Public Shared

[May]

greetings, i came across a function while browsing thru
the net. This function is created in a component. what i
am curious to know is, is this the correct way to create a
function using:
Public Shared Function name() As String
Don't we need some sort of parameter passing to use
the "As String"? Maybe something like this:
Public Shared Function name(ByVal fname As String)

i am also curious as to why we need to use "Public Shared"
and not just the keyword "Shared" alone. what is the
difference between these two? thanx!

 

[May]

sorry, but i still can get wat's the difference
between "Sharing" and "Public". I've tried out both ways
in creating a function in a component and i can still
reference the component from various different web
applications. So wat's the deal with shared and public?