iOS: Open a Welcome Page in Safari, not CNA (post-authentication)

ios mobile-safari captivenetwork
Tom picture Tom · Apr 20, 2015 · Viewed 10.4k times · Source

I'm running a captive portal, target audience are mobile devices only. I would like to open a "welcome page" to the user after he authenticated in the CNA. This page should open in (mobile) Safari, not in the CNA, because it contains interactive elements that don't work in the limited CNA environment.

I've seen this working at other portals before, but I don't know how they do it and can't figure out how even after long research.

What I have is:

  • captive portal / captive network is working
  • users connecting get the splash page shown in popup (CNA)
  • since I don't need authentication, they are connected at this point, and the top-right button shows "OK"

What I want is:

  • a link or button on this splash page that opens a Safari window

or

  • some JavaScript, redirect, whatever else that opens a Safari window when the CNA is closed.

Nothing I found so far (e.g. using target="_system" was mentioned) works. Does anyone know how these hotel and other portals that somehow manage to do it, do it?

Answer

3pic picture 3pic · Jul 13, 2015

You cannot make the OS (OS X or iOS) to open Safari. When iOSX detects a walled garden (captive portal), it launches CNA. That is.

CNA ≠ Safari. Let's try <a href="..." target="_blank">test</a> Any try to open another CNA window fails.

Let's try <a href="..." target="_system">test</a> Any try to open Safari fails (_system works only for Safari, Mail & Safari webviews in iOS applications)

To me: answer = IMPOSSIBLE .

But I wonder: Is there anyone who has already seen this phenomenon. Have you ever Seen a safari page automatically launched after having been presented the CNA window ?

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