RD Tabs 3.0 Public Beta is here with release 3.0.6. It's been a really long road with a lot of code refactoring, new features, and life getting in the way. But it's here!

DOWNLOAD NOW: https://www.avianwaves.com/Tech/Tools/RDTabs/RDTabsSetup_3.0.6_Beta.exe 

Change log:

3.0.6 (Beta)

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- Fixed bug: when tabs were hidden, the remote desktop height was calculated incorrectly causing the desktop to not be as large as it should be.
- Fixed bug: when remote desktop gateway was enabled, an error would occur that said "Conversion from string to type Double is invalid" when you tried to connect.
- Changed some default settings.
- RD Tabs Update nags a little bit more now. I found that in Windows 10, my testers weren't seeing the update notification since Windows more aggressively hides Task Tray icons. So now it "toasts" once per hour or when you unlock the computer.
- Fixed bug: after disconnecting and returning to the connection properties dialog, if you resized the RD Tabs window, scrollbars would appear inside the tab and then disappear and reappear sporadically while resizing.
- Reduced flicker when switching tabs.
- Tab Windows full screen and menu behavior is now the same as the main RD Tabs window.
- Fixed a bug in the window resizing for the profile cleanup utility.
- Splash screen now has the full version number, including patch level and build number.
- All occurences of "Avian Waves" have been replaced with "Avian Waves LLC" to reflect the name of the company and correct current copyright information.
- Added the rest of the missing icons and updated a few others.
- Tweaked a bunch of UI elements and text strings.
- Fixed a few display bugs in the PowerShell Prompt.
- Fixed bug: the window position was not being saved between executions of RD Tabs.
- Changed some text so that terminology matches throughout the application.
- Fixed some scaling issues.
- The error icon is back when there is a problem connecting to a remote session.
- Fixed bug: The "After Connected" script could still continue to run after the remote desktop session was ended.
- Fixed bug: some of the automation methods in the PowerShell $RDTabs.Automation object were not working correctly.
- Fixed bug: added bounds checking to $RDTabs.Automation.ScreenCaptureRemoteDesktopRegionToClipboard().
- Added CTRL+A shortcut to the script editor for selecting all text.
- Fixed bug: RD Tabs would notify an update is available even after the update was installed due to some invalid update readiness caching.
- Documentation fully updated.
- This release is ready for public beta! Let the veil be lifted!

3.0.5 (Alpha)

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- Fixed bug: there were rare instances where RD Tabs would not correctly remember it's window location after closing and relaunching, particularly if you have an odd multi-monitor layout (L-shape, for example). New window layout validation code now uses each individual monitor position reported by Windows.
- Fixed bug: desktop scaling would not be honored (would revert to unscaled) in certain scenarios when using split screen (send to new pane).
- Improved performance: When resizing the RD Tabs window, the remote desktop resizing now performs faster.
- Changed behavior: The option "Open favorite in a new tab only if the active tab is connected, otherwise use the active tab" has been changed to "Open favorite in a new tab only if the active tab is connected [or connecting], otherwise use the active tab." This is a subtle change, but I've found that it's really annoying when you are trying to open many tabs quickly in succession for it to reuse the same time while the tab is in the connecting state. This also affects the "has ever connected" option underneath it.
- Minor tweak: The resolution section of the connection bar now updates live values if the connection is set to one of the "Fit to" options.
- Changed behavior: If RD Tabs is open, connected to a remote tab, and the warning is enabled, it will ask if you are sure you want to exit. It did this even if Windows was shutting down, which is against Microsoft usability guidelines. RD Tabs now is compliant with the usability guidelines and will exit gracefully without prompting during a shutdown situation even with warnings enabled. If you had to select the "end task now" option from the shutdown warning screen, RD Tabs would not exit gracefully and may have been at risk for losing settings.
- Fixed bug: sometimes the window size wouldn't save when exiting the application.
- Changed behavior: Script execution errors are now logged to the connection history. Scripts that are missing are no longer "hidden" from the user, so you will get appropriate errors in the connection history and "before connecting" scripts will now block the connection, if configured to stop on error. Simply remove the missing script to fix. This will only happen if you create a script add it to a favorite, then delete the script without removing the reference in the favorite.
- Finished wiring up the PowerShell RemoteDesktopConnectionProperties object. There is now a "Factory" property of the automatic variable $RDTabs that lets you get empty RemoteDesktopConnectionProperties objects and you can fully control all of the properties for creating new tabs in the automation scenario. This is also potentially useful during executing context. There is still no access to favorites. That will come in a later version. CreateRDPTab() has a TON of overloads. To see them all, just run the method name without the parenthesis, like $RDTabs.Automation.CreateRDPTab.
- Fixed bug: Some PowerShell CreateRDPTab() methods were wired up incorrectly so if you tried to pass in a server name directly, for example, it wouldn't work.
- Exporting and importing of scripts is now possible. Scripts will export to a file type called RDTSX (RD Tabs Secure Export). This is a new container file type that will eventually supercede RDTSF (secure favorites export) and RDTAS (application settings) as well. The idea is that the new file format which makes use of the SecurityDriven.Inferno library for enhanced security. Like RDTSF, it uses AES-256 for encryption, but uses modern strong key derivation. Since it uses a container format, all types of RD Tabs exportable data can be stored within it, allowing a full export of your entire RD Tabs setup, so you can more easily set up new computers or share data. For favorites with scripts, this will be especially helpful since the script can be contained with the favorite. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Right now, it's only good for scripts. Look for the rest in a future release. :-)
- Fixed bug: If the redial counter was counting down and you closed a tab, in some situations the application would crash due to a timer not getting reset on the RDP control.
- Fixed bug: automatic recovery from non-fatal errors in the RDP control (introduced in 3.0.0) has had several bugs fixed that prevented errors from being recovered in certain cases, the application would simply crash as in older versions.
- .Net Version Change: Switched from 4.5 to 4.5.2 (which you should be on anyway!).
- All RD Tabs assemblies are now digitally signed (Authenticode), including the installer. You can now be assured that the RD Tabs installer you get is valid by looking to see if it's signed by Avian Waves LLC.
- RD Tabs Setup has been rebuilt and now uses WiX instead of the old legacy Setup Project. Because of this, RD Tabs now has a very simple single universal installer, rather than seperate x86 and x64 installers. The installer has most of its logic in the EXE "bootstrap" setup file. Inside this are two MSIs for the x64 and x86 version. Silent installations can be performed using command line parameters /install /quiet. It's not recommended, but if you need to install from then MSIs, you can extract them using the dark.exe utility that comes with the free WiX toolkit. Remember that doing a silent install or MSI extraction is the same as clicking "accept" on the click-wrap of the interactive installer and you are bound by the same licensing terms therein.
- The EULA has been updated. The language has been clarified greatly, and new sections are in place to describe licensing for when Premium Features are offered in the future.
- Fixed bug: scroll wheel tab scrolling on overflow had the direction reversed. Possible regression.
- Changed behavior: Tabs now snap automatically when the window is resized so that the tabs are not off the screen if there is room for them to be on the screen.
- Fixed links in the Help menu.
- Included more details in About screen.
- You can now hide the tabs bar for additional vertical screen real estate. Select "Show/Hide Tabs Bar" in the Connection menu or press CTRL+F12. This might seem weird at first, but maybe you want to only run a single tab in a particular Tab Window plus you can also still switch tabs in the Tabs menu, the Quick View or using keyboard shortcuts.

3.0.4 (Alpha)

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- Fixed the error report URL for Remote Computer Information to always use SSL.
- When you open a favorite, but choose not to connect to it immediately, RD Tabs will now populate the title bar with the favorite name. Previously it would say "New Connection."
- Updated the Remote Desktop interop DLLs to support the latest Windows 10 Creators version.
- Fixed bug: connection history was not being maintained when a new favorite was opened in an existing tab.
- Connection History now supports sorting on any column.
- Connection History default sort order is now timestamp descending (same as Windows Event Viewer).
- Tweaked the update notifications. There's now a dedicated task tray icon for new updates and an easier to read notification link in the application window. This will make it a lot more clear, I hope.
- The remote computer information and profile cleaner utilities now scale to DPI using the Windows compatibilty shim as their default setting for high DPI monitors.
- Profile cleaner tool now includes all the history and backup files of the new 3.0+ settings system. So if you want to delete those, you can do that easily with this tool.
- Remote Computer Info has had it's internal state tracking converted to the new settings format, so there is no longer an associated user.config file that can cause problems.
- Remote Computer Info had a few code paths that wouldn't be caught by the error reporting system. It now fully routes all exceptions correctly.

3.0.3 (Alpha)

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- Tweaked the color theme a bit for better contrast on different displays.
- Added an option to clear the tab cache. It's located in the "about" menu, where you can see the tab cache usage. Under normal circumstances, this isn't necessary. But it may be useful for debugging or in the odd rare case a tab crashes and gets put back into the cache after crashing.
- Fixed bug: when in full screen mode, if you tried to open Options or Manage Favorites, the window closed immediately after opening.
- Windows 8/8.1/10 high DPI monitors are now supported for native resolution (Surface devices, 4K monitors). You can change this in the setting. This may not be desired for most since remote desktops that you connect to may cause everything to be very tiny, so having Windows automatically upscale is the default setting.
- More disconnection codes have been added.
- Domains longer than 16 characters (old NetBIOS limit) has been increased to support any length.
- Fixed bug: certain UI control limits (like manually specific maximum resolution) would get pinned to the wrong RDP version's max/min limit when switching tabs.
- Fixed bug: when a tab automatically reconnects (for example due to network disturbances) the connecting state would show as "connected" after several seconds even if the connection was not reestablished.
- Refactored some code on how connection states are tracked - this may or may not help with rare instances of tabs getting "stuck."
- Added code to detect a tab that might be in a bad state either due to the underlying RDP control going into a bad state or RD Tabs code itself, this allows RD Tabs to avoid caching the tab and causing problems later on.
- Fixed bug: window scaling options were not updating correctly when first loading from a favorite.
- Changed the connected icon color to green instead of cyan. Seems to make more visual sense to me.
- Exporting favorites has been fixed.
- You can no longer export passwords with the XML file type. It's just too dangerous and easy to accidentally do. Use RDTSF!
- Numerous bugs in Remote Computer Information have been fixed for Windows 8/8.1/10+ systems. This mostly affected 64-bit RD Tabs, but may have affected 32-bit in some cases too.
- The favorites editor now correctly works with all the new properties, including script selection.
- The batch favorites editor now includes all new properties and allows more flexible editing of some older properties.
- The versioning of RD Tabs has changed slightly. The scheme I'm going with is: Major.Minor.Patch.Build. So the fourth version segment is used now and it's just a static running counter of each build. This isn't really used for end users as much as for test versions so I can compare DLL versions when working on minor revisions and patches. You'll see the change in the Help->About menu, though.
- RD Tabs now uses universal EXEs and DLLs for x64 and x86 platforms both. However, due to limitations in the MSI installer format, there are still two installers for each CPU, but they install the exact same files. This redesign though should help with future development as there will only be a single machine type to compile to.

3.0.2 (Alpha)

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- Fixed bug: Sometimes the menu wouldn't hide when the mouse lost focus in fullscreen.
- Fixed bug: Occasionally a connection would be black or gray initially after connecting until the window was resized or connection was disconnected and reconnected.
- Added disconnection code 4360.
- Fixed bug: Some non-error disconnection codes were showing as an error.
- Fixed bug: redial / reconnect had numerous regression issues due to code refactoring. This should all be fixed.
- Fixed bug: buttons would get stuck in the "highlighting" color after clicked if the button was then disabled, like clicking the reconnect button.
- Export / Import settings has been implemented with the new application settings. It should be backward compatible with all previous RD Tabs version for importing. However, exporting will not work completely from newer versions to older versions. Use at your own risk for going from new (3.x) to old (2.x).
- Fixed bug: the first tab opened would have connection properties restricted incorrectly to the lowest version RDP, rather than using the actual version discovered and initialized. This also applied to Default Connection Properties.
- Fixed bug: if you clicked reconnect REALLY quickly after disconnecting, sometimes it would disconnect while reconnecting (race condition).

3.0.1 (Alpha)

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- Fixed bug: Favorites menu didn't work in 3.0.0 in secondary tab windows.
- Fixed bug: Automatically hiding the menu bar when entering full screen mode would toggle when you hid or unhid the menu bar.
- Fixed bug: On secondary monitors, the menu bar would flicker open and closed if it was hidden while in full screen mode.
- Fixed bug: If you exited RD Tabs after toggling into and out of full screen mode, it would always attempt full screen mode when you open it again.
- Fixed bug: Normal/restore window dimensions were not correctly saved when maximizing or going into full screen.
- Fixed bug: Settings were not saved if you exited RD Tabs using the Alt+F4 shortcut key instead of clicking on the "X" button.
- Fixed bug: The installer was having issues in some cases reporting a "DLL error."
- Tweaked some settings in the installer that may have been causing issues.
- New: hidden menu in full screen mode now "floats" over the tabs instead of pushing them down. This is the more expected behavior and also resolves issues calculating the desktop size when using an automatic size mode.

3.0.0 (Alpha)

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- Due to internal refactoring, new features, and performance, RD Tabs now requires a minimum of Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008 with the .Net Framework 4.5 (or newer) installed. It may still run on earlier versions of Windows, but it is no longer supported.
- Changed Default: The "new tab" tab on the right side of the tab list is now the default tab creation style. This more closely aligns RD Tabs with the style of other TDI applications. This is only effective for NEW RD Tabs installations and is reconfigurable.
- Changed behavior: Cancelling a connection will no longer remove the computer from the MRU list if you have the option set to remove "bad" connections from the MRU list.
- New eye candy: The connecting, reconnecting, redialing, and disconnecting graphics/dialogs have all been changed. No big functionality difference - I just wanted to make it look slicker. :-)
- New visual style: Changed the tabs to look more modern.
- Smaller footprint: The new eye candy uses the "lightweight controls" library I developed for RD Tabs, so the tab is slightly less of a resource hog now. :-)
- Most of the connection properties chrome was removed to make RD Tabs look more modern.
- The embedded "change display name" dialog has been changed from the orange sherbert theme to the standard windows Control colors with a thick black border so it doesn't look like it's a part of the desktop.
- Changed default: The default maximum size of the MRU list has been increased to 50 entries (previously 20). This is configurable, obviously.
- New feature: You can now choose between using the RD Tabs auto-reconnector (from 2.1) or the built-in Microsoft auto-reconnector (same as MSTSC). There are situations where the Microsoft one may be preferrable. For example, it can retain connection state, so that you can reconnect under bad network conditions without having to type in your username/password ahead of time. Note that reconnection parameters cannot be set in the Microsoft mode. The maximum attempts is 20 and the time between attempts is approximately 5 seconds.
- Fixed a minor visual bug where some colors on buttons would not set to the default Windows "control" color when operating in a non-skinned visual mode (as in the basic Windows visual mode that is not XP "Luna" or Vista's Aero)
- The tab icon (which represents connection state) is now visible in the Tabs menu. So if you use the Tabs menu to switch between tabs, you will now be able to see connection state in that menu.
- New feature: Connection history. You can now view a list of connection attempts and disconnection reasons of each tab in a list.
- The password dialog for encrypting export files now has an indicator telling you how complex your password is. It also confirms that you want to use the password you entered if the password is weak. The algorithm to determine complexity is a bit involved, but it basically revolves around using many different characters sets (letters, numbers, punctuation) while also taking length into consideration since lengthy passwords without a diverse set of characters are still strong passwords. It also "punishes" passwords that are largely made up of just a few different characters. It does not use a dictionary, so it doesn't know if you are using common words that might make your password easier to guess. Still, I think it's pretty useful.
- Smaller footprint: decoupled several large controls from each individual tab and converted it into a shared control. This drastically reduced the footprint of each individual tab.
- New option: Under "experience" in the connection properties, you can now specify if the tab will suspend its network traffic when it is hidden (the optimization made in 2.1.7). There are cases where this optimization does not improve network performance since a full screen redraw is required when the tab is switched back to. Now you have the option to choose for each individual tab. The default value is that network traffic is NOT suspended when hidden (the behavior of RD Tabs versions prior to 2.1.7).
- Fixed a bug where custom DPI would cause RD Tabs to malfunction in strange ways.
- Better UI: There is no longer a modal dialog before batch editing favorites asking you if you want to apply the changes recursively. Instead, it has a checkbox at the bottom of the editor allowing you to make changes only to a single folder deep or recursively. This is a much less intrusive experience for the user. Default is to apply changes recursively.
- Added better feature detection into the RDP initialization to catch situations where certain features are not supported so we can automatically fail back to an older RDP version.
- Replaced the buggy Connection Thumbnail Selector with what is now called the Tab Quick View. It improves on the thumbnail selector in the following ways: thumbnails are now live views of your connections and updated in real time and each tab window has its own Quick View, rather than just the one in the main program window.
- Added a new recovery feature where if certain non-fatal occurs occur within a tab, RD Tabs is able to close the tab, discard it, and continue operating without exiting the program. As time goes on, the number of recoverable errors will grow. Unfortunately, not all tab-level errors are non-fatal, so some tab-level crashes will still crash the entire application.
- RD Tabs no longer includes a bundled RDP 6.0 control (which was distributed with permission from Microsoft). Since the RDP Control is distributed through Windows Update now since the release of Windows Vista and Windows XP SP3, it is simply no longer needed. RD Tabs will inform you of a download link if you run the self-repair utility and are missing the library.
- EULA has changed slightly for clarity.
- RD Tabs no longer uses the .Net user.config system to store settings. It now uses its own system. You can continue to use the Profile Cleaner to cleanup residual garbage from previous versions and also settings history from the new system. Settings files are now stored in the roaming user profile appdata under the "Avian Waves\RD Tabs" folder.
- Several dialogs have been updated for screen size issues and workflow consistency.
- All graphics and icons have been redesigned based on my take on Microsoft's "Modern" UI paradigm. I tried not to go too overboard and make it all bland and gray. I hope you like it. There are no public domain icons in use in RD Tabs any longer. It's all original.
- The RD Tabs application icon and splash screen are both brand new. It should be unique enough to be recognizable without confusing with the Microsoft Remote Desktop iconography, while still giving a nod to the iconography used in Windows 8, so you can tell it's a remote desktop app and not something else.
- Fixed an issue where on Windows 7 and newer systems, RD Tabs was not able to launch the TS Admin app that comes with windows (under Tools menu). Reworked this code a bit too to help with elevation issues when using RD Tabs 32-bit on a 64-bit system.
- The "single instance" code has been rewritten. The built-in .Net single instance enforcement has a few strange bugs that can cause RD Tabs to crash. Most notably, if you are running RD Tabs and then "Run As" RD Tabs as another user, it will crash.
- Updated support for the Windows 8.1 RDP library version.
- UI improvement on the toolbar buttons in the upper-right corner of the window -- they are larger, better looking, and easier to target.
- You can now lock the aspect ratio for desktop scaling so when you resize the RD Tabs windows and tab panes, your desktop doesn't get squished.
- New command line options have been added for connecting to a favorite by the XML-encoded full path or the FavID (below). You can get the information from the favorites editor.
- All favorites have a GUID now, called the FavID, which can be used to reference a favorite even if it moves to another folder or its name changes. Note that importing, duplicating, or overwriting an existing favorite using the "Add Favorite" button will cause the FavID to change.
- New feature: password reveal. This is for those times when OOPS you lose the password to something important and it's trapped, encrypted, in RD Tabs. Hold down CTRL and SHIFT and then double click on the "Password" label in any favorite or connection properties dialog. RD Tabs will then require that you lock and then unlock your computer to allow you to view the password. The reason for the locking part is to make sure that a full Windows authentication takes place before revealing the password as a way to protect the data in case the user walks away from the computer and forgets to lock the computer. For those concerned about security implications of this feature, all strings associated with password dialogs are stored in Windows as plain text in memory and so this is no less secure. It's just an added convenience.
- Password encryption is now much stronger for the favorites. All passwords are now salted separately from each other, so even repeated passwords for multiple favorites will not reveal if the password is, in fact, the same. Encryption and decryption is now slower, which in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you notice RD Tabs favorites loading/saving taking too long now, let me know.
- If when you are doing a batch edit the changes will take longer than 100ms to complete, a progress bar will now appear.
- You can now set tabs to have a color. This will help to easily spot a tab you want to keep your eye on when you have quite a few open. You can batch edit this property like any other.
- The main RD Tabs window and the "Tab Window" secondary windows now have the currently active tab title in the title bar. This was requested for scripting purposes.
- Fixed compatibility issue in Windows 8/8.1 where remote computer information could not be launched because UAC detection was throwing an exception.
- Improved handling of unexpected exceptions. Previously there were cases where RD Tabs would not catch the error and you were presented with the standard Windows appcrash dialog. This isn't good because then I never get the error report! This usually happened during unmanaged exceptions or for worker threads. It was pretty rare, but happened often enough to be a problem.
- Removed "Allow Password Savings" setting. It was confusing to end users and provided negligable improved security. If you need to block password saving, use the group policy. Previously saved passwords are not removed until they are resaved. This includes favorites history files. This is not new behavior. This setting was included back before RD Tabs had really good password encryption. Also, neither the RD Tabs setting nor the registry setting can block people from saving passwords in text files, so the benefits are dubious at best.
- Moved NLA checkbox to logon page for better visability.
- The executing UI culture context for RD Tabs have been changed to "invariant." This will cause .Net exception messages to appear in English, so that way when error reports are sent to me from other cultures and regions, I can read them. :-)
- New feature: PowerShell integration! You can run PowerShell scripts based on per-tab connection events or ad hoc. RD Tabs exposes methods for UI automation. More PowerShell integration will be added in the future.
- New connection property sheet for storing and showing notes in favorites.
- Status bar code was rewritten so it supports DPI scaling and is more graphically responsive.