Citrix Receiver On Android: Your Desktop Anywhere
Posted by
Mike Fratto
December 17, 2009
Whether you are using a mobile phone with a hard or soft keyboard, in some cases both, you typically have a limited sized QWERTY keypad and you have to switch to access numerals, symbols and keyboard keys like Control and Escape. Citrix designed Receiver to be somewhat intelligent in how the keyboard is presented, based on the type of input field such as automatically selecting letters or numbers. Citrix extended the Droid's soft keyboard to include keys normally found on a full computer keyboard like function keys. For example, the extended keys run along the top of the soft keyboard and you can swipe side to side like a ribbon to access more keys than are displayed. The soft keyboard will display the full QWERTY keyboard plus the extended keys when the hard keyboard is closed or just the extended keys when open. During text input, I did notice a bit of lag, enough to be noticeable but not a real problem.
Viewing desktop applications on a small device is a bit more difficult to do well. In most cases, to move across a window, you scroll by swiping your finger across the screen. You can often zoom out scroll to where you want to be and zoom back in. But that brings up a thorny usability issue. In Android 2.0, actions that require moving your finger across a static screen, such as highlighting text in preparation for copy and paste or moving an object, means the screen has to remain still. But, Android helpfully likes to scroll the screen when you drag your finger across it. That makes something as basic as copy and paste an exercise in frustration and largely impossible, because when you drag your finger to select text, the screen scrolls. With Receiver, the screen still scrolls.
Marcus Taylor, senior director of product management with XenApp and Receiver said they are looking into the scrolling issue and will most likely introduce a toggle lock so the screen can be locked and objects moved. Receiver currently doesn't support multi-touch, a feature iPhone users love to manipulate the screen, but Taylor said they have a working prototype in the lab and plan to roll it out by 2Q, 2010 or sooner.
There are only two requirements for Receiver. First, you have to be a Xenapp customer, naturally. Second, you have a solid network connection to use it. My ad-hoc testing was on Verizon 3G network which is pretty fast for wireless. I was getting about 1 Mbps download and 512 Kbps upload measured by Speedtest.net. Not too shabby. But down rating to 1G or 1xRTT would push performance into the dirt. Citrix protocol is pretty efficient, but can't overcome high loss, highly latent traffic. The other issue that is beyond Citrix's reach is that with Verizon Wireless' current network, you can't use both voice and data at the same time. Remember that Autodesk program? It would be nice to call up the drawing while talking to someone else about it, but if you are tied to your Droid, you can't. However, with other Android 2.0 devices rumored to be coming out in 2010 from HTC and Google, you will likely find something that will run on a network that supports both.
Mike Fratto is editor of Network Computing. You can email him, follow him on Twitter, or join the Network Computing group on LinkedIN. He's not as grumpy as he seems.
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