Kevin,

Happy Holidays to you too.

Getting down to your question ... I don't exactly know what Embedded WinForm Controls are, but it sounds to me like this consultant is recommending using a browser-based UI and you want a WinForm UI. I say stick to your guns about this. If you need a rich UI, you need WinForms, not WebForms, no matter what this guys says (unless I've misinterpreted his intent).

Anyway, as far as automated software updates, it's do-able with WinForms easily enough. We've designed our app that way. Basically, all updated .DLLs are placed on the webserver and the app on the client workstations detect when a newer .DLL is available on the server and automatically download its. It's done with reflection. Unfortunately, that's all I know about it ... and I don't know if there are white papers about it or not, but if you search MSDN for "Smart Applications", you might find some pertinent information. I can dig around in our app in order to give you more info on how to do this, if this is what you're interested in (I didn't write the code, I only understand the concept <g>).

~~Bonnie

>Hi, all...
>
>First, Happy Holidays to everybody.
>
>Second, a technical consultant made a suggestion to me yesterday that I'm having trouble researching...he described it as embedded Winform controls.
>
>We have a Web-based app using Web Services, but with a very feature-rich WinForms UI at the client end. We decided long ago that ASP.NET just wouldn't cut it for our UI.
>
>Recently, we started talking about ways to do 'automated' software updates anytime we makes changes/enhancements to the front-end UI. That's when our consultant brought up 'embedded Winform controls' in Internet Explorer.
>
>He stated that we'd lose very little of our interface by doing so, and told me he'd send me some Microsoft whitepapers in a week or so. I did some searches on MSDN on this topic, and found nothing.
>
>So has anyone heard of this, and does anyone have any Web references?
>
>Thanks,
>Kevin