>Thanks for the reply Tom. Unfortunately, we are being pushed towards web-development for the wrong reasons. Management here (I work for a public facility) has no real understanding of what web-enablement means. They think it is going to solve all of our problems in ways such as we won't have to do client PC maintenance for apps anymore. It is this uninformed thinking that is causing me grief. To think web development is going to make PC support disappear for apps is absurd unless all they want is straight HTML (and not even then). However I have to go along with it despite the fact I know more then they they. I know I know. Join the crowd.
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>I currently develop in VB6 with SQLServer7 as my back end and use crystal reports for reporting purposes. All of our clients are at IE 5.5 on Win95 (and some on Windows 2000). If I can't provide the same look and feel I currently get with my VB executable apps then I really don't see the point. What I am hoping to get out of this thread is a push in the direction of where to start if I want to do VB development and have it presented on the Web. What I have been unable to find surfing the net is clear answers as to what skills are necessary to start presenting high quality apps over an intranet (and possibly internet). I hear everything about things like ASP and DHTML with no clear understanding of how all of these pieces fit together. Should I just throw away everything and start with VB.NET and ASP? Is this what everyone else is doing?
>
>Please keep in mind that while I am quite comfortable with VB in a client/server environment I don't know the first thing about Web technologies. I'd probably have trouble displaying "Hello World" in HTML. :(

Jason;

I hear you loud and clear. I use Visual FoxPro and Visual Basic, depending upon the need. One good tool that I like is West wind connection (VFP based) for web development. However, I am only allowed to use Visual Interdev at work for web development. One "good" thing about VI is it has a degugger. However, as soon as you write some complex forms you can forget about using it. These tools are not "perfect".

When I got my feet wet with web development it was for my flamenco guitar site. Then I began ASP and got to the point where I could do some interesting things - like dBase II 20 years ago. I get paid well by the company I work for to create web applications. I worked for 13 months on my project which went live about three weeks ago. 60 forms using ASP, SQL Server 7.0 and about 75,000 lines of code. Many objects INCLUDE files and all the bells and whistles. I told management I could do a faster and better job with VFP and a framework - even proved it with one form created with both methods. No, the management decision is to use VI.

There are lots of books on web development. One that is very good is Wrox IE5 Dynamic HTML. Chapter 7 has a small form that taught me a lot. As you go deeper into web development you end up with many books. The interesting thing is that you can use notepad to create any web site - but that would be a bit of a pain! Homesite has a good editor. The editor of VI is ok but it likes to rearrange the code after I carefully tab everything where I want it. That is alright as after the 5th or 6th time it no longer does that. What a pain!

If you "got your feet wet" with ASP and DHTML (VB Script and JavaScript) it would be a step in the right direction. Then get into .NET and explore it as it promises to be around for a while.

What bothers me is that around January of last year Microsoft released all types of new technology for web development and June of last year they announced Visual Studio 7.0 and .NET, doing away with the old (six months) and entering the new. There is a message there - and I have not been able to get management to understand. Now, it may be another 6 months before Visual Studio 7.0 is released. Add to that version 1.0 of any software product is "buggy" and it might be 18 months before Visual Studio 7.0 is stable. Then again if you remember Visual Interdev it began with version 1.0 and the next version was 6.0. What a joke!

It is always good to be aware of the latest technologies that are a part of the world we develop in. However, there are so many things going on and then to just "dump" everything and start .NET? This does not give me a warm feeling.

Some people argue .NET might bomb. If it does don't worry - we will all be up the creek without a paddle.

We may end up writing code for DOS applications!

Tom