JollysFastVNCDESCRIPTION
AIMto become the best VNC client on the Mac.
BACKGROUND
When I started ScreenRecycler I thought that there are enough VNC clients out there to support it. When the program started to get useful I realized that the VNC clients available on the Mac were pretty slow and people were complaining about the speed of ScreenRecycler. I was using VNCThing at the time which proved to be acceptable on PPC Macs but does not run on Intel Macs.
Without a proper viewer people can't access ScreenRecycler in a way I imagined. So I started programming JollysFastVNC to enable people using ScreenRecycler. As I got a few mails about the VNC capabilities of JollysFastVNC I decided to enhance the program to be a fully functional VNC client. It's still in the early stages of development, even though somewhat usable and fast as you can see here.
REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.5
Version 0.96.42 released 2008-Sep-05
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•added ZRLE encoding support.
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•server list window will hide on deactivate and unhide on activate when no other windows are open.
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•added ctrl-right click to immitate ctrl left click for Windows servers.
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•added support for reverse connections were the server has not security type set.
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•added middle mouse dragging for unix servers.
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•fixed user defaults problem on 10.4 machines in build 1890.
Known bugs: not enough features. If the application crashes send me a bug report please.
HELP / FAQ
LIMITATIONS
My definition of alpha means that the app will get more features ( beta’s are feature frozen ) and things might not work. It should not crash though.
Features for new Users
Global preferences- those are used when the connection preferences have a default value. So if you want every connection to have just 16 bit by default set that in the global preferences.
ServerType: The ServerType setting is used for dectection on how keyboard and mouse events are send to the client. Automatic should work, except for the Vineserver where you have to explicitly use the Mac ServerType setting.
Keyboard layout: Invasive - Everything including CMD-q and CMD-w is sent to the client. Use ESC to revert from fullscreen.
Things that look like they would work, but are not implemented yet:
hextile support: available only for screenrecycler connections.
mouse cursors: currently the cursor is not drawn, so you see only the local mouse right now. 'none' setting works, which will hide the cursor inside the connection window.
keyboard layout: only the remote keyboard layout is supported. That means that the keys pressed on your local keyboard will appear as if they were pressed on the remote machine keyboard. If the remote machine is a Windows PC the keyboard will appear as an US keyboard.
color depth: 8 bit does not work. 16 and 32 bit work. The current version contains a color conversion let me know when you have problems with colors.
on disconnect: not supported yet.
Known Problems
Some servers are not capable of handling the amount of requests JollysFastVNC sends them. I'm thinking about a solution which does not slow down high performance servers like ScreenRecycler.
JollysFastVNC sometimes does not recognize a connection beeing shut down in the interface.
USAGE
JollysFastVNC starts up with a list of vnc servers. Bonjour announced servers will get added to the list automatically. You can add your servers that do not have Bonjour running with the '+' button. Just type the network-name or ip-address in the network address field ( in the drawer ).
Clicking the connect button will establish a connection to the server and will view that server in a window: toggle with cmd-f for fullscreen or cmd-0 for 50% size, cmd-1 for 100% and cmd-2 for 200%.
CMD-q will quit the program ( except you have a client open ). You can use CMD-tab to have the fullscreen vnc-window as backdrop. Clicking on the backdrop will bring it up front.
