Internet programming means different things to different people. From the standpoint of commercial software, it might mean developing new client/server tools that use the Web. To a sales and marketing department, it might mean creating a Web page that can take order information to sell products over the Internet. And to a human resources department, it might mean publishing an employee handbook that runs as a stand-alone application easily updated over an intranet.
Because of this diversity, I've divided the subject of Internet programming into three chapters for this edition:
This chapter discusses how to use the ActiveX controls that come with Visual Basic to handle everything from low-level protocol communication to the creation of your own Web browser based on Internet Explorer (IE).
Chapter 8, "Creating Internet Components," shows you how to create the different types of formlike containers provided by Visual Basic for distributing content over the Internet. Chapter 8 also has information about creating ActiveX controls and Web classes to be used over the Internet.
Chapter 9, "Creating Internet Applications," puts the information from Chapter 7 and Chapter 8 to work by explaining how to create three different classes of application in Visual Basic.