Hmmm, well although it is far from obvious, things are happening...  The site now rests on a server at pair.com which will help me later when/if I finally release some new code and controls and have massive traffic influx <g>  I'm still making payments on my domain name and webhost.  And I'm still getting the "thank you" emails almost daily even though it's been embarrassingly long since I actually *did* anything around here.  I am starting to get a few emails that go kind of like this - "what happened?"  "where did you go?".  But I plan to make a frontal assault on my apathy "soon".  In the meantime, if you make a whole bundle of cash by using one of the controls here, consider buying me a dedicated server somewhere so I can play around with the stuff I am learning now (Servlets and other web-app related stuff).  Broadband access is still quite expensive here, but it looks like I may have 3 or 4 options by the end of this year for a fixed IP at home (whoo-hoo!).

<*flash*> I'll be hopping a flight to Redmond next week for a private summit with the VB.NET team and 30 other VB MVPs.  MS is making quite an effort to convince us that .NET is great.  I wish they had made VB into the all-purpose Windows language I had hoped for, with static-linking and ASM power combined with BASIC simplicity.  Instead they have gone the other way and are *expanding* the runtime and trying to make it universal across all known languages and OS.  I won't say anything else until I get back from the summit, but does anyone else think MS is starting to resemble the BORG?

Dave Snyder sent me a really nice update of my original Mixer Line sample. He put a lot of work into this incredibly hard to understand API, so I decided to post it here. Check it out in the Code section. Thanks Dave!

I compiled ezVidCap and GetFreeX with VB6 with absolutely no problems. I'm beginning to think that all the rumors about hardcore programmers having trouble moving to VB6 are just a myth.  I still want to test them a bit and I had to use my VB6 box for something else. Hopefully, I will have VB6 versions of all ActiveX controls up in a couple of weeks.  As far as I know, all the Code example work fine on VB6.  I'd appreciate feedback from anyone who has problems with stuff on this site in VB6.  I don't use it a whole lot yet (waiting for VB7 :-) so if you don't tell me, I probably won't know.  I would also love to hear if anything *works* on VB6.  It will give me confidence to share more VB6 samples...

Oh yeah, one more thing.  How sweet it is, too.  MS called yesterday and told me that I got the MVP award.  I've been praying that God would give me the bucks for a Universal MSDN for when I quit the company this Summer.  I'm glad He answered "yes" on that one.  Thank you Microsoft - and *especially* thank you Jesus.

I've also decided to start compiling all my controls in both VB5 and VB6.  The first is ezAVIWnd.ocx, which has now become ezAVI2.ocx (VB5) and ezAVI26.ocx (VB6).  The vidcap control will be next.  I hope it will be as easy as the AVI control was.

MS is considering me for an MVP award and that is really exciting.  They have been promising me a review for about 3 months now.  If any of you reading this are "insiders" or MVPs, maybe you could put in a good word for me?

The new ezAVIWnd.ocx is looking good but I'm still having a few troubles with binary compatibility.  I'm using the new binary compatibility plug-in from MS and it compiles fine now.  Today, however the subclassing mechanism I am using suddenly stopped working. Well, if this keeps up, I am going to rename the OCX and break compatibility.  I think I changed something in the property procedures menu that really messed with VB's secret compatibility algorithm.  Best case - uploading later this week.

I'm also aiming to compile VB6 versions of all my controls in the very near future.  I will continue to use VB5 as my main VB environment for the time being, but many of you are using VB6 and I know that if I were you I wouldn't want to distribute 2 runtimes, so...

Getting lots of praise for the site via email every day and the average hits keeps increasing. Thanks for your support.

Also in the works - a small utility DLL for DirectX 6.0 programmers is now in beta testing.  Just drop me a line if you want to see it early.

01/20/99 - Working on a new version of the AVI Playback OCX which fixes bugs on NT4 and adds new functionality. Should be ready in the very near future.

01/20/99 - Added this news page and a "legalese" page which spells out the distribution limitations. Thanks to the CCRP people for their example of a free use license agreement and permission to use it.

01/20/99 - Added graphics and a new look to most of the site.  Let me know what you think. There is also a new ShrinkwrapVB logo at the bottom of most of the pages.  Please use this GIF if you link to my site.