BOb,

>Doesn't a ActiveX control done in VB, need the VB runtime installed?

Doesn't every OS that can run IE 4 or higher and manage an OCX (meaning no Macs) already have the required VB runtimes?

>Um, won't the adobe reader allow for this? Granted it has to be downloaded an installed ahead of time.

Reader itself does not provide the kind of annotation features that are needed in this case. Also, the client does not want to require the end users to install anything separately from what would be downloaded automatically from the web hit. We also don't want to mess with possibly changing the end users' default PDF association.

>What about a client side java applet?

That's also a possibility, although I'd rather develop in VB than Java. :-)