iPad tip: Downloading large files
One of the issues of the iPad and Safari is when you’re trying to download large (supported) files. By default, it will open the files and load them completely before giving you the ability to put them in other apps and things like that, and if you’re dealing with large documents you may never get that far. I’ve had PDF files as large as 200MB that I’ve needed to download, and if you try going the direct Safari route with these then you’re basically screwed because Safari will try to both download/buffer 200MB and open the file at the same time.
The solution to this is to use a file downloading app that acts much the way downloads do with desktop browsers. In my case I use Filer, which aside from a useful unzipping feature also has a built in browser where you have a proper file downloader. In fact it has a download mode, which lets you download the target of any link you see- be it the website it’s linking to or documents, archives etc. By using this app I can download my giant PDF files and then open them in iBooks. It gives me a proper download progression bar and doesn’t try to open files while downloading, meaning it has no trouble with 600 page PDF files.So if you ever run into large files you need to download, keep this in mind!
