE: There is only one "preferFloat:" present, so it can be found easily.
Now surface plots are working on Safari/iOS, Chrome/Android, Chrome/Windows, Edge/Windows.
On touch devices, touch gestures such as rotation are still clumsy and require some work, probably because the browser defaults for the canvas touch events are not disabled (preventDefault).
This also fixes #280 for me, see my comment there on the bug's origin for iPad.

[ityoung2016]

Brilliant! Thank you for providing a patch to eliminate the problem with my local copy of plotly.js. It was simple to find and change from "!y" to "0". The question remains if this fix will be implemented in the next official release of plotly and if not then why not? But, nevertheless, thank you, thank you, thank you!

[etpinard]

The question remains if this fix will be implemented in the next official release of plotly and if not then why not?

If someone from the community is willing to make a PR, then yeah, why not!

[ityoung2016]

The information provided by bg23 in October 2017 resolved the problem and I have used an accordingly modified version of 'plotly-latest.min.ls' v1.31.2 since then without problem. Today, I downloaded and installed v1.33.1. It did not need to be modified as 'preferFloat" had already been set to 0. Unfortunately the new version no longer solved the problem; the inability to display 3D surfaces on an iPad (not iPhone or iMac) has returned. All three devices are running the very latest OS versions released this week. Any ideas?

[bg23]

Plotly version 1.33.1 still doesn't detect the iPad as a device, it only detects iPhone and iPod. As decribed in my comment to bug #280 (Oct 11, 2017) you can correct for this by searching for: "ip(hone|od)" and replace it by "ip(ad|hone|od)". Although surface plots will work then, their interactive behaviour is still implemented rather incompletely: 1) When moving a finger up and down the surface plot, the plot should rotate. It actually does so, but the touch events are also catched by the browser which moves the whole page up and down according to its default behaviour. 2) Zooming using 2-finger spread/pinch gestures isn't implemented at all. On devices with a mouse 1) and 2), in contrast, are working perfectly.

…

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[ityoung2016]

Many thanks, bg23, for the advice in your post of yesterday. I never saw your 11 Oct 2017 post concerning the #280 bug. I only saw your post on this thread of 10 October 2017. You must have been very focussed on this problem and your later submission addresses the problem with an understandable, structural solution. I hope it will become a formal part of the "plotly canon".