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On May 5th, Citrix released Receiver for iPhone 1.0 at Synergy in Las Vegas. Receiver for iPhone is a wonderful testament to the HDX experience we're moving towards. The engineering team involved (winks and nods to Steve Parry, Gus Pinto, Ruiguo Yang, et al) graciously accepted a literal barrage of feedback, input, direction changes, and general user griping about usability for this app. The result is a testament to what's possible when you consider the form factor when porting software to different OS's and adjust to suit. In that same vain, and in conjunction with the Receiver for iPhone, Citrix also released two features called Doc Finder and App Viewer.
Doc Finder
Doc Finder is kind of like a mini- Windows Explorer. It's built for the small form factor (SFF)(mainly the iPhone at this time) and it let's users traverse folders and files easily. The assumption is that the user of an SFF device wants to start with finding a file and then open the associated application from there. I love this feature because it saves me time. Rather than opening Word, for example, and then clicking the File button, then open, then zooming in and out and panning and using the native file dialogue in Word to find my file and open it, I just use Doc Finder which saves me about 20 taps. One of the other cool things is it looks like a native iPhone app that is installed locally but it is a Windows application published and running on XenApp. What's more, it respects GPO's already in place so you can hide server drives and specific folders from users just as you normally would from the full blown Windows Explorer. |
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App Viewer
In addition to Doc Finder is another really cool feature called App Viewer. The idea behind App Viewer is simple - make the browser invisible. Contrary to what you might think, many, many customers publish web applications for delivery via XenApp. There are a number of reasons for this but that's another blog post. In any case, publishing web apps to small form factor devices like the iPhone wastes a lot of precious real-estate for browser controls and fields that are built for PC's. For example, a user of a published web app from the iPhone doesn't need the URL bar or the window title bar of Internet Explorer... they just need the page. Plus, if you've created a lightweight page for the web app that is customized for SFF users, they probably don't even need scroll bars. This is where app viewer comes in. It's just a web browser with no controls, fields, buttons, scroll bars, etc. To help you understand it more, think about it this way. There are a lot of apps on the iPhone that are actually web pages. They use the Safari browser but it is invisible. Bank of America is one such application. It's a web page but you wouldn't know because of the way it's presented to you. App Viewer makes this possible for applications that are hosted on XenApp. Essentially, App Viewer preserves the experience that users are already familiar with when they access locally installed web apps on their iPhone. Even better is that App Viewer can be used to deliver hosted web applications running on XenApp to Windows Mobile devices as well. In fact, you can use it with any form factor. It's completely configurable. All you need to do is make sure you have an appropriate application interface for the form factors you want to support.
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Xcelsius Dashboard on iPhone
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Xcelsius Dashboard on Windows Mobile
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I'm tellin' ya, the engineering guys that worked on this did a great job thinking outside of the box. If you want to check these features out, visit citrix.com/iPhone for more information.
Comments (6)
May 19, 2009
Nick Holmquist says:
I applaud the engineers who are bringing the power of XenApp to the mobile world...I applaud the engineers who are bringing the power of XenApp to the mobile world. It opens the door for so many new ways to create mobile versions of applications for quick and easy access.
May 21, 2009
Tim Consolazio says:
I'm pretty excited about this as well, I see it as a great opportunity for devel...I'm pretty excited about this as well, I see it as a great opportunity for developers, even independent ones. Check out my blog post on the subject:
http://www.tcoz.com/blogger/2009/05/flash-flexon-your-iphone.html
I frequently talk to clients about "we want to put this app on iPhone, and are looking at Blackberry Windows Mobile, and depending how it goes, Android, and maybe Sybian. Can you do this, or can you build a team of devs..."
I know this isn't a sustainable model, it's why I got into things like Flash and Java to deploy services and UIs across multiple OSs, but the mobile world has been slow on the uptake of Flash due to the required processing muscle. Ajax/JS apps are an option, but only up to a certain point, the UIs just don't have that "real time" native feel. The whole "build it as a Web 2.0 app for iPhone" Apple strategy was lukewarm at best.
I'm experimenting with technology mentioned above right now to move a game I developed for Facebook to multiple mobile platforms via the Citrix Receiver. I'll keep you posted.
Anonymous replies:
May 21, 2009
Vinny Sosa says:
Tim, That sounds fantastic. It will be interesting to see how your infrastructu...Tim,
That sounds fantastic. It will be interesting to see how your infrastructure pans out. For hosting the app on XenApp, you could always use the Amazon cloud. I just wanted to throw that in there since I didn't know if you were independent and whether you had space for an infrastructure to support your hosting model. I assume you charge for your game or have some kind of subscription or advertizing revenue associated with it to help sustain the infrastructure you would use to host... yes? Very intrigued.
Keep an eye out as I will be doing an interview with one of our internal developers on developing for the small form factor using XenApp and Receiver for delivery (plus App Viewer). Is there anything you would like me to ask him?
Vinny
May 21, 2009
Anonymous says:
Tim, I agree, this gives you the power of developing on one platfo...Tim,
I agree, this gives you the power of developing on one platform and have all devices (that a Receiver exists for of course) be able to take advantage of it.. Very powerful.
I wonder when the mobile platform creators will take notice though (Apple..) and finally implement Flash/Air support in their devices?
I too am working on an app dedicated to the mobile platform as I see the power that the Citrix Receiver brings for actual IT administrators.
Shameless self promotion here but I think it's relevant to the discussion:
Mobile Admin App
May 22
Keith Turnbull says:
I am particularly interested in what everyone sees as the next key platforms aft...I am particularly interested in what everyone sees as the next key platforms after iPhone as well as taking in the feedback on the iPhone itself.
As well as extending the iPhone my team will be freshening up existing platforms. e.g. WinMo, Blackberry etc
What is interesting to me is that we have built many earlier versions of many of these mobile platforms for a while, e.g. Symbian,WinMo but these were really only used in niche use cses. Not so much a day to day general mobile necessity as really happened when Blackberry came along with always on "trickle charge" e-mail .
Now a combination of better devices (screens, user controls), better networks and our own innovations like Doc finder and App Viewer are giving a much more inviting and compelling end user experience when accessing applications on the move. Plus as mentioned anyone can upload their own XenApp farm into the cloud as we have demonstrated with the EC2 trial that we have made available.
Keith
May 23
Glen Benjamin says:
Absolutely thrilled that it also works with Windows Mobile as that also has a bi...Absolutely thrilled that it also works with Windows Mobile as that also has a bit of a user base to work from as well. I have been working on those trials and received great exposure at Synergy with the following videos:
http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/432
http://www.citrix.com/tv/#video/431
Also view Brianmadden.com and fast forward to the 18 minute mark to see Sprint Windows Mobile devices working with a Celio Redfly in this clip http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/tv/archive/2009/05/07/brian-madden-tv-12-citrix-synergy-wrap-up-xenclient-dazzle-iphone-receiver-hdx-flash-remoting-and-a-demo-of-red-fly.aspx
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