Bluetooth keyboard with View Client for iPad

[BrandonJ]

While the the use of a bluetooth keyboard with the View Client app does work, it's very unfriendly in how it works.  It won't work at all until you have "enabled the keyboard" from the pull-down tool bar as if you were trying to use the on-screen keyboard.  Once you do this, a small bar for special keys not on your keyboard will pop up on the bottom of the screen COVERING THE START MENU AND TASK BAR!!!! You can drag the desktop screen up to get to your Start menu but you shouldn't have to do this.  Furthermore, the arrow keys won't function at all on the keyboard.

All of this works just fine very smoothly and as you would expect through Wyse Pocket Cloud, however, I prefer the performance of PCoIP in most cases.

[DwilsonCMG]

I am with you 100%.  This has slowed down our deployment of View to our remote staff that uses ipads.

They have other issues with the keyboard connectivity.  It thhinks a button is stuck or delays input of keystrokes.  It needs to be fixed to help adoption.

[jwidener]

I'll second the concerns this with this issue as well. It makes using an external bluetooth keyboard almost impossible when you not only have to 'activate' the keyboard in the View client, but you also have to then lose access to your taskbar, start menu, etc. This is a big issue for those of us that are trying to work exclusively from our iPad.

Please work to get this fixed in the next update.

--Joey

[Thierry67]

I'm having the same issue. Since I'm trying to figure out if iPads using View are a viable way of working for some employees, I'm afraid we're going to have to put a hold on this option until the issue is resolved.

[Surfunit]

i rasied this issue with VMware, and there was a resolution, you had to run the keyboard in "split mode" before connecting to the VDI desktop, But in the lastest version of the iPad client, they have removed this....

like the VDI route, but because of this stupid keyboard function i;m more tempted to go down the Citrix route as that doesnt have the same issues.

VMWARE..... SORT YOUR APPLICATION OUT!!!!!!

[Pat_Lee]

There are multiple improvements made with bluetooth keyboards in the View Clients 1.5 release:

1) The software keyboard extended key no longer cover the Start menu and task bar

2) If you are using View 5.1 and using the new keyboard auto popup feature which requires the View 5.1 agent, when you click in a supported text field, the keyboard is activated

Download the View Client 1.5 for iPad and View 5.1 and check it out.

Pat

[Surfunit]

Thanks mate!!!

Already in it!! ☺

Kind Regards.

Steve

[BrandonJ]

We're getting very close to a complete solution here since this update with one more key point missing (which I didn't actually state originally).  The arrow keys on the keyboard don't work in the View app but they work perfectly in PocketCloud Pro and every single other keyboard based app on my iPad.

[esmondep]

The new version 1.5 does not truly fix the issue...all it does is squish the screen to fit.  Version 1.3 would re-size the screen resolution correctly and it would not be compressed.  When using the keyboard, the screen has visual abnormalities--even when tying this post the letters are not lined up correctly.  The speed on the iPad is much better, but the keyboard is still an issue!

[BrandonJ]

So after upgrading to iPad View client 1.5 and View 5.1 (required for auto-activate of keyboard), I can say that the auto-activate works reasonably well though not 100%.  It seems to function reasonably well if you click in to Office apps and such but doesn't activiate if you are trying to enter something on the Start-Run command line.  Also, cursor definitely don't work.  This is the number one thing our people tend to prefer about using a physical keyboard for all typing in any iPad app.  The cursor keys work in PocketCloud but not the View app.  This is one of several reasons many of our users prefer PocketCloud.  Unfortunately, it's currently not working with View 5.1

[BrandonJ]

The new iOS client that dropped last night finally has cursor keys working!!! And the app now works on the iPhone as well and is actually pretty well done given the limited screen size.

[Pat_Lee]

Brandon,

Glad you like new client. The arrow keys will not work on iOS 6, which is why we are not talking about this at this time. It is something we will look at for a future release.

Pat

[BrandonJ]

Actually, I'm on iOS6 but have now figured out that they more or less work but not always and not always as expected.  Like scrolling through my Outlook inbox, both the up and the down keys scroll down.  In some Windows apps, the cursors keys work exactly as expected.  Still not as clean as PocketCloud Pro but certainly improving.

[jwidener]

Pat - I just pulled out my Apple BT keyboard with my iOS6 iPad3 and the arrow keys worked like a charm!

Are you saying that the arrow keys are not working on a specific device, or with specific keyboards?

--Joey

[Pat_Lee]

I am happy to report that View Client 1.7 is now available and external keyboard support is greatly improved. The arrow keys work, control works for hotkeys, and esc works as well.

Also, you can hide the VMware extended keyboard now when using an external keyboard.

Enjoy!

Pat

[thro]

I've been attempting to live with an iPad as a VDI client for view for about 3 days now (with a bluetooth apple keyboard and VGA out to a monitor) and have run into a number of annoying problems:

FN key has no effect, meaning i can't use the function keys within my windows desktop for stuff like ALT+F4 to close an app

Holding SHIFT to shift-right click to "run-as" an application does not appear to get passed and has no effect.

alt+tab does not work to change apps

For some bizzare reason, when attempting to RDP from my VDI desktop to a Windows 2003 R2 host, I can not enter my password because the shift key looks to not get passed to remote desktop.  Curiously, RDP from my VDI desktop to Windows 2008 R2 works fine.  My VDI desktop is runnning Windows 7 SP1.

trackpad emulation lags a bit, even when on wireless N 6 feet from an AP with no other users on it

Any idea when/if these problems will be fixed?  It's rather frustrating as the app is "almost there", but trying to actually use it (we're running a pilot) as a primary desktop is annoying.

All testing above done on both an iPad mini and iPad 4 using the latest view client.

[thro]

So, how do I go about reporting bugs for the view client?

The bluetooth keyboard bugs above are a total deal-breaker here.

You simply can't rely on the keyboard input to work for password entry - if you're logging in, you may lock yourself out, resetting user passwords via a windows session in View is a "maybe it will work" operation.