Graphic Effects

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

A Windows®-based Terminal Server relies on the network to transmit all input and output to its client terminals. Consequently, applications that make excessive use of graphic effects can affect performance for all Terminal Server clients by bogging down the network. In addition, the slower transmission speed over a network might cause the appearance of these special effects to be less pleasing than it would be in a local video environment.

In particular, applications should disable or minimize the use of the following features when running in a Terminal Server environment:

• Splash screens—graphical product or company information displayed while an application is starting. Transmitting a splash screen to a Terminal Server client consumes extra network bandwidth and forces the user to wait before accessing the application.
• Animations, which consume both CPU time and network bandwidth.
• Direct input or output to the video display. If you need to read bits from the screen, maintain a separate, off-screen copy of the video buffer. Similarly, if you need to do elaborate screen output—for example, overlaying several images to arrive at a final composite screen—do that work in an off-screen buffer, and then send the results to the actual video buffer.