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Console application with read only pure HTML UI

Story
I would like to make an application with two parts:
1. Console
Normal, bash-like CLI, implemented by me. That would be the way of communicating with the user, processing information, etc.
2. HTML
I would like to print HTML somewhere on the screen. It would be updated by the console.
Question
What should be the approach here? I'm not sure if a Windows Forms or WPF application is good here. IMO, that's too heavy. Ideally, a console application + some additional process would be used. But I've never heard of anything like that. Could you give me names of some frameworks / technologies where this would be possible?
Or maybe the other way - create this application but emulate console within it. I'm not sure if this is feasible...

Navigating website with application

I'm looking to make a C# application to automate some processes for me. One of which would be navigating a few websites that I frequent, such as grooveshark. I'd like my application to be able to log me into the website and search for/play a song.
I've done some googling on the topic and came across something called selenium. I was wondering if this was the best tool for what I would like to accomplish or if there is another option that would be a suit my needs better?
Thanks in advance!

In order to automate your process , you can use Microsoft Test Manager , who is tool about testing and generating code
On Microsoft Test Manager 2012 , for example you have new functionnality such as Exploratory Test, the process is you explore your application and generate your test.
Link : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/vstudio/hh191621.aspx
After creating your tests, you can generate Coded UI Test and include in your build process
Note : you must use Team Foundation Server or Service in order interact with Test Case WorkItem

Selenium will do fine, unless the sites use Flash. If they do, you are pretty much stuck.
https://code.google.com/p/selenium/
http://selenium.googlecode.com/git/docs/api/dotnet/index.html
http://docs.seleniumhq.org/docs/03_webdriver.jsp
I would read up on Selenium and come back when you have a specific problem.

If you have Visual studio Premium or greater I would suggest Coded UI. I would also suggest CUITe http://cuite.codeplex.com/ as it simplifies the code.

It definately depends on what your automation is going to be able to. I don't know Selenium at all. I think it's for recording certain actions on a website in a certain order. Though you will only be able to automate the process as far as the website (the actual client) capabilities offer.
If you'd like to build some different, more advanced behaviour the client doesn't provide yet, you'd need to build your own client. That'd need some backwards engeneering. That'd be the case for e.g. automating browser games. Usually a browser game client doesn't provide scanning certain amounts of players and automatically comparing them to your own player profile, so building this feature on your own would be the only possible solution.

Getting input into a process

While talking with a friend over yahoo messenger, I told him would be really cool to make a bot to answer with generic messages when someone starts a conversation. Upon thinking about what I told him, I realized it would be quite interesting to do something like that. The problem is that I don't know much about win32.
So my question is this: how do you 'link' a process to both another one and the windows environment? The goal would be to have an application running in the background which makes some sort of a query to see what windows are opened and when a new yahoo messenger conversation window appears it should send a list of keystroke events to that window.
I could use either C# or VC++ for the programming part and I can use any help: either specific answers or tips that could help me - e.g.: what to google for. So far my google research only came up with some apps/dlls/code that do that for you and some scripting stuff and I'm not exactly searching for that. I want to do all the work myself so I can learn from it.

It seems like you basically want to control other applications.
There are roughly 2 ways to do this on windows
1 - Use the low level windows API to blindly fire keyboard and mouse events at your target application.
The basic way this works is using the Win32 SendInput method, but there's a ton of other work you have to do to find window handles, etc, etc
2 - Use a higher level UI automation API to interact with the application in a more structured manner.
The best (well, newest anyway) way to do this is using the Microsoft UI Automation API which shipped in windows vista and 7 (it's available on XP as well). Here's the MSDN starter page for it.
We use the microsoft UI automation API at my job for automated UI testing of our apps, and it's not too bad. Beware though, that no matter how you chose to solve this problem, it is fraught with peril, and whether or not it works at all depends on the target application.
Good luck

Not quite the same domain as what you're looking for, BUT this series of blog posts will tell you what you need to know (and some other cool stuff).
http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-poker-bot

If you really want to learn everything from scratch, then you should use C++ and native WIN32 API functions.
If you want to play a bit with C#, then you should look the pinvoke.net site and Managed Windows API project.
What you'll surely need is the Spy++ tool.

http://pinvoke.net/ seems to be the website you are looking for. The site explains how to use Windows API functions in higher level languages. Search on pinvoke for any of the functions I've listed below and it gives you the code necessary to be able to use these functions in your application.
You'll likely want to use the FindWindow function to find the window in which you're interested.
You'll need the process ID, so use GetWindowThreadProcessId to grab it.
Next, you'll need to use OpenProcess allow for reading of the process's memory.
Afterwards, you'll want to use ReadProcessMemory to read into the process's memory to see what happening with it.
Lastly, you'll want to use the PostMessage function to send key presses to the window handle.
Welcome to the wonderful world of Windows API programming.

Check out Autohotkey. This is the fastest way to do what you want.

Create a WPF "control" that is run in an external process

I have a WPF app which contains a number of child controls.
One of these controls hosts a third party library which underneath the covers runs some native code which throws access violations and crashes the application. Unfortunately removing the library is not an option.
What I'd like to do is spin up a new windows process, host the third party library inside that, and somehow communicate with it. Much in the same way that Google Chrome and IE8 handle browser plugins.
The issue is that the third party library needs to draw to the screen, so I have to somehow have the equivalent of an HTML iframe inside my WPF app's main window.
I'm not sure how to get started on this, it's proving difficult to google for thus far. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

This is a tough one, but fortunately for you there is a little work being done in this space lately.
Have you heard of the System.Addin namespace in .NET 3.5? It could probably help in this case. It allows for controls to be loaded in a separate AppDomain, but be displayed in the same UI. I'd imagine you'd have to do a little bit of work to get everything communicating properly (never done this before), but it's possible.
Have a look at this early post from the Add-in team: http://blogs.msdn.com/clraddins/archive/2007/08/06/appdomain-isolated-wpf-add-ins-jesse-kaplan.aspx
Seems like they keep their samples and helper code on codeplex: http://clraddins.codeplex.com/
I'm very interested in this, so if you get this working, let us know how this went for you!

Coming in way late. If you still need this, have you seen this project: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/changov/hosting-wpf-ui-cross-thread-and-cross-process
I'm running multiple plugins in multiple external processes in my LOB app. My framework grew out of the project above.

Probably not the easiest of tasks. Have you considered hosting your 3rd party stuff in a separate App-Domain? That way you will also get a good level of isolation while saving you the hassle of another project. Does it have to be refreshed constantly or could you refresh at predefined points in your application? Maybe some scheme where you basically do a screenshot of the 3rd party output and show it as image in your original app would then be possible...

Can an exe compiled from C# be integrated into a website?

I'm a beginner in programming. I've just made a program called "Guessing Game". And it seems to work fine. Can I integrate it into a website? The CMS that I'm using is Mambo.
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additional info's
Thanks for all your suggestions.
I still don't have any background about Silverlight, WPF and Java Script which I think sounds good. I'm using Windows and I programmed my "Guessing Game" from Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and it's using Window application forms.
Yes I guess, for the moment I let it be and start to learn Silverlight or Java Script so that I can integrate it on my website:-)
Thanks for all your input guys:-)
Cheers

A standalone executable cannot be directly integrated into a website. You have a few choices though:
Allow your users to download the executable and run it locally for themselves
Rewrite your program in JavaScript to have it run directly inside of an HTML page, though this could obviously involve a fair amount of reworking
Use Microsoft's Silverlight technology, which allows you to code in C# and produce a web-based frontend similar to Adobe Flash. Your program logic should remain the same and you should only have to change the UI code. In fact if you're already using WPF for the front end, the transition will be even easier.

There are several questions that you still need to answer.
What is your server running? If its not Windows, your exe will not run at all unless it is compatible with Mono or a similar framework for your server's operating system.
How does your "Guessing game" interact with the user? If it is through a WinForms GUI, it will you will not be able to use that GUI on the web. If your game is a WPF application your easiest route may be to port it to Silverlight and serve it up on a web page.
It is typically not trivial to make a regular windows application run in a web environment since on on the web you are really running in the browser, not on Windows.

Yes - in general, when you're talking about software, anything is possible. The question is, how difficult will it be?
To understand that, you have to give us more details about "Guessing Game" including how it is designed, what it's interfaces are, how readily extensible it is, and how prepared you are to change or extend it.
For example, if it is a Windows Forms GUI app, then it will be diifficult to integrate into a web app. If it is a console app, then it will be a little easier. If you can modify it to run as a Windows Service, then a little easier. If you can modify it to accept input from the network (as opposed to getting input solely from the keyboard + mouse), still easier.

You may be able to use reflection to load your assembly into the web application, but most likely, the answer is no.
Your best solution is probably to re-write the game in javascript.

The short answer to your question is now. I'm presuming that since you're running Mambo you're web environment is a LAMP stack. However, you're "Guessing Game" is most likely a Windows application from the sound of it. For a beginner in programming, there is no integration path you're going to be able to take that will allow you to have your game running on your website.
However, here are avenues you can take, which will require a significant amount of time to learn. I'm not saying you shouldn't take time to learn, by all means you should! I'm simply trying to illustrate the fact that this is not something that is going to be doable in a couple of hours.
Silverlight - allows you to run C# code with a WPF like interface on your client's browser and can integrate with your web site through javascript.
Let your client download it from your website and run it off of their PC. This would actually be fairly trivial and would be your quickest option, but it sounds like it's not the kind of integration you were looking for.