Vnc.js: how to build a JavaScript VNC Client

http://engineering.linkedin.com/javascript/vncjs-how-build-javascript-vnc-client-24-hour-hackday

by LiveTheDream • 15 years ago

87 14 15 years ago

engineering.linkedin.com

lrizzo• 15 years ago

cool project. are you aware (or have considered) of similar projects for the RDP (rdesktop) protocol ?

bgaff• 15 years ago

I have considered doing RDP in JS; however, it's a considerably more complex protocol and for that reason it wasn't really appropriate for a 24hr hackday..

switch007• 15 years ago

Guacamole (http://guac-dev.org) has a ticket to implement RDP support, IIRC.

thetrendycyborg• 15 years ago

Atwood's Law marches on.

misterbwong• 15 years ago

I usually shrug off these JS demos but this is just getting ridiculous. The amount of stuff that people are creating with JS these days is amazing. Atwood's Law indeed.

ChrisArchitect• 15 years ago

wow, yeah, that was my immediate thought too.

Atwood's Law: any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript.

dspillett• 15 years ago

I've seen a couple of JS VNC clients that use a canvas tag for the drawing surface before now, though they used some other language from the translation layer between the browser based client and the real server (this uses node to do that job, so still uses an extra layer but isn't using two completely different languages).

I've considered writing one that would operate on broken old browsers with no canvas support (in case I'm ever stuck with just IE6/7/8 in a place where I need to remote control one of my machines) which would take some extra work to be even moderately efficient, the server half having to translate changes into images to be delivered and positioned by the client half, and the client half dropping blocks as they become irrelevant (as their entire area has been replaced by later updates).

JS as a language is perfectly complete in terms of being capable of all this. The missing parts are not in the langauge but the supporting libraries (i.e. you can't just open a TCP connection client-side).

shaggy• 15 years ago

This is one of the first apps I've seen using all these "hot" frameworks that would be worth something to a broad IT audience. Very cool.

pc0• 15 years ago

Hasn't this already been done: https://github.com/kanaka/noVNC

rebelde• 15 years ago

I need me an intern like that. Nice work!

pspeter32• 15 years ago

The fact that they developed this in 24 hours is ridiculous. I sat next to them when they did it and it was pretty incredible to see in action.

bciocc• 15 years ago

Yeah, this guy is insane.

pspeter32• 15 years ago

It was actually a team of 4 people. Avik Das who is mentioned only briefly at the bottom of the article was crucial in finishing the project.

marquis• 15 years ago

This may then mean that a matching Javascript VNC server is not far away? I've been looking into non-flash Desktop sharing options and found this recently which is a peer-to-peer screensharing service over WebSockets: https://labs.ericsson.com/developer-community/blog/screen-sh...

Vnc.js: how to build a JavaScript VNC Client

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