Welcome at our developer-site

Here on 'TheCommon.net', we want to "push COM to its limits" - trying to lower the dependencies to MS's "original COM-Environment" like e.g. DCOM/COM+, ADO/JET
or the Windows-CommonControls - and even the MS-Office-COMponents (...our embeddable "OpenOffice-Component" is available now).

The background (or the goal) is, to bring feature-rich COM-based (n-tier) Applications to the Linux-Desktop (using its Wine-Layer in a first step).

But VB6-compiled Applications, able to run on Linux/Wine are only an intermediate step on our "roadmap". In the later half of the year 2009, we want to have a new VB6-Widgetset running, based on the Cairo-Rendering-Backend and this way lowering the dependencies to the Windows-GDI too. Please check for the Widget-Project here periodically - we want to transform this site into a dedicated project-site for the new widgets and the richclient-infrastructure ca. from may 2009 on.

After the widget-project gets momentum, we should be able, to write rich VB6-Applications, which only consist of *.cls and *.bas modules (no *.frm - and also no *.ctl-modules would be required). After we reached that point (maybe already at the end of 2009, or in early 2010), we will start a VB6-compatible compiler-project on this site too.

This new compiler will generate intermediate C-Source, which allows us to "plug in" different C-Backends later on, but we will start with the tinycc-backend in the beginning, since it is pretty small and easy to install - and it offers a currently unmatched compilation-speed.

We will try, to implement full compatibility to VB6-Source, as long as hosted within *.cls or *.bas-Modules - and that on a very low level - up to the exact memory-representation of VBs BStrings, SafeArrays, Userdefined-Types, etc. - so that even the VB StrPtr- or VarPtr-based "workarounds" (over CopyMemory, etc.) will work further - at least we will try...

But of course the richclient-toolset, as well as the new widgets, can be used on Windows too - here you can profite from their usually small size, their great performance and the capability, to instantiate ActiveX-COMponents without prior registering on their "target-platform" - this way we think, we can achieve also a greater "tolerance" for VB6-Apps, running on Vista and Windows7 (less MS-dependencies + regfree instantiation).

All controls in our Tools-Section are free (as in free-beer) - you can use them without any restrictions in your own apps, but (as usual for tools in the "Public Domain") at your own risk. That doesn't mean, that we don't offer support - just drop us an email, if you experience any problems.

So finally, have fun and check out our Tools-Section!