SpeedScreen Flash Acceleration improves the presentation of flash animations through an ICA session. This feature uses lossy compression technology to reduce the size of images, which speeds up their display on the client side. SpeedScreen Flash Acceleration reduces the size of an image by removing some of the information that would be necessary for advanced editing of that image. Thus, you probably won't want to use this feature if your users work with Adobe Systems' Adobe Photoshop (.psd) images, x-ray images, or other types of images in which the preservation of image data is crucial.
SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration improves the performance of streaming audio or video. The stream runs as smooth as if it were running locally on the user's machine. SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration doesn't put any significant load on the server CPU because it makes the client machine's CPU render the data. In addition, this feature requires little network bandwidth because it compresses the data that's traveling through the communications link.
To use the three SpeedScreen features, your clients must be running Citrix ICA 7.0 or later. You also need to configure your clients to use at least 16-bit color. All three features are enabled by default. To disable a SpeedScreen feature, open the Management Console for Presentation Server 3.0, right-click your server-farm node, then select Properties. In the Properties dialog box, click the SpeedScreen feature you want to disable, then clear the check box that enables that feature. Note that, for SpeedScreen Browser Acceleration, you can allow or not allow Macromedia Flash Player to load. If your applications don't need to use Macromedia Flash Player, selecting the Do not allow option will greatly preserve bandwidth and improve performance.
Hide Disabled Applications
In MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, you can hide a disabled application, which can be helpful if you need to troubleshoot a problematic problem. To disable and hide an application, open the Management Console for Presentation Server 3.0 and expand the Applications node. Right-click the application you want to hide and select Properties. In the Properties dialog box, choose Application Name from the left pane. In the right pane, select the Disable Application check box, then select the Hide Disabled Application check box.
Improved User Logon Process
In MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, Citrix has improved the application logon process. When a user double-clicks an application, he or she now sees a dialog box that displays the progress of the application launch process. There's no period of seeming inactivity between the time the user double-clicks an application and the time MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 opens it. Thus, if the application takes a bit longer to open, the user won't try to launch it again.
Digital Dictation
Digital dictation lets users plug a microphone into their desktops and record meeting notes or even run voice-recognition software. This feature is supported in the advanced and enterprise editions of MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 only.
Enhanced Citrix Policies
One area in which MetaFrame XP Presentation Server FR3 needed work was policies. For example, you could apply policies to only users and user groups. Citrix has finally made the necessary improvements in MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0. You can now apply policies to not only users and user groups but also server groups, IP addresses, and client groups. Some of the other policy improvements include
- the ability to set a preferred zone as well as a failover zone for users
- the ability to control sound quality and session bandwidth consumption
- the ability to configure print jobs so that they route from the server directly to the printer, avoiding the transit stop at the client desktop
To add a new policy, open the Management Console for Presentation Server 3.0, right-click the Policies node, and select Create New Policy. After naming this policy, right-click it and select Properties. In the Properties dialog box, which Figure 3 shows, configure the policy.
Improved Support for Large Farms
Citrix has refined the way in which the zone data collectors monitor and handle server load. In the previous MetaFrame versions, the zone data collectors share their load information with one another, which increases network traffic. In small or midsized server farms, this extra traffic isn't a problem. However, in large farms, the extra traffic sometimes negatively affects performance. In MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, the zone data collectors no longer share their load information, which reduces network traffic between zones.
An Improved Console
In MetaFrame XP Presentation Server FR3, Citrix changed the name of the console from Citrix Management Console to simply Management Console. Along with the name change, Citrix made some GUI enhancements and added some features. Although the Management Console name didn't carry over to MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 (Citrix changed it to Management Console for Presentation Server 3.0), the enhancements and features did carry over.
If you're still using MetaFrame XP FR2 or earlier (hereafter simply referred to as the early MetaFrame versions), you'll definitely notice the GUI enhancements, especially in the various Properties dialog boxes. In the early MetaFrame versions, the Properties dialog boxes list the property headings in tabs at the top. In MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0, the property headings are in a listing at the left. To view the properties under a particular heading, you simply click that heading in the left pane and the properties appear in the right pane.
Compared with the early MetaFrame versions, MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0's Properties dialog box for the server-farm node contains five new features: ICA Keep-Alive, Information, SpeedScreen Browser Acceleration, SpeedScreen Flash Acceleration, and SpeedScreen Multimedia Acceleration. I already covered the SpeedScreen features, so let's look at the other two features.
ICA Keep-Alive. In the Management Console for Presentation Server 3.0, you often have to troubleshoot problems with user sessions. Sometimes you know a user isn't on the system any more, but the console indicates that the user session is active. You can configure ICA Keep-Alive to query user sessions at regular intervals (e.g., every 60 seconds). If a session doesn't respond to a query, ICA Keep-Alive automatically places this session in disconnect mode. Previously, you had to use registry hacks to achieve this functionality.
Information. The Information feature provides a snapshot of what's going on in your environment. The snapshot provides detailed data, such as the pooled licenses in use, published resources, number of connected users, and number of servers in the farm.
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