The Common-Controls form a Java™ Presentation Framework based on Java Servlets, Java Serverpages (JSP™) and Struts. The Presentation Framework contains the most common control elements like lists, trees, tabfolders, menus and forms, which are required for the development of J2EE™ applications with HTML frontends.

The control elements distinguish themselves by the fact that they automatically save their own state across server roundtrips, so that the scrolling mechanism of a list, for example, or the explosion and folding of a tree structure do not have to be implemented independently. Rather, the state is managed by the control element itself, so that the developer can concentrate on the actual and important aspects of a Web application, such as the technical sequences or providing the data. The Framework takes over the presentation.

The configuration of a control element takes place within a JSP page with corresponding tags. If the layout of a control element is not fixed at the time of design, or if it defines itself dynamically, it can be set via its design model on the server side. Thus, columns of a table, for example, can be displayed or suppressed at runtime.

The control elements, however, are still flexible enough to be able to react to special requirements. They provide different template methods with which the standard behavior can be overwritten and specifically customized. The Common Controls work according to the strict separation between the presentation layer and the business logic.

With the Common Controls, we can also provide a common design and navigation concept, so that optically appealing user interfaces can be generated.
The generated HTML code is optimized for  different browsers. Own layouts (CorporateDesign) can be adopted quite easily.

The presentation framework was optimized for Struts as a Java Framework, and maps events of the control elements to callback methods within the action classes. This results in structured programming.