>no, they reside on the server but al of the users will only have a shortcut to the exe. no one will have VFP installed.

Having VFP installed is an entirely different question.

What you are proposing is like having a copy of the Visual C++ run-time library on some server, having a search path to it and have all your controls run using it.

You can do this with the VFP run-time files but the initial load time is going to be horrible even on a fast (100 MBit) network.