Update (Jan 22, 2007): There was a bug in the automatic update code (the online part) that was incorrectly telling older versions of RD Tabs that they were the newest version available.  The manual update would correctly tell you that you were out of date -- just the automatic part failed.  This has been fixed.  I apologize for the error.  The original blog post follows... 

I haven't been working on RD Tabs 2.0 as much as I like because work has kept me busy and in my spare time I've been renovating XS BAP for it's beta "2.0" release (which, incidently, should be out sometime next week!)...

However, I have been reading the comments in the blogs and have introduced another intermediate version of RD Tabs which includes several bug fixes for reported problems.  Also, to help aid troubleshooting in the future, RD Tabs will now "phone home" when it crashes, much like Microsoft's error reporting service that many of you have encountered when Windows or Office crashes.  Yes, you do have the opportunity to NOT send an error report if you are concerned about privacy!  No big brother nonsense from me!

Download RD Tabs 1.1.1 here...

• Click here to download a Zip archive with the MSI installer and a Setup.exe "bootstrap" file.
• Click here to download the MSI installer.

Here's the 1.1.1 changelog...

• It has been tested and the 1.1.x code-line of RD Tabs is Vista-compatible. Feel free to use this instead of the boring standard client on Vista!
• Fixed bug where the Default Connection Properties were not loaded into the "New Favorite" dialog when you tried to create a favorite from scratch from within the Favorites Manager.
• Fixed bug where if you exported favorites that have saved passwords, but selected not to export the passwords, the passwords would disappear from your favorites and would be lost forever.
• Added error code 1289 - This occurs when you cancel a connection after being prompted about whether to connect to a non-TLS session when the security property is set to "Ask"
• While working on XS BAP 2.0, I created a library that will automatically trap and send me uncaught exceptions (unexpected errors). Since plugging it into RD Tabs is so easy, I went ahead and did that. If RD Tabs crashes hard, please click the "Send Error Report" button! It will help me greatly. Thank you!
• Added links in the help menu... (1) The Avian Waves Music website (which is my first love); (2) The RD Tabs home page; (3) And finally, a shameless "begging for a donation" link! :-)

Soon!  I promise.  Mastering of the album has been completed!  Gerry at GK Labs (www.gklabs.com) did the mastering and it sounds absolutely incredible.  If you are a musician looking for a mastering house, I cannot recommend anybody more than GK!

Now for my latest excuse about the delay... I'm currently in the process of buying my first house.  (I get giddy just thinking about the studio I am going to set up in there.)  After closing, I'm going to get the CDs pressed at DiscMakers and they will be available online at major online outlets such as CDBaby and Amazon.com.  I'm also going to try my absolute best to get the songs available on iTunes and other music download services, but I hear through the grapevine that they are slow and sometimes pretty strict about letting in indie artists.  I would love to get a distribution deal that would put my CD in "brick and mortar" stores, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.  :-)

Are you a DJ?  A special "singles" version of the CD will be available upon request for a very reasonable fee.  The difference between the two versions is that the "singles" version will provide ample silence between each track and will not crossfade any two tracks together.  This is ideal for radio stations and DJs.  Contact me for a copy of the "singles" version if you are a DJ, program director, or would like the "singles" version for any other purpose.  These will be burned and shipped on high quality CD-Rs, instead of being mass-produced.  This CD will be shipped only to music industry pros, sorry guys.  Consumers can get each song as a single through download services when that becomes available (if I can't get on iTunes or another one, I'll sell them myself through my website). 

Both CDs will be available in a few months.  I will post it on the blog when they are.

I received several requests for a donation link for my two more popular free applications, RD Tabs and XS BAP.  I must say I really appreciate the support!  Thank you for offering.  I will continue to update these applications (and come up with new applications) whenever I have free time.  I added the link on the applications' web pages, but if you feel extra-giving right now, click here!  :-)  Happy New Year!

The other day, Microsoft released an update (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925876) which installs the Remote Desktop Client 6.0 for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.  This is great news, except that it broke RD Tabs!  Microsoft failed to inform me (like they care about me haha) that some of the calls RD Tabs makes to determine which version of RDP it is using doesn't return correct version data with the new client.  It was an easy fix, but annoying to you guys who woke up to seeing RD Tabs complaining that the installation is corrupt!  Worse, RD Tabs can't run "RD Tabs Update" since it can't even start.  Sorry about that.

Anyway, RD Tabs 1.1 is now out!  The main feature is that it is built off the Remote Desktop 6.0 library, but is also still backward compatible with versions 5.2 and 5.1 should you manually unregister the included 6.0 client and reinstall 5.2 or 5.1.  It does not yet support all the fun new features of 6.0, like Remote Desktop Gateway, Network Authentication, and so on, but it will work with RDP 6.0 servers (or, at least, should).  Additionally, I was able to add one new feature easily, which is the new maximum resolution allowed in RDP 6.0!  You can now have screen sizes up to 4096x2048, instead of being constrained to 1600x1200.  The idea is that you can create "pseudo" multiple monitor setups by stretching the client window across a couple monitors.  Well, it's a good first attempt, anyway.  Thanks, Microsoft.

Stay tuned to this website for RD Tabs 2.0, which will include a more full set of RDP 6.0 features, plus the UI enhancements and terminal server management features promised in previous posts!

RD Tabs 1.1.0 MSI Installer
http://www.avianwaves.com/Tech/Tools/RDTabs/RDTabs_1.1.0.msi

RD Tabs 1.1.0 MSI Installer and Setup.EXE bootstrap in a zip file
http://www.avianwaves.com/Tech/Tools/RDTabs/RDTabs_1.1.0.zip

As you may have seen, Microsoft has released the Remote Desktop Client 6.0 for Windows 2003 and Windows XP.  If you install this update, RD Tabs will no longer function, because RD Tabs does not support the Remote Desktop Protocol 6.0 -- It uses RDP 5.2.  Do not despair!  Now that I can access the RDP 6.0 library from XP and 2003, I will add the 6.0 features to RD Tabs.  This release will be RD Tabs 1.1 because it is adding a major new feature (incrementing the minor version number).  RD Tabs 2.0 is also in parallel development, which will add all kinds of new features from splitting and grouping tabs side-by-side (new UI) to being able to explore / manage remote terminal servers from within RD Tabs.  RD Tabs 2.0 will not be out until spring or summer 2007 sometime, which is why I'm creating RD Tabs 1.1, which will fully support RDP 6.0, even though it will not have all the new snazzy UI features!  :-) 

I will try to get this out as quick as I can, so stay tuned!  The first version of RD Tabs 1.1 will not support remote desktop gateways or being able to individually select which drives you want to share with the remote session (some of the new 6.0 features), but those will be added in subsequent versions.  I mainly just want to get RDP 6.0 compatibility as quickly as possible!

The new version of the Avian Waves website is now online!  It took much longer than expected to complete, but I think it is now finally done.  It may still need some tweaks here and there, so please contact me if you find any issues.

My debut album has just arrived from the mastering studio (www.gklabs.com) where it was sweetened to crystal clarity!  All that is left is some artwork tweaks and CD duplication.  The album should be available very early 2007.  I am excited for it to finally go on sale, professionally mastered and professionally pressed.

It seems all I've been blogging about recently is RD Tabs.  Well, 1.0.8 is now out!  It's mainly a bug fix release.  No new features have been added.  I won't be adding any more features to the 1.0.x branch, but will continue to release bug fixes until 1.1 is ready.  I'm working on a lot of cool new things for 1.1 including a more versatile tab manager!  Stay tuned for that.

For an introduction to RD Tabs, read this blog post.

Download RD Tabs 1.0.8 here.

Here's the list of changes from 1.0.7 to 1.0.8...

- Setup now creates a "RD Tabs" folder to store all things RD Tabs under the Avian Waves folder in the Start Menu, since I am writing more software...

- Attempted to fix issue where RD Tabs would occassionally (rarely) hang when closing. It appears rarely that something is not cleaning up properly (or timely) in the RDP ActiveX control (or possibly the wrapper) and the application sits and waits... A ten second hard timeout is set up now which will hopefully cause a forceful termination if the application takes longer than ten seconds to close. I won't know unless I see this issue pop up again.

- Fixed bug in Export Favorites feature where it would only allow you to export using the "Browse" button and not directly by typing in a path and filename into the textbox.

- More "friendly" error messages are provided for common errors while exporting favorites (such as invalid filename).

- On tab close, the focus now moves to the right instead of the left. I mistakenly assumed in version 1.0.7 that in most tabbed programs the focus moved left. I have found since it moves right in every test case I've tried! If you prefer the focus to move left, change the parameter OnTabCloseSwitchFocusToTheRight from TRUE to FALSE in the user.config or rdtabs.config files. This setting is currently not configurable from the GUI.

Version 1.0.7 of RD Tabs is now available.  With this version comes many bug fixes and several requested features have been implemented.

Below is the list of changes from version 1.0.6 to version 1.0.7.  For an introduction to RD Tabs, read this blog post.

Changes:

- Fixed bug where in certain circumstances RD Tabs would incorrectly tell you that saving passwords is disabled by group policy, when policy is actually set NOT to disable the password saving feature.

- Favorites can now be imported and exported from within the Favorites Manager to make it easier to copy favorites from computer to computer.

- When a connection fails, the server will no longer be added to the MRU list.  Also, a parameter is available in the user.config to remove the server from the MRU on any bad connection, even if a connection was established successfully previously (this is disabled by default).  Change RemoveServerFromMRUOnFailure from False to True to change this behavior.  This settings is currently not configurable from the application, only by manually editing the user.config or rdtabs.config files.

- Added a disconnect / cancel connection button which appears when you are opening a new RDP connection.  If you mis-type a server name or something, this will give you the ability to cancel quickly without having to close the entire tab or wait for an error to occur.

- When an error occurs during a connection, the "OK" button in the error dialog now receives focus so you can just hit "enter" to cancel out of the box.

- Fixed bug where under certain circumstances, when you hit enter to cancel a dialog box, the enter key press would be sent to the next control (such as the Connect To dialog) and would immediately initiate another connection.

- When closing a tab, focus will now be sent to the tab immediately to the left of the tab being closed, instead of to the first tab in the list (the previous behavior).  This should provide a better and more consistent user experience similar to other "tabbed" applications.

- Changed the tab-dragging icon to something a little more recognizable and "standardized" (similar to the icon used in IE7) to avoid confusion about what's going on when you drag tabs around.

- Fixed bug where the auto-reconnect feature would not correctly update the status bar and title bar of each tab should network issues cause the remote desktop to attempt to autoreconnect to an active session.  KNOWN ISSUE: The remote desktop screen will not clear after a disconnect during the auto reconnection sequence.  It appears to be a bug in Microsoft's ActiveX control, but I'm not positive.  Either way, this bug is purely cosmetic and does not affect the function of RD Tabs.

- Installer now includes shotcuts to the help file and changelog.txt in the Start Menu.

- Fixed bug where if you installed a newer version of RD Tabs over an older one, then used the same shortcut to launch the application, the help file would not be found since the start location does not include the path where the help file should live.

- Increased size of "Check for Updates" window so that more status messages can be displayed at once by the updater.

- Trapped another undocumented error number thrown by the RDP control.  It would return unknown error code 263 if you click "no" when it asks if you want to connect to a system whose certificate does not match the name you typed in.

- Fixed bug where certain warnings or errors would raise dialog boxes and shift around keyboard focus in such a way that the user would not always know which tab had which problem.  RD Tabs now automatically switches focus to a tab that raises a dialog box.  The dialog boxes are built into the RDP control, otherwise I would replace them with non-modal forms of input, such as the disconnection box.  Unfortunately, I cannot change this behavior.  The best I can do is to automatically switch focus so that the error message is not so confusing.

- Added a close (exit application) button in the menu bar for when RD Tabs is in Full Screen Mode.

- Update URL has been changed to match new Avian Waves website path location.  (Currently both the original and new URLs will work the same.)

- Automatic update notification feature will now check for a new version every 12 hours, in addition to every time the application is opened.  Setting the AutoUpdateRecheckDelay parameter to zero will disable the recheck feature (without disabling autoupdate entirely).  Value is in hours and is currently only modifable in the rdtabs.config or user.config files (no option is in the GUI yet).

[Edit: Feb 10, 2007] Version 1.0.7 is no longer available.  Please visit the RD Tabs home page for the latest version.

If you are a Windows admin, you probably have had times when you are managing multiple servers and have many connections open to many different Remote Desktops.  Microsoft allows you to plug the remote desktop ActiveX control into a MMC console, but that's a pretty lousy solution to the problem.  Then it came to me... Why not use the latest "tabbed browsing" interface paradigm to remote desktops?  It's awesome in Firefox, Opera, and IE 7, how come nobody has done this for remote desktops?  Turns out that it has been done before, but I only could find commercial products and the demos were... well... lacking.  And I'll leave it at that.

So I decided to write my own.  It sounded like a really fun project.  And boy has it been!

RD Tabs was born.  Yes, it's a very uncreative name.  "Remote Desktop Tabs"

My admin friends love it and gave me lots of great feedback.  And now I'm ready to share it with the public.  I plan to add lots of new features in the future and RD Tabs will notify you of updates, so you don't even have to think about it to stay up-to-date.

Some of the major highlights of RD Tabs:

• Up to 100 simultaneous remote desktop connections in a tabbed user interface.
• Favorites can be saved and categorized into folders.
• RDP 5.2 with optional TLS authentication and encryption is fully supported.
• Respects Microsoft's Windows security model and works just as smoothly running under an administrator or limited user account.
• Respects Terminal Services GPO setting to prevent saving of passwords in favorites.
• "Full Screen Mode" still shows tab bar for quickly switching desktops.
• Automatically notifies you of new versions of the software.
• Plus much more!

RD Tabs requires the .NET Framework 2.0.

RD Tabs respects the Microsoft Windows security model.  All user data is stored in the user's Application Data folder and global default settings can be modified by admins by editing the application.config file in Program Files.

RD Tabs has been tested on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, but it should also work in the upcoming Windows Vista (I haven't tested it).

Download version 1.0.6 at the following links...

[Edit: Feb 10, 2007] Version 1.0.6 is no longer available.  Please visit the RD Tabs home page for the latest version.

Looking for a way to restrict access to removable drives in your domain on your workstations?  It's easier than you might think!  There is a registry setting you can set that will turn all removable drives into read-only devices.  This includes USB thumb drives, hard drives, and even CD/DVD writers.  Of course editing the registry is a pain in the butt if you have a domain with dozens or hundreds of workstations, so I created this Administrative Template for use in Group Policy to configure this setting for you. 

Unfortunately, Microsoft did not store these settings in the "true policy" locations of the registry, so in the GPEDIT.MSC you need to click on Administrative Templates, then select View -> Filtering...  Uncheck "Only show policy settings that can be fully managed."  This will allow you to see the "preferences."  (Policy settings that are not fully managed are called Preferences.)  You can google for more information on the differences between policies and preferences. 

Enjoy!

Microsoft's explanation of Administrative Templates...
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/Library/8f0daf74-1eac-4d47-ac8a-bcbe23c673521033.mspx

Link to the Remove Storage Device administrative template...
http://www.avianwaves.com/tech/tools/RemovableStorageDevice_ADM