I'm trying to get the Armory wallet up and running. I created a new wallet and I noticed I'm not online. It wanted me to download and install the Bitcoin-QT wallet in order for me to go online. So now I'm installing the other wallet and downloading the entire blockchain! Is this necessary? I was under the impression that this wallet was self contained and needed nothing else to run
Yes, unfortunatelly you need synced Bitcoin-QT to be able to use Armory in Online mode.