Publish any Windows application to the web

Publish any Windows application to the web with Thinfinity Remote Desktop

Microsoft RemoteApp is a feature of Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Services that allows individual programs to be run remotely using a Microsoft Remote Desktop Client. Instead of accessing the entire remote desktop, Microsoft RemoteApp allows users to see and interact with just the application as if they were running on the end-user’s device. 

Combining Microsoft Remoteapp with Thinfinity® Remote Desktop you can publish any Windows Application on the web and access it from any device using a HTML5 browser

You can configure Thinfinity® Remote Desktop to publish any Windows application throughout the web in less than 5 minutes and in this tutorial we are going to teach you how to do it.  

You don’t need to have any programming skills or make any modifications to the Windows application source code to accomplish it. 

(Remember that RemoteApp is only available for Windows Server with Remote Desktop Services installed, so we recommend to check your environment before you start following this tutorial)

Let’s get started:

  • First, open the Thinfinity® Configuration Manager:

 

Publish Windows application to the web: Opening the Thinfinity Configuration Manager

 

  • Click on the ‘Access Profiles’ tab, and press ‘Add’. For this guide, we’ll be creating an ‘RDP connection:

 

Creating an ‘RDP’ connection:

 

  • Configure the Access Profile with a ‘Name’, then on ‘Computer’ enter the IP Address or domain name of the server, and on ‘Credentials’ enter the Windows credentials to authenticate to said server:

 

Authenticate to said server

 

  • For testing purposes, check the ‘Allow anonymous access’ option:

 

For testing purposes, check the ‘Allow anonymous access’ option

 

  • Under the ‘Program’ tab, choose the ‘Execute as RemoteApp’ option. 

 

Then, point both the ‘Program path and the filename’ and ‘Start in the following folder’ fields to the executable’s directory and its root folder, respectively. 

You can also pass arguments to your application in the “Arguments” field:

 

You can also pass arguments to your application in the “Arguments” field:

 

  • For testing purposes, mark the check-box for ‘Allow anonymous access’ under the ‘Authentication’ tab:

 

For testing purposes, check-box for ‘Allow anonymous access’

 

  • Press ‘Apply’:

 

Apply option of the Thinfinity Configuration Manager

 

  • You can open the published application by going to http://127.0.0.1:Port and clicking on the newly created Profile:

 

Open the published application Thinfinity Configuration Manager

 

  • If you start multiple RemoteApps, you’ll find a dock menu at the bottom of the browser screen, this allows you to toggle between different applications of the same connection.

You can also resize the App’s windows and be able to see more than one at the same time.

You can also pin this menu to be always on top or unpin it to automatically hide it.

Running gpedit.msc

 

If you get an access denied error, you would need to enable a group policy to allow unlisted programs to be started. To this end, open the ‘Group Policy Editor’ by going to ‘Start > Run > gpedit.msc’:

 

Running gpedit.msc

 

  • On the ‘Group Policy Editor’ navigate to: 

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Remote Desktop Services > Remote Desktop Session Host > Connections > Allow users to connect remotely by using Remote Desktop Services

 

Allow users to connect remotely by using Remote Desktop Services

 

  • Double click on this policy and then click on the check-box next to ‘Enabled’:

 

Enabled remote connection

 

  • Afterwards, you’ll have to update the group policies. In order to do this, call ‘gpupdate /force’ from a ‘Command Prompt’ window elevated as an Administrator:

 

First step for publish any Windows application to the web with Thinfinity Remote Desktop

 

  • If you want to give your users quick access to your applications, you can create a desktop shortcut to the URL of Thinfinity Remote Desktop with the Virtual Path of the application. Here’s an example:

 

What item would you like to create a shortcut for? - Thinfinity Remote Desktop

 

  • To ensure these changes are applied, you can go to ‘Start > Run > services.msc’ and restart the ‘Thinfinity Service Manager’:

 

To ensure these changes are applied, you can go to ‘Start > Run > services.msc’ and restart the ‘Thinfinity Service Manager’:

 

  • You can check our live demo and experience this feature yourself. You will be able to test this feature with the following Profiles:
    • Desktop
    • Notepad
    • Paint

 

All your Windows Apps and Desktops on a single web portal

 

Thinfinity Solutions for remote desktop, screen sharng, digital workspace and application virtualization.

Thinfinity Solutions

As you already know, Thinfinity Remote Desktop is a remote access, desktop delivery and app publishing solution.

Explore our other remoting and web-enabling solutions, enjoy our free trials, or request a custom demo HERE. No commitment!

We will be happy to assist you and show you our portfolio for remote desktop, screen sharing, digital workspace, and application virtualization.

Cheers!

Comments (8)

Hi Segun,
Thanks for contacting us.
We have two different solutions, depending on whether you own the app or if it’s a third party. Both solutions are straightforward and cost-effective.
Please send us an email to [email protected] with your contact information so we can schedule a demo session to explain to you how you can achieve your goals with Thinfinity.
Looking forward to hearing from you!

Hello, am a web developer and have a client who wants me to design and develop a website for him where he can allow his prospective clients to test/demo a windows desktop application. So we want to host the software online so that clients can access it through OurDomainName.com. Either it’s a public URL or private where we generate a custom URL for the client to test at a certain time frame.
I would like to know how I can set this up using your platform.

Hi, I would like to run this on a personal website to allow some basic ham radio calculator windows apps that I have not been able to convert to html/php to put on my webpage. This seems to work fine but I do not need users. Just anonymous access to these apps. Looking at the user license a min of 5 users would be way over priced for a personal project. But might be considered if there is no concurrent limit on anonymous users. Even with 5 concurrent anonymous users limit, If people forget and leave on for 30 minutes it would take away those slots for my website and I would have a most not functional personal site with 5 connected anonymous members. This would not work 🙁 So this is why I’m asking about if there is a limit on concurrent anonymous users on shared apps. What I need. I might consider paying if I can use multiple anonymous users with the 5 user license even if I wont need “Users accounts” created for these “public themed” apps.

Fransua Biancarosa

Hi, I looked at the tutorial and I’m very interested in using your product to share my app, but I have some little question
1) How many user can connect simultaneously to the remote app?
2) Are there limitation to the size of the app that can be shared (file size, required resources)?
3) What do I need for a complete setup (a particular configuration of the server, hardware resources ecc)?
3) Can I share my app in a costum webpage (not the dofoult page that i see in the live demo or into the tutorial)?

Hi Fransua,
Thaks for contacting us.
Regarding your inquiries:
1. This is tied to the resources your app requires. If you provide us more details we can better guide you regarding this matter.
2. There aren’t any kind of limitation in this aspect.
3. This is related to item #1.
4. You can build your web application and connect to Thinfinity Remote Desktop Server dynamically. You can also customize our landing page to fit your company style.
One of our reps will contact you to further discuss about your requirements.

A desktop application in C++ could be a native application that may access the complete set of Windows arthropod genus and either run in a very window or within the system console. Desktop applications in C++ will run on Windows XP through Windows ten (although Windows XP isn’t any longer formally supported and there are several Windows arthropod genus that is introduced since then). A desktop and windows application is distinct from a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app, which may run on PCs running Windows ten, and conjointly on XBox, Windows Phone, Surface Hub, and alternative devices. For a lot of info regarding desktop vs. UWP applications.
Windows Forms may be a set of categories that encapsulates the creation of the graphical program (GUI) portion of a typical desktop application. Previously, every artificial language had its own approach to making windows, text boxes, buttons, etc. This practicality has all been moved into the .NET Framework category library—into the kinds settled within the System.Windows.Forms namespace. Closely connected is that the System. Drawing namespace, that contains many varieties utilized in the creation of GUI applications.

Marianna, I have a Visual FoxPro app that is running on a cloud server. My users access my app using a RemoteApp icon on their windows desktop. I pay a cloud server hosting company $35.00 per user (that accesses my app) per month to host my app. The hosting company helped me get all this working and helps a lot when I work thru issues like allowing vendors to write files to a shared folder on the cloud server, allowing my app to access vendors FTP sites, allowing my app to access external (meaning not part of my app) vendor’s databases either at my customer’s site or elsewhere on the web (we use VPN tunnels or add my cloud server to the customer’s network’s Active Directory). If I understand correctly, if my app were accessed via a web browser rather than via RemoteApp, my per user costs would be drastically reduced. Is this something you can help me to understand and implement and if so at what costs?

Dear John,
Thanks for sharing your inquiry.
We provide free assistance and full support at no extra cost to any user who evaluates Thinfinity VirtualUI.
please send us an email to [email protected] with your contact information so we can schedule a demo session to explain to you how our VirtualUI can simplify your structure and reduce your virtualization costs.
Have a great day!

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