I am very excited to announce to you about the new release of TS Web Access with Silverlight BETA! Many improvements have been done from the last prototype (TS Web Access with Silverlight ALPHA) especially on the backend code. Now the icon will consume MsRdpClientShell that invoke the information of RDPFileContents from the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) through ActiveX, rather than link to the RDP file in ALPHA version.
The cool thing on this BETA version is the list of Remote Program will dynamically change according to your TS Web Access Setting. Because, this Web App will read the list of published application from WMI, querying Win32_TSPublishedApplication from Terminal Services RemoteApp Classes. In order to enable using WMI, I have to use Server Control that accessing Win32_TSPublishedApplication with the helper of System.Management, a managed library from .NET Framework. Server Control that used by ASPX page will generate JavaScript. JavaScript will generate eXtensible Application Markup Language (XAML) that will be consuming by Silverlight to generate the presentation of Web Application.
To combine Silverlight, XAML, JavaScript, ASPX, and ServerControl, I need to figure out some tricky ways. ServerControl generates JavaScript, JavaScript generates XAML, and XAML generates UI for Silverlight. Not much documentation that can be found about the combination of those new things. Decompile some dlls from TS Web Access Beta 3, RC0, and RC1 to get more inspiration is needed. But, with the spirit of NEW YEAR, finally I can release it.
You can download the Web App installer (TSXWebSetup.msi) from here: DOWNLOAD
You can also download the offline version from here: DOWNLOAD
Please read the following README about the usage.
README:
- Install the Terminal Services Web Access and all components that required to running TS Web Access properly in your Windows Server 2008 Machine (or you can use any demo VM that TS Web Access Ready)
- Install the TSXWebSetup.msi on your TS machine.
- Open your IIS Manager and enable Anonymous Authentication only on your http://localhost/ts/images folder (note that only for /images folder).
- Add your remote program on your TS Machine (I suggest add around 8-12 remote programs to have good UI, I will fix it on next release)
- Navigate your browser of TS Machine to http://localhost/ts every time you add new remote program.*
- Navigate your browser either form your client or TS Machine to http://[TSMachineName]/TSX
For those of you who connected to Microsoft Network, can try the live demo of BETA version from here **. For those of you who came from outside Microsoft can try the live demo of BETA version from here, but you can't try the remote program, because I'm not put the TS Gateway on the public network. But you can see how the silverlight works. Now you can show to your costumer/partner/friends about the collaboration of Microsoft latest technologies.
Thank goes to Samim Erdogan (Senior Program Manager - Terminal Services, Microsoft Corp) who gave me right direction to use ActiveX and WMI, Risman Adnan (ISV Lead, Microsoft Indonesia) who gave me e book and coding spirit, Zeddy Iskandar (Academic Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Indonesia) who gave me right clue how to access WMI with .NET Framework, and Alex Balcanquall (TS Product Manager, Microsoft Corp) who gave me challenge to getting this done.
Any feedbacks or comment are welcome!
Narenda Wicaksono
IT Pro Evangelist, Microsoft Indonesia
* Please note that every time you add new remote programs in your Terminal Services, make sure to navigate your browser (of your Terminal Services Machine that hosts the RemoteApp) to http://localhost/ts. This activity will generate the images icon of the remote programs (this web application will consume the images of icon from http://localhost/ts/images).
** Password information:
User Name: narn1, narn2, narn3, narn4, ... , narn10
Password: jan-11
password is same for all login names