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Citrix Metaframe for Windows 2000 Servers

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PCQ Bureau
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Citrix Metaframe for Windows 2000 Servers

Price: Rs 2,98,000 for one server and 15 client licenses.



Features: Single or multiple servers can be used; load balancing; supports TCP/IP, NetBIOS, IPX/SPX; automatic client update; application publishing; remote audio; disk


caching and data compression


Pros: Easy to set up; clients for many platform,; wizards for most fun ctions


Cons: Tedious activation process; expensive.


Contact: Citrix Software 


E-mail: Praveen.Sahai@citrix.com
Tel: 80-5272911 



Fax: 5722916


Address: No 212


80 Feet Road, 1st Main


Domlur IInd Stage


Bangalore 560071









The latest release from Citrix in their Metaframe line of products is Citrix Metaframe for Windows 2000 servers version 1.8. The Metaframe requires that Terminal services for Windows be installed. It allows clients working on different platforms such as Mac, Linux, DOS, etc, to connect to it and run Windows applications. Clients could be old machines that you have condemned to lie in a corner. They would then be able to run the latest Windows applications because all the processing is done at the server end. On the flip side, to support so many clients and allow them to run applications simultaneously, the server on which Metaframe will run must have a hefty configuration. If it fails, your entire network will come down. To prevent such a mishap, you can create a server farm for load balancing. 

Metaframe offers a variety of options to connect your clients to the server. These range from normal telephone lines, ISDN lines, and your LAN to broadband connections and the Internet. Connections can be made over TCP/IP, NetBIOS, or IPX/SPX protocols. To make the whole setup work quickly and efficiently, Metaframe uses ICA (Independent Computing Architecture) for client/server communication. ICA sends only keystrokes and mouse clicks from the client. After the computing at the server end is over, it sends back the refreshed screen with the results. To speed up the process further, it uses disk caching and data compression.

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Disk caching stores commonly used portions of your screen, such as the Windows toolbar or your desktop icons locally, so they don't have to be retransmitted every time. Data compression is used to reduce the size of the data sent over the  network. 

During installation, you can set up TAPI (Telephony Application Programming Interface)-compliant modems on your server if you have clients that will access it over a telephone line. Once installed, you have to follow a rather tedious process to activate your license, which involves getting connected to the Citrix Activation server through the Internet and filling in a few details. You’ll then receive an activation code for your server. You can now create client diskettes for Win 3.x/95/98/NT and DOS through the ICA client creator or use the client software included on the CD, which also includes clients for Mac and Linux. It also contains plug-ins for IE and Netscape, which allow clients to connect to the server through a Web browser. 

Clients have to simply install the software and they’re ready to connect. The client will search the entire network for Metaframe servers and you can choose the one you want to connect to (if there’s more than one on your network). You don’t have to create separate accounts for Metaframe users, as it works with the accounts you’ve created in Windows 2000. It also allows you to choose the color depth and screen resolution at which you want to connect. Metaframe also has support for remote audio for DOS, Win16 and Win32 clients. For this, your client must have a Sound Blaster Pro compatible sound card. 

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Another feature of Metaframe is Application publishing, which lets you create published applications that are stored at a central location and can be run from any client. You need to use Application publishing for all applications that you want clients to be able to access. This can easily be done using its Published Application Manager. Application publishing supports load balancing; so if you have more than one Metaframe server, you can specify the servers that will host it. You can also choose things like color depth, resolution, sound support, compression, and the users who’ll be allowed to access the

application. You can enable users from different domains to access the application, by creating trust relationships between domains. 

After you’ve published an application, sitting at the server, you can create desktop icons for it and send them to Win32 client machines. Other clients can create a connection to that application and then manually create shortcuts on their desktops. Now, with one click, clients can access this application from their desktops, and it will run as if it’s running locally. It will even integrate with your Windows environment so you can use the Alt+ Tab keys to switch between local and remote applications. 

Overall, the new version of Metaframe works pretty well with its new features. It could be used for networks spread over a large campus, where maintenance becomes difficult. Since everything runs at the server end, the entire setup becomes easier to manage. 

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Sachin Makhija at PCQ Labs

What’s good

GoLive has more under its hood than the average user will ever use. But with that power, it hasn't gone power-mad. The features are all easily accessible, and they don't intrude into your consciousness until you need them. A much-improved browser-based help guide lets you find step-by-step advice for particular tasks quickly. But you'll need that help less and less, because GoLive's consistency reinforces what you already know. 

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GoLive has excellent site management features, with a single interface, the Site window, handling all site features. The Files tab has all files and folders used in a site, exactly mirroring the contents of the local hard drive's organization. Files can be dragged in and out of this tab, new folders can be created, and objects or items can be moved up or down levels. 

Templates created by GoLive are reusable. Double-click a Stationery file and GoLive offers to create a new page with the template elements. Drag a Component from the Objects palette onto a page, and it copies the HTML while making a reference to the source. Changing the source updates every instance throughout the site. These two features help create an assembly line for crafting sites and later updating them. Making a Component out of a navigation bar allows changes in the navigation with a few clicks and a Save. 

External URLs and embedded e-mail addresses (using the ‘mailto:’ resource locator, to be technical) share the External tab of the site window, while colors applied as attributes and font sets invoked via the Font tag have respective Colors and Font Sets tabs.

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The Design tab contains the most powerful and extensive of the new features: A prototyping tool that allows a designer to easily ‘sketch’ out new sites or sections of existing sites by combining templates, links, and layout tools. Pages and sections can be dragged in, and link relationships can be added (to be placed into real links on the finished pages later).

The Design tab allows any site to contain multiple designs in progress, and each design can have elements that are separately linked to different areas of an existing site. A simple staging approach allows you to check designs into your existing site, or to recall them if there are problems. This whole structure offers a way to test ideas out quickly and easily, as GoLive tracks all the relationships, rewriting pages and links as you submit and recall designs.

GoLive includes various new site management features including WebDAV (Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning). Nowadays such collaborative working is becoming the norm for large sites. For these advanced, multi-author sites it’s also becoming common to tailor not just templates and library items but the program itself. WebDAV is a technology for exchanging and synchronizing files, much like FTP but with substantially more power or, conversely speaking, much like CVS (Concurrent Versioning System) but with substantially less power.

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WebDAV works over HTTP. It integrates with Apache and other Web servers, allowing the system administrator to add it as an extra. It supports file locking and shared locks so that several people can work on a website at once while knowing precisely who has which files checked out. It also allows better two-way synchronization so that newer files from the server can be downloaded at the same time that local files can be uploaded. This is one of the best features the software offers.

GoLive includes a JavaScript-based SDK (Software Development Kit) complete with interpreter and debugger. The idea is to encourage third-party developers to introduce advanced functionality while letting workgroups take control of features such as custom palettes. The SDK is certainly a step in the right direction but it’s by no means as simple as Dreamweaver’s in-built macro recording.

The software also offers a Clean Up Site tool that carries out a number of housekeeping tasks. It can delete any files in the site that aren't referenced from any link descending from the home page or navigational hierarchy; and it can copy files from elsewhere on your local hard drive or network that are referenced by pages but not contained in the site's content folder. 

The Export feature offers three options for copying your site to a new folder. Export also offers ‘stripping’ features that can pull out GoLive-specific HTML, as well as extra white space and comments. 

And what’s not

GoLive lets you plan and build your site before going live, but links must still be handled manually. The software has plenty of options for building and applying Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScript, but it hasn't yet gone that extra mile to provide a full implementation of CSS; nor does it have debugging and programming tools for JavaScript. 

GoLive doesn’t let you use the site design to create automatic navigation links and rollovers in the way that NetObjects Fusion does. Initially this looks possible with the New Pages command which lets you specify automatic links to parent, child or sibling pages. Unfortunately these links aren’t actual but rather ‘pending’. In other words, you will be reminded to add them manually.

GoLive’s use of the Layout grid is great for non-coders and those for whom the visual impact of the page is more crucial than its download time, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t offer good direct table handling too. Some features, such as the ability to sort by rows or columns, are impressive but generally the table handling still isn’t either as interactive or as easily controlled as it should be. GoLive still seems to see tables as an occasional add-on rather than the fundamental basis of a clean HTML layout.

Support for advanced media and dynamic data is important, but by far the most important capability for a Web authoring package is its HTML control. GoLive’s HTML editing is left to two alternative views–HTML Source and HTML Outline–in the Page window. Both of these provide powerful editing environments with advanced features such as code checking against browser profiles, color coding with URL and media file highlighting and so on.

Compared to Dreamweaver, however, with its roundtrip HTML, simultaneous page and code editing and its quick tag selection and editing, control is underpowered and awkward. Dream- weaver’s Tag Selector manages to fit the same functionality into the Page window’s status bar. More importantly, GoLive’s palette’s behavior is strange. For example it looks like you should be able to instantly select the link that the cursor is in and quickly copy it within the Source Code palette; bizarrely though everything is selected apart from the crucial surrounding tags!

Dreamweaver retains its coding edge, but there is one area of HTML functionality in which GoLive does move ahead. In the past, its Find and Replace was limited, but now the feature is fully HTML-aware. Using the new Element tab in particular opens up the ability to search for particular tags or tag attributes, with GoLive intelligently prompting you with all available options. With the Actions option you can then set whether the tag, its attributes or its content is changed. As parameters can be saved and reused, this means that you can automate common searches such as for IMG tags without ALT attributes.

Is GoLive 5 for you? It all depends. If you only dabble occasionally with website design and want lots of help putting pages together, then Microsoft FrontPage may be a better choice for you. For those who need the power of GoLive 5 or Macromedia Dreamweaver, which package will prove the best choice may depend largely on workflow preference. With Dreamweaver, you first figure out what you want and then fill in values; in contrast, GoLive allows you to drop in placeholders that can accommodate any kind of object anywhere, and then leave you to figure out the value later. 

All in all, most people updating websites on a day-to-day basis should find plenty to love in GoLive 5. It's focused on their needs. 

Swati Sani for PCQ Labs

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