VMware just released a new version of ThinApp full of great features. My favourite is the new ThinApp Converter 1.0 but read the full article to learn more.

Loads of companies are going to migrate their desktop environments to Windows 7 but they have still browser based applications which are only supported with Internet Explorer 7. In this case there are a few options to go.

• Stay at Windows XP until the browser based application is supported on Internet Explorer 7 or 8.
• Migrate to Windows 7 and use the XP Mode to run a legacy Internet Explorer
• Use a Windows Terminal Server in version 2003 to deploy IE6 to your desktops

All of these options have their issues and there is a much easier way to go. VMware ThinApp 4.6 does fully support the virtualization of Internet Explorer 6 running on Windows 7. If you tried to virtualize the browser with an old version of ThinApp it might be possible that you see black boxes instead of the proper icons in the navigation bar but all these challenges are fixed now. Check the following video to see how it works.

With old versions of ThinApp it was a complex process to create an IE package. It required a clean instance of Windows 2000 with the native IE5 browser to perform an update to IE6 and record that. With ThinApp 4.6 you can easily grab the Internet Explorer 6 from a Windows XP installation.

With the new ThinDirect feature you can redirect URL’s from a native to an virtualized browser. Back to the browser applications which are only compatible with IE6, you can know force the Windows 7 system to open predefined URL’s in the virtualized IE6 instance. For example you’ve an web application which is only working in IE6, you can configure it’s URL http://yourapplication. A browser helper object is integrated in the local instance of Internet Explorer 7 and will open the link in the virtualized application if needed.

Another new features helps you to start ThinApp applications which inherits services as boot-time applications. This can help you to run an Apache web server for example, during the start up of your system.

My favourite is the new ThinApp Converter 1.0 which leverages a proper VM to automatically virtualize applications. The following operations can be automated:

• Distributing packaging work-load across multiple virtual machines
• Connecting to a named VM Workstations, vSphere, or ESX
• Taking snapshot of VM initial clean state
• Logging into Guest VM
• Mounting package source UNC share inside of VM.
• Mounting library output UNC share inside VM
• Running ThinApp pre-install snapshot process
• Running application installer in guest
• Waiting for application installer to complete
• Running ThinApp post-install snapshot process
• Generating application project from two ThinApp snapshots
• Building generated project into a package
• Saving both project and package in output library
• Reverting Virtual Machine to initial state

The last two features are:

• The public availability of the ThinApp Management SDK
• AppLink does know support wildcards for folders and files.

You can learn more about all features in the VMware ThinApp Blog and the Release Notes! Check it out!

Similar Posts:

• Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 7
• VMware ThinApp 4.6.2 is available
• ThinApp 4.6.1
• ThinApp 4.0.3 released
• VMware ThinApp 4.5 released