Hi,

I'm currently using VB6 and contemplating upgrading to
Visual Basic .NET.

My requirements are quite specific, what I want to do is
write an application that is distributed over the web (I
don't believe that this can be done via web pages).  The
application will run through the users web browser (or
similar) and is capable of transferring data between the
users PC and the web server.

I recently read about "Activex Documents" which appeared
to do what I wanted, however I have since found out that
this functionality has been removed from VB .NET.

In simple terms a user goes to a web address to access the
application, if this is the users first visit to the URL
then the application is automatically downloaded and
started up.  The application must be able to use most (if
not all) of the form controls available through VB in the
downloaded application e.g. datagrid, treecontrol, menus,
all the usual stuff etc.  Obviously the application must
have the capability to interact with the web server in
order to exchange data in the background.

My questions are:

Can this be done in VB .NET ?  

If yes, in very high level terms, How ?

Also does the web server need to support some
additional .NET application (framework) in order to allow
this to happen (I've read somewhere that VB .NET needs
certain applications running on the web server to do this)

I know that Java has this ability and I'm sure that
VB .NET does too, however I've not seen this in any
documentation and don't want to upgrade if VB .NET can't
do this.  

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks