A method includes preparing images of a remote desktop including an open cloud-application window object corresponding to an instance of a network-hosted application executing on a network, encoding the images of the remote desktop as image frames in a video stream, and transmitting the video stream over the network to a computing device. The images the remote desktop are encoded such that when decoded, reconstructed, and displayed on a local desktop of the computing device, the open cloud-application window object corresponding to the instance of the network-hosted application executing on the network has the appearance and behavior of an open window corresponding to a natively-operating application on the local desktop of the computing device.