The game of programming. Programming the game.

The first computer I've ever seen was a Z80 Spectrum. That was back in 1988. Like any kid of my age I was amazed by computer games. I started to learn programming with the hope that one day I will create my own game.

That happened after many years, in 1999 and here's the result. I wrote these two little games just to learn some Java language. Now looking back at this old code of mine, it's nice to see that I wasn't that bad after all :-)

Source code:

• tetris.zip
• black.zip

Click on images below to play!

When IHTMLWindow2.document throws UnauthorizedAccessException

This is basically a C# translation of one of my older articles "When IHTMLWindow2::get_document returns E_ACCESSDENIED". Some .Net people encountered difficulties to use it, so I decided to make their life easier.

The main problem is the confusion created by System.IServiceProvider .Net interface because it has the same name as the COM interface. Once this issue is passed the code translation is straightforward. Here's the interop code to declare the COM interface IServiceProvider.

// This is the COM IServiceProvider interface, not System.IServiceProvider .Net interface!
[ComImport(), ComVisible(true), Guid("6D5140C1-7436-11CE-8034-00AA006009FA"),
InterfaceTypeAttribute(ComInterfaceType.InterfaceIsIUnknown)]
public interface IServiceProvider
{
   [return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.I4)][PreserveSig]
   int QueryService(ref Guid guidService, ref Guid riid, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Interface)] out object ppvObject);
}

You find here full source code of the sample assembly.

This technique was successfully implemented and tested in Twebst web automation library.