Among other things, the Microsoft .NET initiative is an effort to make server-side programming easier. For example,Visual Basic .NET provides you with a programming environment that enables you to stay connected to the server as you develop your code. You can see the Visual Basic .NET development environment in Figure 24.1, where I’m developing a .NET web application. There are two main kinds of .NET applications—Windows applications and web applications—and JavaScript programming can help with the web applications of the kind we’ll see here.