Francisco
You may want to check into ESRI mapobjects if you need to display shapefiles. It also has the ability to display image files.
I have a complete geographic browser aplication quite like arcview written in VFP 6.0 and MapObjects.
www.esri.comThe only place that MO falls short is in large map production.(ansii size E)
Full blown MO is quite reasonable pricewise and MO Light is free I believe.
If you have any more questions let me know.