Progress report #1, on Version 2 of Royal TS. Hopefully I manage to do this more often and I would be grateful for any feedback.

As you may know from the previous post, Royal TS will allow you to open multiple documents at the same time. This might be handy if you are working in a team and have spread your configuration across multiple documents, or if you want to have one document for each of your clients, etc.

Similar to Version 1.5x or later, Royal TS Version 2 will also allow you to encrypt your passwords with a password/passphrase. So if you have a couple of documents protected with the same password, it might be annoying when you get a prompt for each and every document you open in the same instance of Royal TS.

So I invented the “Password Cache” (patent pending ) which basically holds a secure copy of your password in memory. The next time you open an encrypted file, Royal TS will try if one of the cached passwords will work and will spare you the password prompt.

The check box “Remember this Password”, which is checked by default, allows you to control whether you want to cache this password or not.

For security reasons, the cache will not work when you want to edit an encrypted document. Editing a document also allows you to change the password for a document (or remove password protection), therefore, Royal TS will always prompt for the document password in that case.

The Password Cache lives in the RTSApp.exe process, so as soon as you quit your Royal TS instance the cache will be cleared.

One more thing: I also create a Facebook page for Royal TS, so if anyone is interested to join: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Royal-TS/237851900921

cheers,
Stefan

I hope you all had nice and refreshing holidays. I know that I did. Despite the fact that I am still recovering from my minor surgery two weeks ago, I am feeling very well again.

The coming year will bring some major changes to Royal TS and I bet you all are very excited about this. I will not reveal much in this post but you can expect regular progress reports over the next weeks bringing you more and more details about the new features coming to Royal TS in Version 2. There are still some minor nasty bugs in 1.6.8 and you can also expect an update here.

As many of you already know from the forums, Version 2 of Royal TS will be almost a complete rewrite and there’s still a lot of work ahead of us. We are still deciding for some features to be included in Version 2 or to be postponed. We hope that we can provide a beta version of Version 2 some time in Q1/Q2 2010.

Here’s what we know to be included:

Version 2 will have an “Object Explorer” which is basically replacing the current “Navigation Tree”. Why object explorer you may ask? Simply because you can now create not only RDP connections, you can also create and organize other connections and objects.

Using the object explorer you can create/manage the following “Objects”:

• Documents: you can now have more than one document open in the same tree
• Folders: you can now have nested folders in each document
• RDP Connections: pretty much the same as Royal TS can do now, of course some new features and options will be included.
• Web Connections: instead of connecting to a remote desktop session, you can now open a web page. Very handy if you have some web based admin pages for routers, firewalls, WIKI pages, Sharepoint sites, applications, etc.
• Tasks: pretty much the same as Royal TS can do now, only that the tasks can be organized in the tree like any other object.
• Credentials: a credential is nothing more than a username/password pair which can be defined in your document. You can then refer to these credentials in your connections/folders. You can refer to them explicitly by choosing the Task from your tree or you can instruct Royal TS to look for a credential with a specific name. This feature has a great impact if you are using the same document in a team. In your Document you configure each connection credential to look for a credential named “Domain Admin Account” and if you want to connect to this session Royal TS looks in all your open documents or in your application store (Tasks and Credentials can also be stored in something called Application Store to be available all the time in your Royal TS installation, we will talk more about the application store in another post) to find a credential with this name. This way, login information will be separated from the document but it is also possible to have auto-logon functionality.

The last bullet in the list hints another feature many of you requested: Assigning credentials/tasks on a folder level. You can now optionally assign default credentials, a pre-connect task and a post-disconnect task on a folder in your hierarchy and configure your connections to use the configuration of your parent folder instead of the individual configuration.

That’s it for now.

I wish you all happiness and prosperity in the new year. Thank you for being our customer and we look forward to continuing our relationship in this new year!

It’s almost a year since Royal TS became Shareware. When you obtain a license for Royal TS you also get a 12-month software upgrade protection to ensure that you have access to the latest versions of Royal TS for a year after your purchase date.

Some of our very first customers were asking about extending the software upgrade protection and thought it might be a good idea to publish a blog post to clarify a few things about our licensing. So here we go…

First of all, there is no extension for the software upgrade protection and there is no need for that. Here's why and how we planned our licensing structure:

The license key currently issued is bound to the Royal TS Version 1.6.x

The next major version of Royal TS (V2.0) a new license key will be needed. The keys for 1.6.x will not work anymore. The key issued for Version 2.0 will work with all minor versions of version 2.x. Version 3.0 will need a new license key again and so on.

With our software upgrade protection we ensure you have access to all new major and minor releases for a duration of 12 months after purchase. This way you will not have to buy another license a month later after your purchase in case a new major version is released.

Every customer qualifying for a free upgrade according to our software upgrade protection will get the new license key automatically by email when the new release is available.

Every customer who does not qualify for a free upgrade anymore (because the purchase date was back more than a year) will get automatically notified by email when a new major version is released and they will also get a discount coupon to use when they decide to upgrade to the new version.

We think this is a very fair approach because you do not have to pay for an extension without having a new major version on the horizon but at the same time ensures that loyal customers get the benefit of a discount when the release is ready and they decide to upgrade.

I hope this makes sense and want to express my appreciation for all of you supporting Royal TS. Thank you!

We are still working hard on version 2 of Royal TS but over the last couple of months we also needed to take care of some bug of the current version. One of the current issues are some Windows 7 quirks which will hopefully be ironed out with the upcoming release 1.6.8. But here a complete list of fixes and features:

Windows 7 / Font related:

It seems that in Windows 7 the font size changed slightly. At least in some dialogs there are tiny text-cut-offs. These should be fixed now. Another issues for a lot of users is the text size in the tree view and the list view. We were always following the best practices and Windows design guidelines. We used the standard system font and size as recommended. So, when switching from XP to Vista/Win7, Royal TS will use a different (and larger) font. We got a lot of feedback about these issues and implemented a quick fix.

For once we will reduce the default font size back to 8.25pt instead of 9.0pt regardless of the OS.

Additionally we will provide a way to change the font and font size for both separately, the tree view and the list view. For now, there’s no UI for this because we basically rewrite all the UI for V2 and didn’t want to invest much in the soon to be obsolete UI. You need to edit some XML to set the font or font size.

Which brings us to another small but useful new feature: directly opening the config folder from Royal TS. A frequently asked question always is: Where are my task and application settings stored. And the answer is not always easy because it depends if you have some folder redirection policies and it also depends on the OS you use.

So, if you open up the Activity Log from the View menu, notice the Config Folder button on the toolbar:

 

Clicking on this button will open a File Explorer displaying the directory with your setting files.

When you now open the code4ward.RoyalTS.ApplicationSettingsData.xml you will see the following new settings:

The order of the items may be different on your system.

LegacyTreeStyle can be true or false: When true, it will display +/- signs (XP style) instead of the little triangles (Vista/7 style).
ListViewFontName can be Default or a font name of your choice: When set to Default it will use the system’s default font.
ListViewFontSize can be Default or a size of your choice: When set to Default it will use 8.25. If you use Vista or Windows 7 and want to use the system’s default font size you need to change it to 9.0!
TreeViewFontName and TreeViewFontSize will be the same as ListViewFontName and ListViewFontSize except it controls the font of the tree view.
TreeViewHighlightType is by default None and can be Full, Partial or TextOnly: Controls how the items in the tree view will be highlighted after selection.

Control on which Screen the session will appear when it’s not embedded

Notice that there’s now the possibility to setup on which display screen your external session will be opened. This option is only available when you have selected External Window or External Window (Full Screen) and when you have more than one display connected to your computer. The default value is Last Remembered, which saves the position of your session when the window is closed or the session is disconnected but selecting a specific display let’s you force to open it always on the specified screen.

Also note the shortcut to the Display Properties Control Panel, which might be handy if you do not know what display number corresponds to your actual screens.

If more than one display is connected, you can also use the Connect with Options functionality to temporarily open a connection on a specific monitor.

Changes to the Remote Desktop Module

Royal TS now sports a fancy Connecting and Reconnecting indicator:

An often requested feature is to have a better reconnect function to instruct Royal TS to keep on trying to reconnect during a reboot of the remote system. This feature is still NOT available but this indicator is the first of two steps to get it implemented. The idea is to have a checkbox of some sort which says Try to reconnect until server is available again.

Network Level Authentication (NLA):

Royal TS supports NLA and on Windows 2008(R2) and Vista/7 NLA is enabled by default meaning the client trying to connect needs to have NLA enabled. If NLA is not enabled the connection fails with the error code 2825. If this error occurs and the connection doesn’t have NLA checked in the advanced settings tab, Royal TS not only publishes a warning about that, it is trying again with NLA enabled automatically.

Single Sign On:

Royal TS now also supports SSO (big thanks to Wulfert on supporting me with testing and providing valuable information!). You need to setup your environment according to this blog post of the Terminal Services Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/archive/2007/04/19/how-to-enable-single-sign-on-for-my-terminal-server-connections.aspx

If you can connect using mstsc.exe without your explicit credentials (your desktop credentials are passed through to the remote system using Kerberos) you can now also use Royal TS. Just leave the credential information blank (no Username, Domain and no Password), enable Network Level Authentication (NLA) in the Advanced tab of your connection and set Auth. Level to Connect, but warn me if server authentication fails.

Other fixes:

• Individual disk redirection on Windows 7 is now working correctly.
• TS Gateway Credentials are now remembered.
• Bulk Reconnect from the list is now working.
• Some minor UI fixes.

One feature needed to be removed!

A quite handy feature I cannot miss anymore is to move an existing connection out of the main window into an external window using the Change menu. If you are working on two machines and you need to quickly compare something, you can easily pull out one session to an external window and put it on the second screen. Don’t worry, this will still be possible!

The feature that needed to be dropped is Window Mode: External (Full Screen). As you can see in the screen shot above, it’s not available anymore. You can of course still open an external session from scratch in external full screen mode, you just cannot do it with an initially embedded session. The ActiveX control seems to be very unstable when doing this and sometimes it worked but then again sometimes not. So for quality reasons I decided to take it out. Nobody is happy about application crashes…

When will 1.6.8 be available?

Beta testing of 1.6.8 will start within the next few days. If you want to participate and try out the beta you can easily join the beta group. To do so, you need to create an account on the code4ward site (if you do not have one already), sign in and click on this link: http://www.code4ward.net/main/Default.aspx?rsvp=RTSBETA

Clicking on this link doesn’t really give much feedback. To verify if you are member of the beta group, click on your user name on top, right side and click on Manage Services in your Profile. If you see Royal TS Beta Group, you are in.

Member of the beta group will get email announcements about new beta releases and access to the beta forum to discuss the current beta release.

If you decide to try out the beta, always make backup copies of your .rts files and setting files (like task settings if you have lots of them).

Depending on the issues found in the beta 1.6.8 will be publicly released within the next two or three weeks.

Thanks for all of you who provided feedback, suggestions and bug reports. Your help is very much appreciated!

MS released an update earlier this week for XP SP3, Vista SP1/SP2 to install Remote Desktop Connection 7.0.

Follow this link to download the package: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/969084

Follow this link to see what exact features are available in RDC 7 on which OS: http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/archive/2009/08/21/remote-desktop-connection-7-for-windows-7-windows-xp-windows-vista.aspx

So far no word from MS if and when a client update like this may become available for Windows 2003/2008.

I wasn’t yet able to fully test this update with Royal TS but so far (on a Vista x64 box) it’s working fine. Anyone having issues with that? Let me know…

Managing Windows

1. [Win+M] – Minimize all open windows
2. [Win+Shift+M] – Undo all window minimization
3. [Win+D] :- Toggle showing the desktop
4. [Windows+Up] – Maximize window
5. [Windows+Down] – Minimize windows / Restore
6. [Windows+Left] – Dock window to the left side
7. [Windows+Right] – Dock window to the right side
8. [Windows+Shift Up] – Maximize vertical size of window
9. [Windows+Shift Down] – Restore vertical size
10. [Windows+Shift Left] – Move window to left monitor
11. [Windows+Shift Right] – Move window to right monitor
12. [Win+Spacebar] – Aero desktop peek
13. [Win+Home] – minimize/maximize all inactive windows
14. [Alt+F4] - Close the active window
15. [Alt+Tab] - Switch to previous active window
16. [Alt+Esc] – Cycle through all open windows
17. [Win+Tab]- Flip 3D
18. [Ctrl+Win+Tab]- Persistent Flip 3D

Taskbar

1. [Win+Any number (1, 2, 3, .., 0)] – open the corresponding taskbar pinned program
2. [Ctrl+Click a pinned taskbar icon] – cycle through the program’s open windows
3. [Shift+Click a pinned taskbar icon] -run a new instance of the program
4. [Ctrl+Shift+Click a pinned taskbar icon] – run a new instance of the program as administrator
5. [Shift+Right-click on icon] – Show window menu (Restore, Minimize, Move etc)
6. [Shift+Right-click on grouped icon] - Show window menu (Restore All, Minimize All, Move All etc)
7. [Win+T] – Cycle through applications on taskbar (showing its live preview)
8. [Win+Shift+T] – As above, but in reverse order
9. [Win+R] - Opens Run dialog box

General

1. [Win+P] – show presentation mode projector options
2. [Win+G] – show desktop gadgets
3. [Win+L] – Lock computer
4. [Win+X] - Mobility Center
5. [Win++] - Zoom in
6. [Win+-] – Zoom out
7. [Win+=] – Magnifier

Windows Explorer

1. [Alt+P] - Show/hide Preview Pane
2. [Alt+Up] - Go up one level
3. [Alt+Let/Right] - Back/forward

I wasn’t able to blog much lately. Mostly because of piled up work but also family business is keeping me busy.

However, today Version 1.6.7 was released. This update is free for all users with a Royal TS 1.6 license and can be downloaded from here: http://www.code4ward.net/main/RoyalTS/Download.aspx

It’s been a while since the last release and most of the changes in this release are bug fixes. The last refactoring caused some very weird bugs which were hard to find and harder to fix. Here some of my lessons learned:

The tree view and the web browser control from Windows.Forms namespace are buggy as hell and one of the weirdest issues with these controls are focusing issues. Of course there are workarounds for most of the issues but since the dashboard has a web browser control (for displaying the notes) the interaction between the web browser control and the tree view control are causing headaches as hell.

For once, the tree view has some serious focus issues. Trying to move the focus away from the tree view after the selection changed causes the tree view to steal back the focus after the event chain was processed. There are some workarounds for this and I think during all my Royal TS releases I tried every single one available.

The web browser control has similar issues. When you set the contents for the web browser control using the DocumentText property you always get this annoying click sound. As a workaround you can set the contents using the Document.Write() method – which is not causing the click sound. The side effect however is, when you set it this way, the control starts to steal the focus back when it got the focus once (e.g. if you click inside the control or on a link). Now with all the focus stealing there’s no way to predict which control will get the focus after all. 

So I was forced to use a 3rd party tree view control, which unfortunately will blow up the footprint of the installer package a bit. But the good news is, that it’s nicer, not so buggy – at least not with all the ordinary stuff, has plenty of options and provides a very easy approach to implement drag & drop.

So now you can use drag & drop to reorder folders or move connections within or between folders, including a nice drop marker as shown in the screen shot.

Holding down the CTRL key while dragging will duplicate a connection instead of moving it. Watch the icon with the “plus” sign.

You can also drag multiple connections from the list to the tree view as well!

So while I was at it and touched the tree view code, I took the opportunity to make sure that the selected item stays highlighted even when the focus is inside a session. So everybody should be happy now to see very clear which session is active. Another thing I did, was optimizing the code to build the tree and the list. It’s now very fast, even when you have several hundred connections.

Replacing the tree view resolved some of my headaches but, the web browser control still wants to steal the focus. So back to the start. I need to set the content using the DocumentText property, at least I get rid of the focus stealing issue. But how to disable the click sound. Fortunately when we deal with IE7 and IE8 there’s a Win32 API call to disable that very annoying “feature”: CoInternetSetFeatureEnabled().

I haven’t tested it, but my guess is that users with IE6 will have the click sound when changing the selection in the navigation tree. If you get annoyed and want to commit suicide, go to the system sounds and disable the click noise (which will be effective on all IE browsers on your system) or upgrade to IE7 or IE8.

What else changed? In order to prepare everything for the new document model I changed some terms and menu item names. I also tried to use terms and keyboard shortcuts already well known from the windows shell.

Add and Remove changes to Insert and Delete (Del as the keyboard shortcut). In future Insert will have a sub menu where you can choose Folder, Credential, Task, Remote Desktop Connection, Web Connection, etc.

Edit was changed to Properties (Alt+Enter as keyboard shortcut). I always felt that “Edit->Edit” just doesn’t sound right. “Edit->Properties” is much nicer. I know these are some minor cosmetic changes but as many of you may already know the love and passion to details is driving me.

I should also mention that you can also hit F2 when you just want to change the name of a tree or list item!

Speaking of detail: I already use the Windows 7 / Windows 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Service icon to identify a remote desktop connection in the tree (as usual as black for inactive and green for active connections). Besides that I set the greenish icon as window icon for connections in external window mode. This way you can easily distinguish the main window of Royal TS and all the external windows from Royal TS when you use Alt+Tab for example.

Finally I want to thank all beta users for their support in identifying bugs and for constructive discussion on features. I hope you enjoy the new build.

I’ve still not shown all new features and improvements for 1.6.5 but starting today I offer to download the beta version (1.6.5.32156). If you are interested to test drive the beta version, create an account on this web site (if you haven’t already) and click on this link: http://www.code4ward.net/main/Default.aspx?rsvp=RTSBETA

After that you should have access to the beta forums. There you’ll find all the instructions…

Now let’s do some screenshot bonanza:

 

I think the pictures are saying more than thousand words…

cheers

Stefan

Nadim Abdo – the development manager for Remote Desktop Protocol published an interesting blog post (part one of two parts) about common RDP misconceptions.

Interesting read: http://blogs.msdn.com/ts/archive/2009/03/03/top-10-rdp-protocol-misconceptions-part-1.aspx

Let’s have another little preview of the upcoming 1.6.5 release. Unfortunately the Beta will be slightly delayed because I wasn’t able to do anything this weekend due to some health issues. I was in bed most of the time recovering from a cold (which is still not gone completely).

Anyhow, let’s have a look at logging: as many users requested better logging options I completely rewrote all the logging code. First changes are visible in the options dialog:

There are two logging levels:

Standard Logging
Verbose Logging.

Verbose logging additionally logs some more debug information for troubleshooting and also logs selection changes in the tree. The latter was requested by some users because they want to track the time they spend on a server.

The checkbox will cause Royal TS to log into the event log as well.

 

 

Now to the Logging Window itself:

As you can see, completely new Logging Window!

The window isn’t shown “Modal” as before, meaning you can leave the logging window open all the time, use Royal TS and hit on Refresh whenever you want to update the view.

Selecting an item in the grid will show you all the details in the preview pane on the bottom of the window.

Notice the new toolbar items “Copy Details to Clipboard” and “Go to the Forums”. This is still not completely finished but the basic idea is to copy HTML formatted text from the log entry and some additional information like versions, OS, Service Pack, etc. to the clipboard, so that you can share your issues easily on the forums. If you wish, Royal TS will automatically blank out some sensitive information from the log entry (like user name or host name).

The list can also be used to filter data, sort the entries and group the columns (Outlook-Style).

Last but not least:

You can save the log in various formats.

 

Stay tuned for the next sneak peak – there’s still a lot of things to show off…