Open URLs on Client Side

Overview

This feature is a powerful one. It allows to open on the client side every websites links and websites shortcuts located on the server.

For instance, you can open YouTube videos directly on the client, thus saving lots of bandwidth and CPU power on your server.

The web address (URL) is automatically transferred on the user side where the local default browser will be used to open it.

Enabling this Feature on a server

The “Open URLs on Client Side” tile is located in the “Sessions - Settings” tab of the AdminTool. Click on it to display the configuration window:

Http and https protocols boxes are not ticked by default.
You can also activate tel, sms and mailto protocols by ticking the corresponding boxes.

Then click on the “Apply” button, which allows you to activate this feature for all users on the server.

In order to fully enable this feature, every user will have to restart its session (logoff then login) before they can use this feature.

All the web links and shortcuts will then be opened on client side, provided that you use one of Terminal Service Plus connection clients:

• Any generated Terminal Service Plus Client (RemoteApp or RDP)
• Any Windows connection from the Terminal Service Plus Web Portal

Warning: this feature is not supported for:

• Any RDP client (mstsc for example).
• Any HTML5 connection from Terminal Service Plus Web Portal.

Changing the server default web browser

All URL’s that are not defined to be opened on client side will continue to be opened on server side, using Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer. If you want to change the default web browser used on the server side, you need to edit the configuration file urlonclient_list.ini located in the TSPlus installation folder.

The exact location (depending on your exact installation path) should be : “C:\Program Files (x86)\TSplus\UserDesktop\files\urlonclient_list.ini”.

The you need to add a new section “DefaultBrowser” in the file, and an entry “Path” with value the path of the web browser you want. Like so :

[DefaultBrowser]
Path=C:\Path\To\Your\Favorite\WebBrowser.exe

Setting default browser to Brave

⚠ If you have replaced firefox.exe by c:\wsession\URLonClient.exe

and you want Firefox to be your default web browser on server side :

• Rename the old firefox.exe file into firefox-real.exe.
• use the new executable name in the urlonclient_list.ini file :

[DefaultBrowser]
Path=​C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox-real.exe

Windows 8 and 8.1

Starting with Windows 8, Microsoft has forbidden automatic change of user’s default browser.

This is why, once the feature is activated on the server, every user will have to choose ‘Url On Client’ when asked for a default browser.

This window will only be displayed the first time a user opens a web link. Unfortunately, this is Microsoft Windows policy and we are not aware of any workaround.