True, there are tons of posts about using .NET classes from unmanaged code. And yes, it is quite simple. With COM Interop, you can expose any .NET class as a COM object. That makes it callable and usable by pretty much any language that supports COM objects. Essentially, you create a .NET class and define attributes to expose it as a COM object. All the gory details can be found in Microsoft's documentation, which describes this quite well (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zsfww439(VS.71).aspx).

As usual, the real problem doesn't show until you try to use your brand-new application in the real world. You have to deploy your application. We all want XCOPY deployment, where you can simply copy your files over to another computer. But, you can't just run your application, because COM objects have to be registered using Regasm.exe. Yes, that means your .NET class (actually, the assembly) must be registered. (No, not if you use the technique shown below, but read on).

How and why I switched from BeyondTV to SageTV and how I can run many TVs on a low cost (digital) cable budget.

I am not going to say how I feel about WebHost4Life.com, but I will document what my experience with them was like. You decide if I'm just being difficult. Actually, I just want what I'm promised and what I paid for. I wanted to set up a backup account for www.softelvdm.com, so when things go really bad, I can switch in a couple of minutes. DNS isn't a problem as I can switch it equally quickly. Disaster recovery on the cheap.

Just installed DotNetNuke 05.01.00 (Beta 501) on Windows 7 with IIS 7.5. In the past, with IIS 7, you had to make sure to set folder permissions properly and allow NETWORK SERVICE access to your folders and also as a database user (assuming you used integrated security).

You could use Application Pool Identities even with older versions of IIS, but now with IIS 7.5 this is the default! So, with IIS 7.5, NETWORK SERVICE is no longer used and you need to define the permissions for IIS AppPool\DefaultAppPool instead.

More info about the changes can be found at http://blogs.iis.net/webtopics/archive/2009/03/13/changes-to-application-pool-identities-in-iis-7-5-beta.aspx

Things are getting easier all the time. I remember setting NTFS file permissions a few years ago for MyTinyTV. What a pain that was in C++. I still am not sure if I really got it quite right (although it did work properly for many years). 

Once again, I'm developing a desktop Windows Forms application in C#. But, this one makes extensive use of web access and hosts a WebBrowser control.

I had to be able to call a Javascript function on the web page displayed by the WebBrowser control, from within my C# code. The .NET WebBrowser control is nothing more than a repackaged COM object (or ActiveX control), so all the knowledge with the "old" web browser ActiveX control and all its interfaces comes in really handy.

My list of links to useful information about DotNetNuke.

Once again, the seemingly trivial was an incredible waste of time. While I'm documenting this here mostly for myself, it might help someone else too. The other day I was implementing a small webcontrol for one of my projects. Adding the finishing touches, I needed to add the toolbox bitmap (I hate looking at the default gears icon in my toolbox).

If you regularly (or even just occasionally) use jQuery with ASP.NET / Visual Studio 2008, you have to get the IntelliSense help for jQuery. Scott Gu's blog has all the installation information and it works great!

For quite some time, I have been meaning to get a "better" menu for DotNetNuke. I really wanted a menu based on CSS with UL, LI tags, instead of the current menu with TABLEs. I have always been struggling with the CSS for the table-based menu. Well, someone has been listening! DotNetNuke 5 has some major enhancements, which most skinners will love.