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	NetMeeting

Desktop - Application Sharing

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Application Sharing allows meeting participants to view and work on files simultaneously. For example, you may have a Microsoft Word document that several people need to work on. You can open the document on your computer, share it, and then everyone can provide comments directly in the document. Only the person who has opened the file is required to have the program on the computer. Other participants can work on the document without having the program.

NetMeeting offers a full application sharing facility, which allows broadcasting or “sharing” of any selected application on your desktop to all of the meeting participants.

NetMeeting allows the presenter/moderator to give rights to other users to control the application being shared (hand out control).

Only one person can be in control of a shared program at a time. If “controllable” appears in the title bar of the shared program window, the person who shared the program has control and is allowing others to work in the program. If a little box with small letters initials is displayed next to the mouse pointer, another meeting participant is maintaining control of the program.

Other application sharing features include:

the ability to "unshare" specific programs or to "unshare" all programs;
a feature for automatically accepting control requests or for requiring manual acceptance;
and a do-not-disturb feature for temporarily disabling non-host control without actually switching the feature off.

Users who have been granted control by the host can pass control to other users, as long as they are also using version 3.x. The host can take control back again at any time she wishes to.

A quality display control is available in the application sharing control window, which allows the selection of true-color mode (24-bit color =16 millions of colors) or 8-bit mode (256 colors). The two modes reflect two different color settings: true color utilizes the full color spectrum but requires higher bandwidth, while 8-bit sends only 256 colors providing a better performing solution where connection speed and number of participants may be an issue.

Like all other application-sharing tools I have tested, NetMeeting does not offer a direct way to share applications without opening them first. This can be easily circumvented by sharing directly the Windows Explorer application.

Please note that, depending on the connection speed each participant is connecting at, the amount of time that it will take for the same image (of the application being shared) to arrive at all participants’ screens may vary (as greatly as the difference in connection speed).

« Video Conferencing | Main | Remote Control »

Posted on June 13, 2003 at 06:01 PM

Updated on November 17, 2003 at 03:05 PM

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