The WinHEC build of Longhorn just seems so much more stable than the PDC build of Longhorn, that I find it a pleasure to use. If you’re an MSDN subscriber into Longhorn, I recommend it.

Nathan Dunlap takes us on a tour of his favorite new things in Avalon in the WinHEC build of Longhorn (4074), including a sneak peak an updated GelButton, his love affair with the  new Grid panel, his lust for real 3D and more. You gotta love that enthusiasm. : )

After posting a few sets of free Windows Forms controls, now I’m a magnet for the “but you forgot my favorite free controls site” emails, which I feel compelled to share with you. This time, it’s the vbAccelerator site, which is a mix of VB6 and .NET controls, code and tools. The .NET stuff is here. Enjoy.

I had no idea that there were so many declarative platforms for UI. The XUL Grand Coding Challenge 2004 shows off 10 and the XAML app ain't even posted yet (but it’s coming).

Adam Nathan has taken the information from his extremely popular P/Invoke Wiki site and built an add-in to pull and drop P/Invoke signatures directly into VS.NET. Whoa, indeed.

Dave Massy has amassed some information about the new WinHEC Longhorn build (4074) and it's available on the Longhorn Developer Center in the "Conference In A Box." The idea is to bundle the set of conference-related materials together into a kind of "virtual event" so that even folks that didn't get to go to WinHEC can get the Longhorn information that was provided there. The plan is to gather this same kind of material for future Longhorn community technology preview drops.

If you can't be at WinHEC to check out the latest Longhorn information, Paul Thurott's got you covered with his WinHEC 2004 Show Report and Photo Gallery.

I got this email from Brian Jepson, one of my favorite DevCon speakers (he ran his PowerPoint slides by clicking on his cell phone!), and I just had to share it:

“My stepson got a 99 on his driving test today–I think the blue Sells Brothers t-shirt that he’s so fond of (the one I got at the XML SellsCon that he immediately swiped from me) gave him that extra boost of skillz and confidence…”

The conference t-shirt should also help him on his SATs and with his college entrance essay, but the downside is that it repels women. Sorry! : )