The Web Interface 3.0 Feature Summary

The Web Interface 3.0 Feature Summary

Table 14.1 summarizes the key features of the Web Interface for MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0.

Table 14.1. Web Interface Feature Summary

Feature	Description
Active Directory and Novell Directory Services (NDS) support	User authentication is integrated with Microsoft Active Directory or NDS. User Principal Names (UPN) can also be used when providing user credentials on the Web Interface authentication page. A UPN typically appears as name @domain .com. NDS authentication is supported only when running the Web Interface on IIS.
ActiveX client deployment control	The Web Interface allows you to define the specific version and class ID of the Web Client and Remote Desktop Connection ActiveX controls that you want to deploy to the end user.
Anonymous user logon	Users can log on to the farm using an anonymous account (an account requiring no user ID and password), providing support for kiosk-type implementations using the Web Interface.
Application and content publishing support	Published applications and content can be accessed through the Web Interface. Configuration options for published content and applications are managed through the ICA template files.
Improved address translation support	Address translation options can be created within the Web Interface. These options are based on the client subnet address and subnet mask rules that you define. When users connect from a given subnet, the associated address translation rules can be automatically applied, ensuring that users are always connecting to the proper servers.
Multiple site support with IIS	When an IIS server is hosting more than one website, you can specify the target site where the Web Interface will be hosted. Multiple instances of the Web Interface can be deployed on different sites on the same server.
Personal Digital Assistant/Windows-based Terminal Support	Citrix supports accessing the Web Interface on a limited range of PDA and WBT devices, including those running PocketPC 2002 or later.
Presentation Server client deployment	The Web Interface allows you to control deployment of Presentation Server clients to any device with a web browser. The Web Interface can detect the client and browser type, presenting the user with the appropriate client for installation. Only the presence of the 16- and 32-bit clients can be detected and the installation request shown or hidden as required. For all other client types, the option to install the client is always shown.
Presentation Server/IIS Server integration	Citrix supports the integration of Presentation Server and IIS running on the same server and sharing port 80 between IIS and the Citrix XML Service. This is made possible by the Internet Server Application Program Interface (ISAPI) extension that is part of the Citrix XML Service.
Presentation Server load balancing and failover support	The Web Interface allows you to define references to multiple servers hosting the XML Service. This ensures applications remain accessible even if the primary reference is unavailable. References can be load-balanced , which is the default, or accessed sequentially, failing over to the next server if the previous one was unavailable.
Program Neighborhood Agent Integration	The Web Interface also integrates with the Program Neighborhood Agent. The PN Agent allows access to published applications through the Web Interface without requiring the use of a web browser. For more details on the Web Interface, see the section titled "The Program Neighborhood Agent" later in this chapter.
Remote Desktop Connection support	Microsoft's ActiveX client for RDP is natively supported in the Web Interface, but with limited features compared to the Citrix clients. See the section "Remote Desktop Web Connection Software" for more information on this client support.
Secure Gateway for Presentation Server	The Secure Gateway, included as part of Presentation Server, provides a single point of secured access into your server farm. Specifically created to secure access to the farm from untrusted networks (such as the Internet), the Secure Gateway is discussed in the "Securing Server Access with the Secure Gateway" section of this chapter.
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) support	SSL/TLS is supported for securing communications between the Web Interface server and the XML Service on MetaFrame servers in the farm. On the Windows platform, SSL and TLS support is provided by Microsoft's Secure Channel (SChannel) security package.
Session authentication tickets	Instead of user credentials being passed within a generated template ICA file, the Web Interface employs special authentication tickets that are used to validate a user's access to published content. Once used, or if the expiry date has passed, the ticket can no longer be used for authentication. To support ticketing, the Citrix XML Service must be running on all servers in the farm and listening on the same port. By default, the XML Service is installed as part of Presentation Server and listens on port 80.
Support for multiple server farms	As we already mentioned, application sets can be retrieved from multiple server farms and displayed to the user. Server farms must be in trusted domains in order to share one set of user credentials.
Unicode support for ICA template files	You can configure the Web Interface to generate a Unicode-based ICA template file when a user clicks an application link in the web browser. Unicode is a 16-bit encoding scheme (compared to 8-bit for ASCII), allowing the combination of character sets from different languages (European, Japanese, Chinese, and so on) to be represented in a single character set. Encoding the ICA template files in Unicode greatly expands the usability of the Web Interface in non-European countries .
Workspace Control	Workspace Control allows a user to quickly connect, disconnect, or log out of all running applications. Workspace Control can allow users to quickly access applications, even if they have been left connected at another terminal.

Note

Certain Web Interface features are available only when a given Presentation Server and client version are used. For example, the Workspace Control feature requires MetaFrame Presentation Server 3.0 and ICA Client version 8.0 or higher. A complete list can be found in Citrix's "Web Interface Administrator's Guide." All the features discussed are available when using the latest version of Presentation Server and ICA client.