Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect is the First Terminal Services Solution Certified for Windows Server 2008

I'm extremely proud and thrilled to announce that Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect is the first Terminal Services Solution certified for Windows Server 2008. Indeed we are one of the first applications of any kind to be certified for this new platform. Moreover, the same version of PowerTerm WebConnect is also fully compatible with Windows Server 2003, 2003 x64 and 2000. This means that it is the only Server Based Computing solution that can support both your existing and future infrastructure.

First and foremost, I would like to thank our highly dedicated and very talented R&D group for this wonderful achievement. I also want to thank the great people at Microsoft, in particular the Terminal Services team, for all their assistance. This close cooperation has been instrumental in enabling us to support this exiting new perform so quickly.

In order to achieve certification PowerTerm WebConnect successfully underwent a barrage of over 100 tests. These tests confirm its compliance with best practices for compatibility, security, reliability, and availability, on Windows Server 2008. Tony de Freitas, director of Windows Server marketing at Microsoft has said: "Ericom has introduced the first Terminal Services application that takes full advantage of the security and solid foundation of Windows Server 2008".

Innovation: Internet Explorer Controls Now Respond to User Input (Again)

If you browse the Internet using Microsoft Internet Explorer you must have encountered that annoying phenomena where in many web sites controls, such as Flash or Media Player, display a tooltip containing the text "Click to Activate" when your mouse hovers over them. When you do click the control that text disappears, but the control itself appears to ignore that first click. So, for example, if you want to mute Media Player you may have to click the mute button twice: first to activate the control and again to actually mute it.

It wasn't always this way. Controls embedded within Internet Explorer used to react to the first click without requiring the user to first activate them. This change for the worse in user experience occurred back in April 2006 when Microsoft was forced to distribute this "upgrade" to Internet Explorer. This was done as a result of law suit filed by a company called Eolas that had managed to patent the concept of browser plugins. You can read about it here.

Microsoft did published various methods to work around this limitation, using such hacks as dynamically updating the HTML on the client side using script. However, many sites did not apply these techniques, much to the annoyance of many users. Thankfully this is sorry tale is drawing to a close: Microsoft has licensed the technologies from Eolas, removing the "Click to Activate" requirement in Internet Explorer. Unfortunately for web developers, they will have to continue using the hacks previously provided by Microsoft for a long time to come, just in case some poor schmuck with a browser that has not been updated hits their website.

"Really Rocks"

I got this cool link via a comment on my Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services post (thanks Anon, whomever your are ...) I do wish the video included somebody from the Terminal Services team. Also, I never knew you could get so excited about Group Policies :-)

Have You Turned Vista UAC Off Yet?

A few months ago I wrote a piece about Vista User Access Control (UAC). The gist of it was that while the concept of UAC is good, the way in which it has been implemented will cause many people to turn it off. Obviously when turned off it doesn’t do anybody any good. I asserted that if Microsoft had relaxed the rules a little bit, at least in the initial system configuration stage, a lot more people would be likely to use UAC in the long run.

A poll running at 4sysops validates my intuition. Of the 1,189 people who participated in the poll 66% have switched off UAC completely and another 8% disabled or modified portions of it. Only 25% of these Vista users are still using UAC in its full capacity. This poll does not include people who where so bummed out by UAC that they uninstalled Vista completely – and I’m personally familiar with several people who did just that.

SBC Could Save You From Jail

Just in case you live in the UK and need an argument to convince the organization you work for to switch to Server Based Computing, check out this article (link via Slashdot). Apparently the British Government's Information commissioner Richard Thomas has called on the Ministry of Justice to make it a criminal offence to lose a laptop containing sensitive data that is not sufficiently encrypted. An example might be a doctor leaving a laptop containing personal details of patients in a car. The deputy Information commissioner David Smith told the House of Lords that the watchdog body was seeking powers to inspect organisations to check whether they were applying data protection laws.

While encrypting local data can be a solution, insuring that all sensitive data is properly encrypted can be difficult. Moreover, proving that all such data has been encrypted after a laptop has been lost or stolen is practically impossible. A much better solution is to simply store all data on central servers at the data center, and access them remotely via a Server Based Computing solution such as Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect.

The Continuing Saga of Microsoft Releases

In a previous post I wrote that the release date for Windows Server 2008 (formally "Longhorn"), Visual Studio 2008 (formally "Orcas") and SQL Server 2008 will be February 27th. Turns out that this release schedule is accurate on average. Visual Studio 2008 will be available to developers three months earlier, at the end of November. SQL Server, on the other hand, will only be available sometime in Q2 2008. The version available at the launch will be a CTP (Community Tech Preview) only. As for Windows Server 2008, since RTM was delayed to the end of 2007 we will have to wait and see.

In the meantime Microsoft’s new hypervisor, previously codenamed Viridian has been officially branded "Hyper-V". Microsoft also announced that they will create a specialized virtualization product called "Hyper-V Server". It will be released 90 days after Hyper-V itself and seems to be a stripped-down version of Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition that only includes the virtualization role.

Corrections to Windows Server 2008 Upgrade Article

Debra Littlejohn Shinder posted an interesting article at TechRepublic listing 10 things to consider when making a Windows Server 2008 upgrade decision. As reason #7 to upgrade the article lists enhancements to Windows Terminal Services. Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 have indeed been significantly enhanced, but unfortunately this section of the article contains some significant omissions and inaccuracies:

1. The article mentions the new Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) version 6.0 and states that it is included in both Vista and Server 2008. RDC 6.0 is actually already available for XP as well. This is significant because it means you do not have to upgrade all clients to Vista in order to access all the new Terminal Services features. Moreover, Server 2008 will include RDC 6.1, which will also be made available Vista and XP. Some new features require upgrading to 6.1.
2. The article describes improvements to the user experience, such as higher resolution and multi-monitor spanning. It’s important to note that these two features are actually available for Windows Server 2003 as well, if you use RDC 6.0 on the client side.
3. The article neglects to mention some of the most significant usability enhancements such as TS RemoteApp and TS Getway.

Since the release of Windows Server 2008 is rapidly approaching I encourage you to download and test Windows Server 2008 RC0. Also if you are wandering if Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services are good enough for you as a stand-alone solution or if you still require an add-on product such as Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect or Citrix, check out this post.

Getting Started with Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect

James Lui, our Director of Customer Services, has created a cool video showing how to get started with PowerTerm WebConnect, and posted it on YouTube. The great thing about this video is that it is only 10 minutes long! Yes, this is how long it takes to install PowerTerm WebConnect, configure it, publish multiple applications and access them remotely. Now there absolutely no justification not to check out PowerTerm WebConnect when you are looking for a Server Based Computing solution / Terminal Server enhancement / Citrix alternative. Enjoy the video:

For more information about PowerTerm WebConnect please visit the Ericom website.

MFC: Back to the Future

Approximately three months ago I blogged about how Microsoft is planning to resuscitate MFC. With the release of Visual Studio 2008 ("Orcas") fast approaching Microsofties are releasing more details about the new VC++ is general, and MFC in particular. Apparently Microsoft is planning a huge update for MFC including such functions as:

• Vista theme support, allowing your application to dynamically switch between themes.
• The Office 2007 UI, including the Ribbon bar look in all its glory, with the ribbon itself, the pearl, quick access toolbar, status bar, and more.
• The Office 2003 and XP UI, including Outlook-style shortcut bar, Office-style toolbars and menus, print preview, live font picker, color picker, etc.
• The Internet Explorer UI, including rebars and task panes in all their glory.
• The Visual Studio UI, with sophisticated docking functionality, auto hide windows, property grids, MDI tabs, tab groups, and more.

Which leads me to ask: Is MFC the new .NET? :-)

Login Scripts Good, Launch Scripts Bad

A common SBC scenario is one where certain drive mappings need to occur when accessing published applications or logging in to remote desktops. One reason for this is that some line-of-business applications were written is such a way that requires specific drive letters to exist. Another reason is that some organizational work procedures associate user-specific folders on servers with fixed drive letters. For example, we have a large PowerTerm WebConnect customer that maps users' folders on Netware servers in such a way.

An obvious approach to mapping such drives is to create a login script that performs the mapping operation. Unfortunately this approach does not always work. One significant problem is that login scripts generally run asynchronously. What this means is that the script is indeed launched before the published application, but Windows (or Citrix) does not wait for it to finish before launching the published application. Instead both the script and the application run in parallel. As a result, if the application launches quickly and attempts to access the mapped drives as one of its first operations, it may do so before the drives were actually mapped by the script. The same can happen if the script needs to perform a relatively lengthy operation before mapping the drives or to interact with the user in some way.

A common solution for this problem is to create a script that maps the drives and then launches the application. In this case, instead of publishing the actual application, you publish the script. In other words, instead of creating a login script you create a "launch script". Such launch scripts typically have the following structure:

1. Delete current drive mappings - this is in case the application is being launched a second time and the drives are already mapped
2. Map the drive letters that are needed
3. Launch the application
4. Exist the script

(Thanks to Patrick Rouse for providing this information)

When we designed script support in PowerTerm WebConnect we decided to do our best to avoid the need for such launch scripts. There were several reasons for this:

1. Launch scripts make the process of application publishing unwieldy - since you publish a script instead of the actual application browsing for it is more difficult and you need to manually adjust properties such as the icon
2. They invalidate multiple application publishing - PowerTerm WebConnect has a cool feature that scans the Start menu on the Terminal Server, and enables you to publish multiple applications simply by selecting them. If you need to publish scripts instead of the actual applications this feature cannot be used
3. Bugs in the scripts - in particular a script may launch the application with wrong command-line arguments or in an incorrect folder
4. Script maintenance - whenever an application is upgraded its launch script may need to be updated as well
5. Synchronization problems - if you launch the published application twice at the same time session sharing will place both instances in the same session. This will results in two instances of the launch script running at the same time and stepping on each other's toes
6. More Synchronization problems - if one instance of the application is already running (its launch script is already done) and you run another instance in the same session, the new script will unmap the drives from under the first instance's feet (see step 1 of the script)
7. Increased maintenance overhead - several applications may require identical mappings. Yet each application will utilize its own script, so you end up with duplicate code in several files that must always be in sync (yes, you could create a script that runs another script, but that is even more complicated and error-prone)

Because of all these issues we decided to find a way to enable login scripts to properly perform such operations without requiring launch scripts.

Our solution was to augment the Windows scripting infrastructure with additional custom scripts specific to PowerTerm WebConnect. What this means is that in addition to the standard Windows login scripts, PowerTerm WebConnect runs its own custom login scripts whenever a session is created. The interesting twist is that these login scripts are completely synchronous with the applications. In other words, the published application will not be launched until the script is done. This facility makes it very simple to create login scripts that perform such operations successfully.

We did not stop with this. PowerTerm WebConnect's scripting functionality is very robust providing many additional features such as:

1. Logout scripts, which are also synchronous (session does not end until they are done)
2. Application scripts - scripts that are run for specific published applications. This reduces the need for launch scripts even more. Such scripts are synchronous both with the application and other instances of themselves
3. Connect/disconnect scripts
4. Scripting API - the scripts can directly interact with PowerTerm WebConnect to receive information and perform operations. For example, if the mapping fails the script can use an API method to abort the session

Over the upcoming weeks I will provide more information about the PowerTerm WebConnect scripting infrastructure so stay tuned.

Fear is the Mind-Killer

Over the past few years I’ve meet several people from Citrix. Overall they were smart, friendly and interesting. The same is true regarding people I’ve meet from Provision Networks and Jetro. Obviously they are our competitors, and we do compete with them, sometimes aggressively but never maliciously. This is why I’m a somewhat shocked by the sentiments expressed in some posts in this discussion. I think Yoda said it best: Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you.