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I am looking for a good, free (preferred) screen sharing program that works well for pair programming and code review sessions for Windows (Vista x64, Server 2008). It should allow either person take control of the screen and be fairly responsive for text editing over decent broadband connections. Additional features like the ability to draw/mark/annotate the other persons screen would be nice.

Edit: This will be used by developers in remote locations.

John Lemp
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  • Make sure that your screen sharing program is window based rather than screen-region based... I have seen situations where people accidentally got other windows passing through the shared aware with interesting consequences. – Uri Jan 28 '09 at 23:43

16 Answers16

10

TeamViewer from http://www.teamviewer.com/ works very well. We use it for pair programming between London and Ukraine.

Notes:

  1. We use Skype for voice.
  2. TeamViewer uses extremely low bandwidth - 4kbyte/sec on average for programming in Visual Studio 2008 @ 1024x768 resolution.
  3. Can swap roles from hotseat to viewer with a button.
  4. The remote view of the screen can be resized to fit in a smaller area with no loss in usability.
Contango
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5

Windows Shared View works for me. It allows you to only share certain windows and even shows where your "attendees" mouse is. It would be best to use that in connection with some sort of voip connection so that you don't have to type questions/responses back and forth.

Jere.Jones
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    SharedView was officially EOLed on 31 January 2012, and was finally shut down on 3 February 2012 at 3:30pm, PST. Citation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_SharedView – Larry Silverman Oct 02 '12 at 13:36
4

I have checked some hours now for a good one.

Best and the simplest thing i have found. http://www.screenleap.com/
Free, no strings found so far.
No need to waste time installing or registering anything.

Works perfect with "share are only" if you have multimontor setup.
Most other software shares full screen default, and you cannot choose which monitor you share.

You need to be aware that it does not encrypt data. Check FAQ. But if you have to run voice over Skype/Mymble/Whatever separate anyway.. What harm can a hacker do by simply getting 50% of the conference ?

Pff.. Oh you wished for screen sharing.. this one does not have it.
So try: http://www.mingleview.com/ It has that multimonitor "bug" and you need to install a simple pluginlike thing. But "take control" is there and it's very simple also.

Most other software has bundled unneccesary functions like calendaring, document system, filesharing which i already have solutions for. It's like developing games on excel macros.. unneccesary.. developers please learn that already !

Egon Ojamaa
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I haven't actually tried it yet, but it looks promising. Check out DimDim. They have a free web service and a VMWare image on Sourceforge.

charlesbridge
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If you're using eclipse, you might wanna try ECF. There's a video presentation available here.

zedoo
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I like to use Screen Hero, which allows both users to use the mouse on the shared screen: http://screenhero.com/

or Zoom: http://zoom.us/

Michelle Glauser
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Try Mikogo at www.mikogo.com

very easy to setup. no problems with Firewalls etc etc

Steve
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1

And my final suggestion, but this is not one I've tried. Go to Crossloop

Steve
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1

For a poor-man's solution, you can use the free edition of RealVNC. On the server, un-check all of these boxes:

alt text
(source: realvnc.com)

Glorfindel
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JosephStyons
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On OSX, I've used vim and a multi-user GNU screen session - this gives much better responsiveness than VNC, screen-sharing, etc. I guess you could use these with Cygwin?

James Mead
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For multi-platform simplicity, I would suggest

  1. https://join.me/ for screen share (you can even view a remote screen using iOS!)
  2. getting a phone headset, and using the phone for audio.
Dan Esparza
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Would a VNC client not do the trick, combined with a one of those screen overlay apps people use for presentations (screenpen rings a bell)?

Dycey
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  • My experience with using VNC for these situations it the amount of effort it takes to set-up, open firewall ports, send the other party your current IP generally makes it too cumbersome. Has there been any progress or projects that deal with these issues? Also, the speed hasn't generally been good. – John Lemp Nov 14 '08 at 15:18
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Do you need this to be remote? You could just have two monitors set to mirror and 2 USB keyboards/mice

If it is remote then VNC is the way to go, I would use UltraVNC if you are looking for a free version, it has more features (chat, file transfer) than the free version of VNC - it also has a video driver hook that means it suffers less from any weird screen issues than regualr VNC.
If firewalls are a problem you can simply set up a VPN (which is probably a good idea anyway - although ultra can do encryption).

Martin Beckett
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Another option is to use VNC, but use reverse connections. Have a look at this I use this in conjunction with No-IP to get a fixed address.

Steve
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How about any of the services like Joel's https://www.copilot.com/?

kenny
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  • Copilot's strength is that it's easy to set up. But you pay by the minute or by the month so for extended use (8 h/ day) it might be a bit expensive. – Clay Nichols May 06 '10 at 18:00
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Have you looked at the collaboration module that comes with netbeans? Its very useful for pair programming!