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Useful Links:
![]() Primary TightVNC Site ![]() TightVNC at SourceForge.net ![]() TightVNC Mailing List ![]() TightVNC at FreshMeat.net ![]() TridiaVNC Developers ![]() Official VNC Homepage ![]() |
Help the project -- donate $10 to support TightVNC development!
VNC (an abbreviation for Virtual Network Computing) is a great client/server software package allowing remote network access to graphical desktops. With VNC, you can access your machine from everywhere provided that your machine is connected to the Internet. VNC is free (released under the GNU General Public License) and it's available on most platforms. Original VNC distribution can be obtained at this site.
Here you can find an enhanced version of VNC, called TightVNC, which includes a lot of new features, improvements, optimizations and bugfixes over the original VNC version, see the list of features below. Note that TightVNC is absolutely free, cross-platform and compatible with the standard VNC. Many users agree that TightVNC is the most advanced free remote desktop package. And it's being actively developed so you can expect TightVNC will become even better.
TightVNC can be used to perform remote administration tasks in Windows, Unix and mixed network environments. It can be very helpful in distance learning and remote customer support. Finally, you can find a number of additional VNC-compatible utilities and packages that can extend the areas where TightVNC can be helpful.
TightVNC is a project maintained by Constantin Kaplinsky. Many other individuals and companies participate in development, testing and support.
Here is a brief list of TightVNC features absent in the standard VNC.
- Local cursor handling. Cursor movements do not generate screen updates any more, remote cursor movements are processed locally by the viewer, so you do not see remote cursor pointer moving too slow behind the local cursor.
- Efficient compression algorithms. New Tight encoding is optimized for slow and medium-speed connections and thus generates much less traffic as compared to traditional VNC encodings. At the same time, TightVNC supports all the standard VNC encodings, so it can operate efficiently over fast networks, too. Thus, with TightVNC you can work remotely almost in real time in most network environments.
- Configurable compression levels. You can choose any appropriate level of compromise between compression ratios and coding speed, depending on your connection speed and processor power.
- Optional JPEG compression. If you don't care too much about perfect image quality, you can enable JPEG compression which will compress the color-rich screen areas much more efficiently (and image quality level is configurable too).
- Web browser access. TightVNC includes a greatly improved Java viewer with full support for Tight encoding, local cursor feature, 24-bit color mode, and more. The Java viewer applet can be accessed via built-in HTTP server like in the standard VNC.
- Operating under Unix and Windows. All new features listed above are available in both the Unix and Win32 versions of TightVNC.
- Advanced Properties dialog in WinVNC. Unlike the standard VNC, TightVNC gives you the possibility of setting a number of advanced settings directly from the WinVNC GUI, and to apply changed settings immediately. There is no need to launch regedit to set query options, connection priority, to allow loopback connections, disable HTTP server etc.
- Security and reliability fixes. Unlike the standard WinVNC, TightVNC Win32 server does not make it possible to grab plain-text passwords from the Properties dialog box. Also, a long-standing Win9x resource consumption problem of WinVNC is fixed in the TightVNC server.
- Automatic SSH tunneling on Unix. The Unix version of TightVNC viewer can tunnel connections via SSH automatically using local SSH or OpenSSH client installation.
- And more. TightVNC features a number of other improvements, performance optimizations and bugfixes, see WhatsNew and ChangeLog documents for more information.
Current stable version of TightVNC is 1.2.6.
Go to: [ download page | Win32 self-installing archive ]
You can be easily notified when new releases of TightVNC are available by registering at the freshmeat.net site and choosing the link "Subscribe to new releases" on the TightVNC project page. (Also, you might like to rate the project by choosing another link on the same page: more realistic ratings will give other users better information about whether it is worth looking more closely into TightVNC.)
If you would like to ask TightVNC-specific question, or to discuss TightVNC and the direction of its development, please subscribe to the TightVNC mailing list here. However, if you think that your question or suggestion applies both to TightVNC and to the standard VNC, then you might want to write to the VNC mailing list instead. Please contact me directly only if you think your question cannot be answered in these mailing lists, or if you really like to send a private message. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I have been receiving far too much e-mail recently, and am having problems with answering all of the messages in a timely manner.
Before posting to a mailing list, please try to search the subject in the mailing list archives. The TightVNC mailing list archives are available here, and here you can search the VNC mailing list.
There is a number of ways you can help the TightVNC project.
- Make a donation to the TightVNC project. Using TightVNC could save you real time and money, so maybe this piece of software is worth more than its zero price. Note that you are not paying for the software itself, making donations simply compensates the developers' efforts and makes possible further development. You can donate any amount starting from 10 U.S. dollars using THIS PAGE at the Kagi Internet store. Making payments through Kagi is easy and secure. Please contact me by e-mail if you have any questions or suggestions.
- Report bugs if you think you have discovered some. A good place where you can describe new bugs is the bug tracker on SourceForge.net. When preparing information describing a potential bug, if possible, please try to include details that would allow me to re-produce the bug. Before posting bug reports, please search existing ones: it's possible that somebody has already described the same problem (in this case, just add a comment to the existing bug report, instead of posting another version). Also, please login on the SourceForge.net site before submitting a bug report, this will allow you to get notified about changes in bug status / resolution.
- Help to write the documentation. Currently, the documentation is incomplete, and we'd really appreciate help in its improvements. English is not the native language of TightVNC developers, and that is why it's not easy for us to maintain the documentation.
- Let other people know about the TightVNC software. Making TightVNC more popular means more support from the users community, more bug reports and more sponsored major improvements. This all can boost TightVNC development and bugfixing activities, improve the quality of support provided by the community in mailing lists. There are different ways to make the software more popular: placing links to the TightVNC site at your Web pages; rating TightVNC in software directories such as download.com and freshmeat.net; recommending TightVNC in Web forums; writing TightVNC reviews for Web sites and printed magazines etc.
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Constantin Kaplinsky: e-mail, brief resume. |