Archive for the ‘ThinApp’ tag
Link: Managing ThinApp Packages with Horizon Workspace
Great job by Barry Coombs! Yesterday he’s published a brilliant article about managing VMware ThinApp applications with VMware Horizon Workspace. His article gives you a great overview on how preparing and integrating ThinApp packages.
Link: http://virtualisedreality.com/2013/03/03/managing-thinapp-packages-with-horizon-workspace/
Horizon Upgrade path – Overview with SKUs
I’ve put a graphic together with the SKU’s needed to upgrade your VMware EUC products to Horizon. These information is taken from the VMware price list.
No guarantee for completeness or correctness. 
As already mentioned in many blog posts out there, the EOA products are not going End of Life! They’re just going off the price list as a standalone SKU. ThinApp will live in View, Mirage and Workspace, Horizon Mobile and Application Manager are going into the Horizon Workspace SKU.
References:
Disable copy and paste or printing within your virtual application
One of my customers had a requirement where they wanted there users to not copy & paste from an application and also being not able to print documents. How could you resolve that requirement? Quite easy with ThinApp as I’ve learned. I’ve asked my fellow colleague Tim Arenz, who’s a ThinApp specialist at VMware Professional Services and he came of course up with a solution. I’ve asked him if he could write a blog post about it and he did! Please visit his blog to see what ThinApp is able to.
Link: http://www.horizonflux.com/disable-copy-and-paste-or-printing-within-your-virtual-application/
ThinApp project folder cleaning up best practices
Peter Björk has published a new article on the VMware ThinApp blog showing best practices for application virtualization. In this article he describes how to cleanup a project folder before compiling the virtualized application.
Link: http://blogs.vmware.com/thinapp/2013/02/thinapp-project-folder-cleaning-up-best-practices.html
ThinApp Scripting: Launch virtual application only if a specific process is not running
VMware ThinApp isn’t just only a application virtualization tool. In my eyes it is the most powerful application packaging and virtualization tool on the market. Tim Arenz again has published a great article on his blog which shows the customization options within a ThinApp package. With a script he checks if a specific process is running and if so, the ThinApp application does not start but gives the user a message that an instance of the application is already running. It’s great to see what you can do with the pre-execution scripts in ThinApp. Good job!
Long live ThinApp!
Next to the Horizon Suite, VMware also announced some news about the enterprise virtualization software ThinApp. First of all: It is still there and it will be there! Don’t get it wrong! VMware just announced that effective on December 15th 2013 no orders for the ThinApp standalone product will be accepted. The customers with an active SnS contract (Support & Subscription) will still receive maintenance and support for their licenses. From 16th December on ThinApp will live in VMware Horizon View, VMware Horizon Mirage, VMware Horizon Workspace and in the Horizon Suite. There are also migration paths available – please speak to your VMware rep.
So, ThinApp is still there but it will be bundled with other VMware solutions!
Link: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/thinapp/VMware-ThinApp-EOA-FAQ.pdf
ThinDirect redirection message does not close automatically
Again a great article by Tim Arenz who’s a End User Computing consultant at VMware Professional Services in Germany. This time he gives a hint what to do if a ThinDirect redirection message doesn’t gets closed after reedirecting the user to another web browser.
Link: http://www.horizonflux.com/thindirect-redirection-message-does-not-close-automatically/
ThinApp Microsoft Visio and Project 2010 while locally installed Microsoft Office 2010
Great technical article on how to run Visio and Project as ThinApp application next to local installed Microsoft Office 2010.
While many are virtualizing Microsoft Office 2010 during a Proof Of Concept (POC) most companies decide to install Microsoft Office natively rather than virtualizing it. Both packaging method are valid but many times it’s easier and more efficient to have Office locally installed. That said, virtualizing Microsoft Visio and Project is a whole different ballgame. Virtualizing Visio/Project makes very much sense in many designs. There are quite a few KB articles and blog posts out there covering Office 2010 and it’s components. But so far I’ve yet to see a complete list of what is needed in order to build a Visio/Project package and have it coexist and to a certain degree integrate with native Office. So I started to collect all data I found on Internet. I ended up adding a couple thinks myself as well.
ThinApp, OS migrations and application compatibility
A new article on HorizonFlux should get everyones attention who’s involved in Windows Migration projects. Tim Arenz again has published a great read on VMware ThinApp. Here’s a quick quote of his article but please visit his blog an learn how ThinApp can help you within a Windows 7 migration.
However other issues aren’t fixable at all. If an application relies on 16-bit components or is a 16-bit application itself and you want to migrate to a 64-bit version of Windows you are out of luck. The application simply will not work. You could however use VMware Workstation orView to deploy 32-bit virtual Windows machines for your legacy 16-bit applications. Another example for an application which will probably not work if it depends on APIs which are deprecated or undocumented and therefore not available or working different in Windows 7.
Other reasons why an application might fail to work on Windows 7 like deprecated .dll files, hard-coded locations and dependencies to specific versions of Internet Explorer are a perfect fit for ThinApp!
Link: http://www.horizonflux.com/thinapp-os-migrations-and-application-compatibility/
Enabling Smart Card authentication with a ThinApp Internet Explorer application
If you want to use Smart Card authentication in a with ThinApp virtualized Internet Explorer there are a few steps to think about. VMware has published a new knowledge base article which does explain what to do, to support this type of authentication within the virtualized application package.
