HTML5 Web Client for Remote Desktop Services 2016

Posted in : Applications, Microsoft, Windows Server By Jan Frick Translate with Google ⟶

5 years ago

Microsoft recently announced that the new HTML5 client for Remote Desktop Services has reached general availability. The new web client lets users access the Remote Desktop infrastructure using a modern browser that supports HTML5.

Requirements & Installation

Microsoft have a great article explaining the requirements and how to get started with the new client in the following link. It’s important to note that if you run any previous versions of the client and want to update to the latest release, it first has to be uninstalled from the Web Access servers.
The client can be installed and run simultaneously as your old RDWeb-page, they just use different URLs to be accessed. To access the new client, the URL https://<FQDN>/RDWeb/webclient/ is used.

Using the new client

The new client that was released previously this year, has now reached version 1.0.0 and with it, a new sign in experience and SSO to the applications. Below is how the now much improved login-screen looks like:

After logging in the apps are presented, and right away you can see the much improved design comparing to the old and very outdated default RDWeb page:

The great thing about the HTML5 client is that it doesn’t require any software to run, just a browser that supports HTML5, which most browsers does these days. So this is good news for tablet and thin-client users.
The applications are contained within the browser window. You can only have one browser window open at a time, and opening multiple applications at the same time creates tabs within the browser window:
 

Printing and copy/paste is available from within the session. Using print will download the job as a PDF file to your local computer.
Some features are still missing for making it a complete replacement for the old one, but Microsoft will be releasing updates in the future and adding more features as time goes by, so keep an eye out.

Tags : Microsoft, RDS, Remote Desktop Services