Super Easy Customization of Citrix Web Interface 4.x
There are several resources out there explaining how to customize, or brand, Citrix
Web Interface. The easiest method I’ve found by far is to modify the layout.ascx
user control. Using the technique outlined in this article, you can quickly give
your Web Interface site a brand new look and feel.
The layout.ascx user control
The heart of the Web Interface layout is a file called layout.ascx. Layout.ascx
is a user control that "constructs" the Web Interface authentication and applications
page's HTML. There are two different layout.ascx files for every Web Interface site.
These layout.ascx files can be found at path_to_your_wi_site\auth\include
(login
page) and path_to_your_wi_site\site\include (applications page).
UPDATE:
The layout.ascx files in Web Interface 4.6 are located at path_to_your_wi_site\app_data\auth\include
(login
page) and path_to_your_wi_site\app_data\site\include (applications page).
Cutting layout.ascx to the core
To get started, open up the layout.ascx file located at path_to_your_wi_site\site\include.
Next, strip out all the markup and code between the opening and closing <body>
tags except
the <wi:Welcome runat="server"/>,
<wi:MessageCenter>,
<wi:Toolbar>, and <asp:PlaceHolder> tags.
These tags are the "meat and potatoes" of the Web Interface applications page. The
<wi:Welcome runat="server"/> tag displays the welcome message. The
<wi:MessageCenter> tag displays the
message center. The <wi:Toolbar>
tag shows the toolbar holding the refresh,
settings, and help buttons. The <asp:PlaceHolder>
tag shows all the published
applications for the authenticated user.
Note: it is not necessary
to use any of these tags in your final markup although it would be pretty silly
not to include at least the <asp:PlaceHolder> tag.
The end result should look
something like this:
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" LINK="#000000" VLINK="#000000" ALINK="#000000"
topmargin='0' leftmargin='0' marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" onLoad="onLoadLayout();"
dir="<%=getString("TextDirection", currentLocale)%>">
<wi:Welcome runat="server"/>
<wi:MessageCenter runat="server"/>
<wi:Toolbar runat="server"/>
<asp:PlaceHolder
id="ViewPlaceHolder" runat="server" />
</body>
This produces a "bare bones" Web Interface page. Check it out:
Click to enlarge
If you would like a copy of this "bare bones" layout.ascx file, you can download
it below:
 layout_40.zip (for Web Interface 4.0)
layout_42.zip (for Web Interface 4.2)
layout_46.zip (for Web Interface 4.6)
Giving layout.ascx a facelift
Now, start adding your
markup to the layout.ascx file and place the above mentioned tags where you
want. If you want to modify text and color properties of the application links,
the easiest place to do that would be the style.inc file located in the same
place as the layout.ascx file. You can use this same technique for the
layout.ascx file located at path_to_your_wi_site\auth\include to customize the
login page.
Note: if you need to grab the username and password of
the authenticated user, check out this article for instructions on how to do
it.
Using the method described in this article, I made Citrix Web
Interface look and feel like Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Check it
out below:
Click to enlarge
You may ask yourself, "Why would I ever want to do this?". Well, in this case
the company was migrating from a custom written Intranet portal to Microsoft Office
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 at the same time they were migrating from Citrix MetaFrame
XP to Citrix Presentation Server 4.0. The SharePoint migration would take
place after the PS4 migration. So, to minimize end-user impact, the custom
portal was replaced with this SharePoint "fake-out". When the portal migration
was ready, the front end never really looked that different to the end user, but
the back end was vastly different.
If you would like a copy of the templates I used to make Web Interface look and feel like SharePoint, you can download them here.
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