Forms: Survey not shown at all on mobile (iOS) if shared via link

ilanti · March 24, 2024, 3:09pm

Nextcloud version (eg, 20.0.5): Nextcloud Hub 7 (28.0.3)
Operating system and version (eg, Ubuntu 20.04): Debian 4.19.304-1
Apache or nginx version (eg, Apache 2.4.25): Apache/2.4.38 (Debian)
PHP version (eg, 7.4): PHP 8.2.17

Issue

When sharing a survey created with Forms via a link (anonymous answers) users of mobile browsers (at least on iPhone7, iOS 15.8.2 ) do not see the survey at all.

Other users (e.g. Firefox on Desktop) see and are able to complete the survey (it just works).

Is this the first time you’ve seen this error? (Y):

Steps to replicate it:

Open this link with a a mobile browser: Nextcloud
See a screen w/o any form

May be related to

sounds similar although, in their case, the user was obviously at least able to start the survey.

susnux · March 24, 2024, 10:31pm

What does lastet iOS mean? At least 15.x is required, can you verify iOS 15+ is used?

ilanti · March 25, 2024, 8:03am

It’s iOS 15.8.2 (I always update immediately, so I wrote “latest” – will edit my post now as well).

Chartman123 · March 25, 2024, 8:17am

Did you try to use an alternative browser on your phone? I just did a quick test on an emulated iPhone 7 and also saw only the public page template using Safari

devnull · March 25, 2024, 8:18am

Are you logged in while entering the website? Can you use another browser on iPhone e.g. Chrome? What browser is it?

Chartman123 · March 25, 2024, 8:18am

No, the screenshot only shows a public page accessed by a share link, so not logged in

ilanti · March 25, 2024, 10:04am

Just installed and tried Firefox (124.0) with the same result. I also can confirm, that I am not logged into my onwcloud instance.

Do you think it has to do with the server-side configuration? In other words: Does Forms work with iOS on other owncloud instances?

devnull · March 25, 2024, 10:19am

I don’t use iOS. But I think if Nextcloud Forms didn’t work on iOS, it would be known. Can you try a different iPhone?

ilanti · March 25, 2024, 3:02pm

I have now a bit more feedback from other users with different devices: Both iPhone X and Android 10 (Honot 20 YAL-L21) do not show this problem. But two different iPhone7 with different Browsers (Safari and Firefox) show it as documented above. So it may be an iPhone7-only problem? Seems strange to me …

devnull · March 25, 2024, 3:11pm

Maybe they can also test another browser e.g. Chrome.

SysKeeper · March 25, 2024, 3:13pm

I can reproduce it with iOS 15.5, this is on the console

Seems the problem is the lookbehind, which is only supported starting iOS 16.4 (Lookbehind in JS regular expressions | Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc)

On iOS before 17.4 all browsers are forced to use the safari rendering engine. So even when you install a different browser, that does not make a difference.

devnull · March 25, 2024, 3:14pm

They are forced? Nice system. Thank you for getting such bad technology for so much money. What about browser Opera?

SysKeeper · March 25, 2024, 3:17pm

No native browser engine is allowed, besides safari/webkit. This changed with recent 17.4 but only because the EU forced apple to open up in this regard.

devnull · March 25, 2024, 3:18pm

Thanks EU.
Thanks Apple for nothing.

And after +10 years there is also the end of Lightning. Hallo USB-C. Welcome Apple back from the Stone Age.

ilanti · March 25, 2024, 5:44pm

Thanks for the deep insight! So for now, all users of iPhone-models below 8 can not participate? This could be a no-go for us as we do not want to force people into buying new devices.

Should I file an issue at GitHub - nextcloud/forms: 📝 Simple form & survey app for Nextcloud ?
Is there any workaround for this, given that I administer that next-cloud instance?

Sources

SysKeeper · March 25, 2024, 6:03pm

Yes, opening an issue on GitHub sounds like a good idea.
I don’t think there’s a way to workaround easily. It needs to be checked if the current regex can be rewritten without a lookbehind.

Chartman123 · March 25, 2024, 8:47pm

The iPhone 7 doesn’t receive feature updates from Apple since 2022. So I think that we won’t fix it for these old devices anymore.

susnux · March 25, 2024, 11:02pm

At least it gets security updates. Nextcloud currently supports 15+, so I will have a look if we can fix this or at least make it not fatal.

But as said no guarantees here.

ilanti · March 26, 2024, 7:08am

The corresponding Issue Survey not shown on mobile (iOS 15, iPhone < 8) · Issue #2032 · nextcloud/forms · GitHub

Thanks for all your comments!

ilanti · March 26, 2024, 7:11am

Yes please! Particularly in the context of a survey application, the exclusion of certain devices that are still in circulation would place a distorting filter over the results.