Connect with Options

Instead of having all sorts of “Connect to Console”, “Connect without Auto Logon”, “Connect in external window but without auto logon but to the console”, etc. I decided to implement a much more flexible mechanism to control how you want to connect to a particular remote desktop.

The check menus for “Connect to Console” and “Auto Logon” will override the setting from the connection.

The check menus for “Embedded”, “External” and “Full Screen” can be checked (only one at a time of course) but also unchecked. If one of the three options is checked it will take the selected window mode regardless of the connection’s configuration. If none is checked (you can clear the selection by clicking a check menu again), the window mode stored in the connection will be used.

This concept also allows easy extension in future versions. The overrides are only active for that session and will not be saved for that connection. To change it permanently you still need to edit the connection.

Of course, clicking one of the check menus will still leave the drop down menu open until you click on connect.

The all new “Change” menu:

Royal TS 1.6.5 will allow you to toggle “Smart Sizing” or “Smart Reconnect” on or off while the connection is active.

Another major improvement (as already shown in my previous post) is that you can change the window mode while the connection is active.

Of course, once you rip out a session from the main window to an external, you can put it back using the external window’s system menu or using the “Change” menu in the tree for that connection.

As a side note: the enabled “Edit” function for an active connection is not a bug – it’s a feature!

Now you can also edit connections while they are active.

I've been very busy with extending Royal TS for the last couple of months. One fruity outcome is already implemented: the "Tasks" feature. The next release of Royal TS will have completely fresh and new code for the remote desktop control. Originally I planned to do more smaller releases in shorter periods but this one is already an exception. It will be a 1.6.5 because there's too much change in it to call it a "maintenance" release. In fact some great new, unique features are on board.

But first I want to announce that there's a new group on my site: "Royal TS Beta Group" which you can easily join using the following link (you must be a registered user and logged in): http://www.code4ward.net/main/Default.aspx?rsvp=RTSBETA

When you join this group you will be able to download Beta versions and participate in the new Beta forum to discuss the release. There will also be some kind of notification/newsletter for those who joined the group. If you are interested to test drive new versions of Royal TS you are welcome to join.

So, what will be included in 1.6.5? Here a small preview:

Let me explain the picture above:

This is the system menu from an remote desktop connection in an external window and you see that there are four "Royal TS" menu items in it. Let's start with the last one:

• "Embed Session in Royal TS"
  You can now, on the fly, without reconnecting, ad-hoc, change an embedded session to an external, or vice-versa, change an external session to an embedded.
• "Reconnect"
  Does exactly what it says. When you resized your external window and want to adapt the remote desktop resolution to the new window size, that's what you need. Is very handy when you configured your connection to automatically log on.
• "Smart Sizing"
  As before, smart sizing will scale down your remote session instead of showing scroll bars when making the session window smaller.
• "Smart Reconnect"
  Will automatically reconnect your session when you resize the session window.

That's it for now.