NoMachine NX - Documentation: A quick overview of NX Web Player

	Home > Documents > What NX 4 Preview looks like > A quick overview of NX Web Player

A quick overview of NX Web Player

Revealing what's under the hood of NX Web Player

NX Web Player is the latest addition to the NoMachine family of tools conceived to allow administrators to deploy graphical sessions on the Web. Available starting from NX 4.0, it differs from NX Web Companion and NX Builder because it doesn't need additional software to be installed on the client. Users can simply access their desktop from a browser which supports JavaScript, including the embedded browser used on most mobile phones.

Thanks to the use of AJAX technologies for its front-end, user experience with NX Web Player is comparable to that of an application running locally, as it can be when using NX Client to run shadow sessions. On the server side the NX agent component decomposes the remote desktop in tiles, codifies these images and sends them to the Web Player. The use of AJAX techniques makes it possible to refresh only those parts of the content of the Web page that have been changed, without having to reload the entire page.

NX Web Player, the system flow diagrams

Events flow: from the browser to the remote session Images flow: from the remote session to the browser

Requirements for NX Web Player and integration

NX Web Player requires NX Server version 4.0 to be installed on the host machine as well as Apache HTTP Server (version 2.x is suggested) or any compatible Web server. Note that prerequisites for installing NX Server are NX Client and NX Node. Once NX Web Player is installed and configured to fit the environment, it can be used to deploy graphical sessions on the Web running on multiple NX Servers and NX Node hosts.

The NX Web Player JavaScript frontend consists of a player window which can be easily embedded into any Web page. Size and appearance of that window may be customized and more than one player window may be integrated into the same page.

What users can do with NX Web Player

Users can have access to their remote desktops, applications and data from anywhere since the only requirement to run the session is having a browser-enabled device. Performance-wise, NX Web Player can offer the same level of speed as shadow mode does on a locally installed NX Client.

To allow the user to interact with the remote session, NX Web Player implements a utility toolbar. From this rollaway utility toolbar, which is a draggable bar that can be moved from within the browser window, the user can also activate a number of NX tools to be able to interact with the session and its content in all situations:

The NX Clipboard, a kind of dashboard where the content of the local and remote clipboard can be posted to allow copy&paste operations from remote to local and vice-versa.
The NX Virtual Keyboard especially for mobile devices.
The NX Viewport Navigator to scroll the session screen up, down and side-ways.

All these tools are draggable inside the browser window.

The NX utility toolbar allows also the user to select different view modes: the session can be resized, scaled or the viewport can be activated. The viewport is a kind of zoom over a portion of the session screen that can then browsed thanks to the NX Viewport Navigator. Furthermore, the session window can also be detached to a new browser window. When the session is detached, the new browser window is fully resizable.

NX Web Player at work

NX Web Player makes it easy to integrate NX into the intranet and let users log into their graphical session by embedding a small player window in the home page of their company's portal. See how the NoMachine interface to access NX Test Drive applications could look:

Fig.1 - Navigate your local browser to the player window Web page,
and you are ready to start your NX session.

Screenshots below refer to an NX session (Gnome desktop version 2.30 on Fedora 13) displayed inside a Mozilla Firefox 3.0.3 browser running on Windows Vista.
Once the NX session is loaded into the player window, the user can start to interact with the remote desktop. No session data is stored and left on the local machine once logged-out.

Fig. 2 - Your NX session is loaded into the player window
and is now ready to be used.

For a more comfortable viewing experience, there is the possibility to switch to the detached window mode. The remote desktop will be moved to a new window of the browser to let users run the graphical session at fullscreen. You can revert to the embedded player window mode/detached window mode as many times as you like.

Fig. 3 - Click on the player window button in its toolbar
to detach the window.

No matter what their location or device is, users can get their desktop from everywhere, run their applications, make document changes, and send them over e-mail. Everything from inside a browser.

Fig. 4 - Configure your preferred e-mail client.

	Technology Brief


		Data encryption and security NX security is guaranteed at every layer involved in the communication process. NX uses SSH public-key encryption and 128 bit volatile random cookie generation.


	What Users Say

	"NoMachine NX has proven to be a successful and effective solution for our new kiosk credit application system. NoMachine helped us achieve what we were striving for and the support has been unbelievable. We are happy with the new process and grateful for NoMachine's part in its deployment and maintenance."
	Dawn Hinz, Information Technology Director, Steinhafels



	"Adopting NX as our remote access solution has saved us time, expenditure, and most of all simplified things for our users. It's also given us one client to access 'all worlds.'"
	Horst Braeuner, Project Leader of Migration, Schwaebisch Hall


	Case Studies


		Mosaic This health care industry nonprofit discovers an inexpensive remote access solution that meets HIPAA security requirements through NX.

		Semiconductor One of the world’s leading providers of advanced semiconductor solutions finds that switching from a leading publishing product to NX gives them remote access for a fraction of the cost.

		University of Colorado Colorado's premier research university finds NX ideal for delivering a complex, online Web mapping course inexpensively; the high user-friendliness of NX also enables Windows-accustomed students to gracefully switch to a Linux environment.



			Print this document

			Send this page

Home |