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iosipaduiwebviewrtfdocx

UIWebView is displaying white screen when loading rtf/docx documents

This seems to be bug which occurs on iOS 7 as well as on iOS 8. I already filled out a bug report and I provide a workaround in my answer.

This is the code in C# which loads my rtf document:

webView.LoadData (documentData, "text/rtf", "utf-8", new NSUrl ("/"));

Requirements:

  • webview is visible on screen, but not taking the full screen
  • only rtf, docx so far
  • different documents are loaded consecutively

How it behaves?

The load of the first document works fine. The second load shows a blank (white) screen. Then you can toggle between the document showing and showing the blank screen. So one would have to load the document the second time (was not able doing this in code) to actually display the document.

Some additoinal remarks: My constraints are correct (verified in a test project without constraints at all). On a real device (iPad) it behaves the same. If have tested it in iPad 2 simulator and on iPad Air.

Solution

  • Basically, the idea is to clear the webview before you load another document on screen. The code is in C#, but you can easily convert it to Objective-C/Swift:

    // clear the webview so that successive calls display the document correctly
webView.LoadRequest (NSUrlRequest.FromUrl (NSUrl.FromString ("about:blank")));