[mirror_novnc.git] / README.md

VNC HTML5 Client
================


Description
-----------

An VNC client implemented using HTML5, specifically Canvas and Web Sockets.


Requirements
------------

* A browser that supports Web Sockets (mostly Chrome as of Apr 6, 2010) 
  and Canvas (most browsers)

* Until VNC server support web sockets, you need to use a Web Sockets to
  normal socket proxy. There are a couple reasons for this:

  * Web Sockets is not a pure socket protocol. There is an initial HTTP
    like handshake to allow easy hand-off by web servers and allow some
    origin policy exchange. Also, each Web Sockets frame begins with
    0 ('\x00') and ends with 255 ('\xff').

  * Javascript itself does not have the ability to handle pure byte
    strings (Unicode encoding messes with it) even though you can read
    them with Web Sockets. The python proxy base64 encodes the data so
    that the Javascript client can base64 decode the data into an array.


Usage
-----

* run a VNC server.
 
    `Xvnc :1`

* run the python proxy:

    `./wsproxy.py [listen_port] [vnc_host] [vnc_port]`

    `./wsproxy.py 8787 localhost 5901`


* run the mini python web server to serve the directory:

    `./web.py PORT`

    `./web.py 8080`

* Point your web browser at http://localhost:8080/vnc.html
 (or whatever port you used above to run the web server).

* Provide the host and port where the proxy is running and the password
  that the vnc server is using (if any).
Commit	Line	Data
5aeb9880 JM	1	VNC HTML5 Client
	2	================
	3
	4
	5	Description
	6	-----------
	7
	8	An VNC client implemented using HTML5, specifically Canvas and Web Sockets.
	9
	10
	11
	12	Requirements
	13	------------
	14
	15	* A browser that supports Web Sockets (mostly Chrome as of Apr 6, 2010)
	16	and Canvas (most browsers)
	17
	18	* Until VNC server support web sockets, you need to use a Web Sockets to
	19	normal socket proxy. There are a couple reasons for this:
	20
	21	* Web Sockets is not a pure socket protocol. There is an initial HTTP
	22	like handshake to allow easy hand-off by web servers and allow some
	23	origin policy exchange. Also, each Web Sockets frame begins with
	24	0 ('\x00') and ends with 255 ('\xff').
	25
	26	* Javascript itself does not have the ability to handle pure byte
	27	strings (Unicode encoding messes with it) even though you can read
	28	them with Web Sockets. The python proxy base64 encodes the data so
	29	that the Javascript client can base64 decode the data into an array.
	30
	31
	32	Usage
	33	-----
	34
	35	* run a VNC server.
	36
	37	`Xvnc :1`
	38
	39	* run the python proxy:
	40
	41	`./wsproxy.py [listen_port] [vnc_host] [vnc_port]`
	42
	43	`./wsproxy.py 8787 localhost 5901`
	44
	45
	46	* run the mini python web server to serve the directory:
	47
	48	`./web.py PORT`
	49
	50	`./web.py 8080`
	51
	52	* Point your web browser at http://localhost:8080/vnc.html
	53	(or whatever port you used above to run the web server).
	54
	55	* Provide the host and port where the proxy is running and the password
	56	that the vnc server is using (if any).
	57
	58