Coding Update: You can now grab the full coding portion of this tutorial over at Nettuts! You guys asked, and so you receive

The Video Tutorial

The Written Tutorial

And now, for everyone who wants a play-by-play, here’s the complete written version of the tutorial. You’ll notice slight changes from the video (the video is done on the fly), but the same basic techniques apply to both walkthroughs.

The image used for the demo is an exclusive Envato Marketplace wallpaper from reAdactor. You can find more of these cool wallpaper images here!

Create the Background Layers

We’re going to start on our a 600×400 px document. I’ve added a light grey background with a subtle grid pattern just so we can see our element pop off of the document a little bit better as we create it.

Start out by drawing a simple rectangle (about 450×270 px) on the artboard. We’ll add a very light stroke around the rectangle through the layer options panel (Stroke = 1px Outside, #c8c8c8). The reason we’re adding this stroke is to add a bit of separation between our frame and the background… this will be especially important if you are working on a white background.

Next, we’ll begin our “shadow” underneath the frame. Start by simply grabbing your basic Brush tool and set the Size to 40% and the Hardness to 0%. Start a new layer, then hold down the Shift Key (to keep your line straight) and draw a short line (about half of the width of our frame). Getting this perfect doesn’t matter… we’ll be adjusting the size using the transform tool in the next steps.

Now let’s rotate the newly brushed in layer VERY slightly; The angle I used was 2.5, but you can mess with it on your own. The deeper the angle, the more “bowed” the shadow will seem later on. You can use either Rotate or Free Transform (Ctrl+T) to do the trick.

Duplicate the first brushed in “shadow” layer (Ctrl+J) and then flip it horizontally (Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal). The result should a shadow that’s the opposite of the first one.

Move both shadow layers behind the “frame” layer and scale them (select both layers and press Ctrl+T) so that they fit just inside the total width of the frame rectangle.

Finally, merge both shadow layers together (Ctrl+E) and nudge the shadow layer into the right spot (use the basic selection tool [V] and use the keyboard to nudge). You can also adjust the opacity of the shadow layer to suit your own personal preferences. I used about 50%, you can do more or less according to what you’re after.

Bonus Step: If you want, you can tinker with the shadow even more using these basic techniques plus the “Gaussion Blur” filter. The more blurred out the shadow, the more dispersed it will appear. You can also tinker around with how the shadow bows out using the warp tool.

Create the Image Layer

Alright, now we have our basic background and shadow. The next step is to create the inner “image” layer. Do this by either creating a new rectangle (using the same stroke Layer Style as the first) or simply duplicate the original layer and use the Convert Point tool to nudge in each side about 10px.

You can obviously adjust the spacing according to your own preferences. The more space, the bigger your frame’s padding will appear later on. You can also add a large bottom padding to save room for an image title and description.

Next, drop the image that you’d like to use onto the document (you can drag it from a folder or use the Import tool). You’ll want to scale and position the image over the “inner Image” shape layer – and then make your image a Clipping Mask over the same inner shape layer. You can make it a clipping mask by Right Clicking the image layer and pressing “Create Clipping Mask”.

Add a light Inner Shadow using the Layer Styles panel (Double Click the Shape Layer). The demo uses the following settings:

• Color: Black
• Opacity: 44%
• Distance: 1
• Choke: 0
• Size: 16px

Again, this is a case where you can tinker with the effect to get the results that you want. A darker shadow will make the image seem more dramatic and deeply inset. A lighter shadow (or no shadow at all) will make the image seem more flat.

Whallah!

Create the Tabbed Buttons

The Left and Right tabbed buttons on the side are part of the main appeal of this type of slider because they break outside of the frame just a bit and create a more interesting shape to our slider.

Start by drawing a circle (hold down the Shift key to keep it a perfect circle when using the Ellipse tool). The size should be about 60px (you can look at the Info panel as you are drawing the circle to see it’s size shown in text there).

Next, add a 1px stroke using the same color we used for the background frame.

As a bonus – add a light drop shadow to mimic the shadow that we drew in underneath the frame. The Drop Shadow that we used was about 15% opacity, Distance 3, and Size 4. The angle should reflect our light source in the center of the frame – so in this case it’s about 130 degrees.

Now add our arrows. You can use an ordinary Photoshop Shape or a “>>” text version of the arrows using your favorite font. You can even draw your own in Illustrator if you prefer to get a truly unique shape. In our case we used “>>” using the font Lucida Sans.

Next, group together the circle Shape layer and the Arrow layer by selecting them both and pressing Ctrl+G.

Now draw a mask over the group to make it appear as if it’s just barely overlapping our frame. To do this: Draw a rectangular Marquee selection, then press the “Add Layer Mask” button when you have the group folder selected.

The great thing about this “group” mask is that it also masks all of the Layer Styles. If we tried to just mask the circle itself, the stroke and shadow would be cropped as well, making them visible over the frame (which we don’t want).

Lastly, just duplicate the button group and flip it horizontally. We’ll move it into position over to the left side of the document. The only real tip here is that we’ll also need to adjust the drop shadow’s angle to about 50 degrees to match our light source in the center of the frame. Make sure you turn OFF the Global Light selector to ensure that you don’t adjust the other shadow.

Create the Circle Button Module

The last element in this slider is the little “circle button module” that will show how many images you have in your slide.

Start by creating a simple 13px circle (again, hold Shift to get it perfect). We’ll want to add another 1px stroke around the outside using the same color as all previous strokes (#c8c8c8 for the demo).

Lastly, add a very subtle gradient over the circle (Light grey [#D9D9D9] blending to white at the top). You can adjust the coloring of the gradient to suit your preferences, but the idea here is to make the circle feel more like a button that the user can press down on.

Duplicate the original circle a couple more times and nudge them over to the side (you should have as many circles as you have images in your slide).

Those circles are awfully tricky to see now… so let’s add a background for them to be a bit more visible on light images.

Start by drawing a Rounded Rectangle with a 10px radius (you can adjust the radius to your own desires). Then set the Fill to 50% to make it slightly see through.

Last, set a 2px Stroke (#a7a7a7) with an opacity around 50% to make it also transparent. The final effect should be a transparent rounded rectangle with a subtle border.

Final step! Add a smaller circle over one of the original circles and position it in the center. Adjust the color (you can use a gradient or solid color) to suit your own branding colors. You’ll notice that in the demo, we used the same colors that we use in the Webdesigntuts logo.

Congrats! You’re Done!

Excellent work! Now that you have the basic slider setup, you can easily adjust the size to suit your own projects. You can also reskin this to use differently colors backgrounds, restyled buttons, or even add textures to the frame itself. The limit is really up to you – just keep in mind the basic principles that we setup here and you’ll do fine.

Or any Application for that matter.

Chris Fleck gave fair warning. I'm here to tell you that it works and its here, now. The computing model just got turned on it's ear.

Why would you want this? Because it increases your mobility without having to reboot your laptop everytime you want to use it, it saves time and money, and it delivers any Windows platform or application to your iPhone, iPod or iPad.

What was previously just a future scenario is now a reality.

Citrix runs Windows and Windows Applications from a central server, called XenDesktop, and pipes it out to your mobile device through the NetScaler AGEE. This is perfect for the iPad which has a screen size of 1024x768. Now the touch, squeeze and pinch is available for all of your Enterprise applications, making them usable on an iPad.

The small form factor of the iPhone was a little hindering for Enterprise applications. Now, with the iPad and Citrix Receiver, Enterprise Apps are usable. Although, while putting together this POC the Product Manager sent me an eMail from Microsoft Office 2010 running on a Windows 7 Desktop ... from his iPhone. This confirms that form factors and the computing model is about to be rocked.

The magic is in the way that Citrix hosts the Windows desktops and delivers them to the mobile device. The advantage is all of the computing power of multi-core processors and large memory can still be utilized by Windows, while all of your touching and pinching power is localized at your mobile device.

All of the communication is done over secure tunnels, so all of the information is secure.

For this Proof of Concept, We started with XenServer, installed XenApp and XenDesktop, built a NetScaler to Front-end and secure the infrastructure, and fired up our iPhones and iPads. Its fast, easy and cool. We used the Citrix Web Interface for authentication to keep it simple. You can also use LDAP or any other type of authentication method.

Guides

You can have this setup, by following the guides we wrote up as a result of this testing.

Download the Deployment Guide - ICA Proxy for XenApp & XenDesktop for Citrix Receiver for iPhone, iPod and iPad.

Download the Deployment Guide - ICA Proxy for iPhone, using LDAP authentication.

Delivery Center has arrived.

Products

XenServer is free

Get XenDesktop here.

Download NetScaler VPX here

Citrix Receiver is available for Free on the App Store

Get an iPhone, iPod or iPad from Apple.

Watch it live

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Cloud Networking is secure and robust

You can create a complete end-to-end network from one cloud network, running on XenServer, through a VPN to another network in a different cloud. All servers and hosts communicate securely over SSL VPN. Amazon Machine Images are secured by the Amazon infrastructure using security groups.

The proof of concept speaks for itself. Between the Softlayer cloud and the Amazon EC2 cloud is running a site-to-site SSL VPN using Vyatta. All of the images in this architecture are running on XenServer. This proof of concept gives rise to many networking architectures for cloud computing.

The reason for using Vyatta site-to-site SSL VPN between the Softlayer and Amazon EC2 clouds is there needs to be a secure network between the two for the transfer of data. The Vyatta AMI (Amazon Machine Image) can also function as a complete router, firewall and DNS cache. The Vyatta SSL VPN router provides security with scalability. Suppose I wanted to separate the Vyatta SSL VPN from a Vyatta OSPF router, I would just launch another instance of the Vyatta AMI.

As you can see from the network diagram and video, complete routing from the Softlayer cloud to the Amazon cloud network is seamless, without having to buy any proprietary hardware. In fact, it is very low cost compared to traditional network solutions. Virtualized networking is here, it is fast, secure and cheap.

A CloudBurst happens when Citrix Workflow Studio determines that one of the devices in the Softlayer Cloud has reached a high watermark. WFS then instructs the NetScaler VPX to start sending traffic to the Cloud - CloudBurst.

To get your own cloud, go here

Configurations used

Vyatta SSL VPN (V1) - Datacenter Configuration
Vyatta SSL VPN (V2) - Cloud Configuration
XenApp VPN Client - Cloud Configuration

Links for this solution

Vyatta for XenServer - go here
Amazon EC2 - go here
XenServer is Free! - go here
XenApp - go here
Workflow Studio - go here
XenApp VPN Client - go here
Dell Server - go here
IP Addresses - go here

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NetScaler Virtual Machine

Industry's first Virtual Load Balancer

The challenge

• Check out The Great NetScaler VPX challenge and get $10,000.
• The Tech Preview will be downloadable from citrix on May 18th.
• If you are running VMWare, you need to run Xen - and why wouldn't you, Xen is free.

NetScaler VPX

SharePoint Template

AppExpert Templates are nothing new for NetScaler. However, with a new release of NetScaler comes an updated, new and improved NetScaler AppExpert Template for use with Microsoft SharePoint applications.

AppExpert Templates are a simple approach to configuration management for complex enterprise applications. In one simple view, you can view what is most important to you in terms of application delivery. No more confusing and complex rules to define, reducing the time to deploy, easing management and improving the bottom line.

Improvements to the template include additional optimizations for Image Management, Scripts, SOAP and FrontPage. Caching and Compression policies have been optimized, along with the addition of a section for rewrite. There is a redirect policy for converting HTTP to HTTPS on the fly, to enable secure traffic to/from the Microsoft SharePoint applications.

All of these improvements can be found in the new Microsoft SharePoint template, and a description of the template can be found in the updated SharePoint Deployment Guide.

Download the updated Microsoft SharePoint AppExpert Template here (NS v9.0 b66 required).

Download the updated Microsoft SharePoint Deployment Guide here.

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Load Balancing Auto-Configuration for SAP using Workflow Studio and NetScaler

At the tail end of our certification process at SAP, Citrix engaged in a unique opportunity to make use of the SAP APIs, using Workflow Studio to auto-configure the Citrix NetScaler for Load Balancing. The way it works is, Workflow Studio polls the SAP API, reads the response, and then based on the results in the response, configures the NetScaler Load Balancing groups that map directly to the SAP servers running in the server farm.

SAP has a community group dedicated to the development of their APIs, please reference the latest blog post Catching Up with Deployment and Operations Automation, describes the SAP APIs.

The SAP Community Definition Group (CDG) - titled "PCDG 97 NetWeaver Infrastructure APIs for Network Solutions" - is focused on automation of network-application integrated configuration and operation. As the group title implies, the SAP NetWeaver technology platform includes APIs, which are used by the NetScaler ADCs (load balancers) to auto-configure themselves as proxies for multi-instance SAP application systems. Using Citrix Workflow Studio, the SAP APIs are polled on a regular basis so that the NetScaler ADCs can react to SAP application instance changes during production runtime.

If another application instance is brought up, let's say for providing more computing capacity for an increasing end-user load, or if an instance is brought down temporarily for maintenance, Workflow Studio communicates with the NetScaler ADC to adjust load balancing automatically without any manual administrator intervention. There is no more wait, or lengthy change management required to provision applications.

Workflow Studio, NetScaler and SAP API Use Cases:

Use Case 1: (auto-configure new SAP services).

Workflow Studio sends a URL request to the SAP Message Server, and receives a response. Workflow Studio parse's the response, looking for specific SAP generated patterns. WFS then uses this information to configure a Load Balancing Virtual Server inside of the Citrix NetScaler.

Use Case 2: (dynamic configuration).

Workflow Studio repeatedly queries the SAP API. WFS studio can determine hostnames, ip addresses, port numbers, and whether an SAP server is coming online or going down. When a SAP server comes online/goes down - WFS detects this change, and then takes action on the Citrix NetScaler, to add/remove the SAP service from the Load Balancing group - automatically.

Use Case 3: (graceful shutdown).

Workflow Studio queries the SAP API, determines a SAP server is going down, and based on the response, waits until all existing sessions have been retired, before removing the server from the Load Balancing group . During the shutdown period, no new sessions are added to that SAP server, providing a graceful shutdown of the SAP service. This way, there are no TCP resets sent to existing sessions. New logins are routed to a different server.

Read the SAP article here.

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Canonical URLs

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler. On some Apache web servers there is more than one URL for a resource. Usually there are canonical URLs (which should be used and distributed as a best practive) and those which are just shortcuts, internal ones, etc. Independent of which URL was supplied with the request, the user should only see the canonical one URL in the response.

Example : converting URL /~user to /u/user.

Apache rewrite:

RewriteRule   ^/~([^/]+)/?(.*)    /u/$1/$2[R]

AppExpert rewrite:

Add responder action act1 redirect  '"/u/"+HTTP.REQ.URL.AFTER_STR("/~")' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
Add responder policy pol1 'HTTP.REQ.URL.STARTSWITH("/~") && HTTP.REQ.URL.LENGTH.GT(2)' act1
Bind responder global pol1 100

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Canonical Hostnames

The Citrix NetScaler can be placed in front of a webserver farm that is running Apache. The same re-write rules that run on Apache, can be implemented on the Citrix NetScaler.

The goal of the following rule is to force the use of a particular hostname, in preference to other hostnames which may be used to reach the same site. For example, if you wish to force the use of www.example.com instead of example.com, you might use a variant of the following rules.

Example : changing example.com to www.example.com

Apache rewrite:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^www.example.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^$
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} !^80$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)         http://www.example.com:%{SERVER_PORT}/$1 [L,R]

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^www.example.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^$
RewriteRule ^/(.*)         http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R]

AppExpert rewrite:

add responder action act1 redirect '"http://www.example.com:"+CLIENT.TCP.DSTPORT+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
add responder policy pol1 '!HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.CONTAINS("www.example.com")&&!HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.EQ("")&&!HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.PORT.EQ(80)&&HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.CONTAINS("example.com")' act1
bind responder global pol1 100 END

add responder action act1 redirect '"http://www.example.com"+HTTP.REQ.URL' -bypassSafetyCheck yes
add responder policy pol1  '!HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.CONTAINS("www.example.com")&&!HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.EQ("")&&HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.PORT.EQ(80)&&HTTP.REQ.HOSTNAME.CONTAINS("example.com")' act1
bind responder global  pol1 100 END

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