noVNC: HTML5 VNC Client

Description

noVNC is a HTML5 VNC client that runs well in any modern browser including mobile browsers (iPhone/iPad and Android).

Many companies/projects have integrated noVNC including Ganeti Web Manager, OpenStack, OpenNebula, and LibVNCServer. See the Projects and Companies wiki page for a more complete list with additional info and links.

News/help/contact

Notable commits, announcements and news are posted to @noVNC

If you are a noVNC developer/integrator/user (or want to be) please join the noVNC discussion group

Bugs and feature requests can be submitted via github issues. If you are looking for a place to start contributing to noVNC, a good place to start would be the issues that are marked as “patchwelcome”.

If you want to show appreciation for noVNC you could donate to a great non-profits such as: Compassion International, SIL, Habitat for Humanity, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Against Malaria Foundation, Nothing But Nets, etc. Please tweet @noVNC if you do.

Features

• Supports all modern browsers including mobile (iOS, Android)
• Supported VNC encodings: raw, copyrect, rre, hextile, tight, tightPNG
• WebSocket SSL/TLS encryption (i.e. “wss://”) support
• 24-bit true color and 8 bit colour mapped
• Supports desktop resize notification/pseudo-encoding
• Local or remote cursor
• Clipboard copy/paste
• Clipping or scolling modes for large remote screens
• Easy site integration and theming (3 example themes included)
• Licensed under the MPL 2.0

Screenshots

Running in Chrome before and after connecting:

See more screenshots here.

Browser Requirements

• HTML5 Canvas (with createImageData): Chrome, Firefox 3.6+, iOS Safari, Opera 11+, Internet Explorer 9+, etc.

• HTML5 WebSockets: For browsers that do not have builtin WebSockets support, the project includes web-socket-js, a WebSockets emulator using Adobe Flash. iOS 4.2+ has built-in WebSocket support.

• Fast Javascript Engine: this is not strictly a requirement, but without a fast Javascript engine, noVNC might be painfully slow.

• See the more detailed browser compatibility wiki page.

Server Requirements

Unless you are using a VNC server with support for WebSockets connections (such as x11vnc/libvncserver, QEMU, or PocketVNC), you need to use a WebSockets to TCP socket proxy. There is a python proxy included (‘websockify’).

Quick Start

• Use the launch script to start a mini-webserver and the WebSockets proxy (websockify). The --vnc option is used to specify the location of a running VNC server:

  ./utils/launch.sh --vnc localhost:5901

• Point your browser to the cut-and-paste URL that is output by the launch script. Enter a password if the VNC server has one configured. Hit the Connect button and enjoy!

Other Pages

• Encrypted Connections. How to setup websockify so that you can use encrypted connections from noVNC.

• Advanced Usage. Starting a VNC server, advanced websockify usage, etc.

• Integrating noVNC into existing projects.

• Troubleshooting noVNC problems.

Authors/Contributors

• Core team:

  • Joel Martin
  • Samuel Mannehed (Cendio)
  • Peter Åstrand (Cendio)
  • Solly Ross (Red Hat / OpenStack)

• Notable contributions:

  • UI and Icons : Chris Gordon
  • Original Logo : Michael Sersen
  • tight encoding : Michael Tinglof (Mercuri.ca)

• Included libraries:

  • web-socket-js : Hiroshi Ichikawa (github.com/gimite/web-socket-js)
  • as3crypto : Henri Torgemane (code.google.com/p/as3crypto)
  • base64 : Martijn Pieters (Digital Creations 2), Samuel Sieb (sieb.net)
  • jsunzip : Erik Moller (github.com/operasoftware/jsunzip),
  • tinflate : Joergen Ibsen (ibsensoftware.com)
  • DES : Dave Zimmerman (Widget Workshop), Jef Poskanzer (ACME Labs)