How to make SmartConsole look good even with Terminal Server or Remote Desktop

[Tomer_Sole]

A lot of our users share a Windows machine and connect to it whenever they want to run SmartConsole.

With R80.10, I wanted to share a few tips on how to make it better:

1. Crystal clear fonts:

With Remote Desktop settings, make sure that you enable "Font smoothing". And make sure that you don't let the system detect the performance for you, but you choose the higher speed one so that you can control the "font smoothing" checkbox.

As you may know with Check Point SmartConsole R80.10 we worked on new graphics, fonts and vector-based visualizations, and it will be a shame if our customers will not have the great experience we were aiming for. So make sure this one is checked:

2. Don't hide the publish bar:

With Remote Desktop and the SmartConsole window being maximized, the bar which says the IP address is probably going to hide one of the most important elements in the GUI - the "publish" or "discard" bar and the "number of changes to publish". 

So make sure you move that bar, resize it, maybe un-pin, etc.

Hope this helps

[XBensemhoun]

God to know. Thanks.

And on Windows 7 (yes I know, this version is still in use...) we could face the font sizing (sk116915).

[Tomer_Sole]

I highly doubt you will face that particular SK as it talks about a situation when you change your Windows DPI but Windows does not save it in its internal registry and as a result SmartConsole, and probably other apps as well, fail to read the correct DPI due to a bug in Windows.

You are welcome to share other display issues though and we will address them. 

[XBensemhoun]

Oh yes we faced this particular situation as computers were all imaged with a display set to Medium (125%) ; lot of them had changed this option to Small (100%) and then faced this exact bug.

Here a screen capture when I 'replay' the issue:

before fixing the issue	after

And you're alright : this bug impacts all application using MS Sans Serif, MS Serif and Courrier.

[Vladimir]

and in case you are using a VM for SmartConsole, I would suggest allocating reasonable amount of Video Memory to it to aid in rendering. I.e.:

[Daniel_Taney]

Thanks for this tip! This change made things run much smoother! 

[Vladimir]

You are w:)lcome

[PhoneBoy]

The options aren't present on the Mac version of the RDP client  

That said, I haven't had any issues using RDP to a Windows 10 machine with the default settings.