All the hype is confusing me. I just bought VC++.NET to stay up-to-date as possible. I will mainly be using it for game and school programming. I cannot help but notice all the flashwords thrown at me when reading Microsoft''s feature list. So basically, what are "Web Applications?" A simple example would be good. Also, what libraries are used to code them(MFC, ATL, COM, .NET . . . etc)? Thanks for the help.

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The term "web application" can mean all sorts of things according to how high you have the "hype setting" on your project. Basically, it means that there is some element of an application that makes use of web technologies for distributing some components of the application. That might include HTML, applets, or script languages that run within a web browser (client side), anything that can deliver content to a web browser (server side) or something to do with the protocols that connects client and server technologies.

Examples of client side technologies:

HTML
java-script
VBScript
XML

Examples of server side technologies:

Any API that provides communication on a TCP/IP port, anything built on top of TCP/IP technology, and any programming language that can interface to TCP/IP gets labelled with the term "web technology", whether that''s technically correct or not.

Examples of protocols and data interchange formats:

HTTP
SOAP
XML

So, basically, you can use almost any technology to build a web application. The term is so wide ranging that you can make it fit what you want it to mean. You''re best off ignoring the hype and simply programming whatever you need to program.

--
The Dilbert Principle: People are idiots.