Vnc Thumbnail Viewer is a viewer for observing multiple computers using VNC.
Vnc Thumbnail Viewer gives you the ability to connect to and watch multiple computers at the same time using the VNC protocol. It presents live thumbnail views of many computers in a single window, scaling and rescaling the views to best fit. Double-clicking on a single thumbnail will allow you to enlarge it and take control of that computer's keyboard and mouse.
Background:
I teach in a PC computer lab. As a teacher, I need to help and observe all of the computers at the same time. For Mac OS X there is a great piece of software called Apple’s Remote Desktop. On the teacher’s computer monitor it presents a live scaled-down view of all of the computer screens in the lab. The teacher can watch all the students doing work and when necessary, focus in on one computer and move that computer’s cursor with their own mouse.
For PC/Windows labs there is a program called VNC which allows one computer to watch and control another computer. Unfortunately, viewing is intended to be only one at a time. But, the great thing about VNC is that it is a free open source project, which means anyone can use it and improve it.
Viewer & Servers:
There are two parts to VNC, a Server program and a Viewer program. The Server program shares a computer’s screen over a network. The Viewer program connects to a server and redraws the remote computer’s screen on it’s monitor. Because the software is split this way, watching multiple computers at the same time just entails creating a bunch of (small) VNC Viewers within a single program. No modifications need to be made to the Server and minimal changes to the Viewer.
I wrote Vnc Thumbnail Viewer in Java to make use of TightVNC’s java vncviewer. The Vnc Viewer code is pretty modular, so creating a program that contains vncviewers wasn’t too complicated.
Requirements:
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