File Previews in VB.Net App

[Jack]

I'm looking at using vb.net to create a file (image, document, etc) storage
/ management system. I've read up on some of the issues of files stored on
file system vs database, so I'm aware of the issues there. My biggest catch
at this point is doing file previews for various file types from inside my
app. I've done some testing with images and the picturebox, and it seems to
be fine. However, with everything from word to excel to pdf, I really don't
want to plug in a web browser control. I'd rather have something similar to
the print preview functionality of word - just a read only image of the file
for viewing.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[tomb]

I'm looking at using vb.net to create a file (image, document, etc) storage
/ management system. I've read up on some of the issues of files stored on
file system vs database, so I'm aware of the issues there. My biggest catch
at this point is doing file previews for various file types from inside my
app. I've done some testing with images and the picturebox, and it seems to
be fine. However, with everything from word to excel to pdf, I really don't
want to plug in a web browser control. I'd rather have something similar to
the print preview functionality of word - just a read only image of the file
for viewing.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

Why don't you just shell out to the default application for whatever
file type you want to view?

Tom