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by Alan Williamson.
Original Post: Presenting your web-app remotely
Feed Title: Technical @ alan.blog-city.com
Feed URL: http://www.ibm.com/us/en/
Feed Description: (Technical) the rants of a java developer trapped in the body of a java developer!
Have you ever found yourself in the situation of having to demo a new piece of work to your team or client? You know fine well if you throw them a URL then they will never see half of what you want them to see, and will always miss the really cool feature you are particular proud of.
Working remotely for most of my clients I find myself in this situation all the time. The best I could do was to simply throw them the token URL and let them play themselves. However, last week, I discovered a small piece of software that worked beautifully and my life was changed!
I had to give a presentation of my latest work and wanted to make sure they walked through it with me. I really wanted them to see my desktop and watch-along-with-alan as I performed the presentation. To make matters more complicated, they were based on Linux desktops.
Andy reminded me of a piece of software, RealVNC, that we used a long time ago to remotely control our Apple desktop from Windows. Its a very lightweight application, that allows one or more clients to remotely see (or control) your desktop. Perfect! Yes, you heard correctly, one or more clients at the same time!
Whats really cool is that the client software is a both a native application, but also a very small Java applet, that can be invoked via any browser! Works a treat. You throw your client (or chum) the URL to your machine and they can then watch along with you as you work through the demo. I put my browser into full screen mode to hide all other windows on my desktop and the presentation moved along very nicely.
I know there are alternatives out there, but for ease, speed, and cost ($0), nothing beats RealVNC. The installation is quick with no complications. I even managed to impress Joe Ottinger, when he emailed me a document to read through and solicit comments. I then threw him back the URL to my VNC, and we not only read it together, but also edited it together there and then.
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Have you ever found yourself in the situation of having to demo a new piece of work to your team or client? You know fine well if you throw them a URL then they will never see half of what you want them to see, and will always miss the really cool feature you are particular proud of.