Since this site is for MS employees, I’ve transferred my blog to a new site: http://peterstern.blogspot.com/ I can always be reached through my website: http://www.petersterndesign.com/ Aloha -Peter

It’s been 5 months since my last confession. A lot has happened since I last blogged back in August. At the time my focus was on my upcoming trip to Bermuda . Since then I have left Microsoft and returned to freelancing . The decision to leave Microsoft...

I’m off for a family vacation to Bermuda. OK, it’s not my first choice, but because of an interesting turn of events that includes offshore banking and my mother in law… Bermuda it is. Apparently the fishing is good and you gotta love a country that has...

Dimitri Glazkov gave me some feedback on my post about pixel pushers . I’m happy to say his head did not burst into flames, nor did he experience any bleeding from the eyes. I asked him to elaborate on his comment: “If I look at ASP...

What I want in a next generation design/development platform. I’ll start with the most obvious - control of the “look and feel”. I think there is a common misconception as to why this is so important. It’s not about ego,...

In response to my last post (gradients are kicking my ass) DonXML has uploaded versions of his SharpVectors project that will run on the WinHec build. I’ve just started testing it and so far I’m getting mixed results. Some of the gradients...

I’ve done a lot of experimenting to generate XAML with my vector drawing tools, and Office apps. I learned if you copy vectors from Illustrator and paste them into PowerPoint, they are rasterized into a .png. If you copy and paste those vectors...

One more off topic post then I promise to get back to business. I’ve designed a lot of swag in my career. By swag I mean conference crap… stuff, loot… not as dictionary.com defines it: Slang. Stolen property; loot. Australian...

I work in one of the older buildings on campus. Dark hallways, everything’s covered in a bad, plastic, oak veneer… it’s totally cheesy... it’s great. About a month ago they came through and replaced the name tags on our doors,...

I’m often asked how designers can gain credibility and influence on the product development cycle. To move from PhotoShop Jock, to someone who can influence the products your team builds, you’ll have to think like a business owner and apply...

Consider this fair warning, I’m armed and dangerous . According to the instructions I don’t need a lock of hair, just an IP address.

When I originally designed my personal site I had an animated splash screen . Chris Sells was quick to point out it was annoying as hell, and it looked like an “under construction” sign. He’s right on both counts. I knew better, but...

Check out my Microsoft.com home page archive . It dates back to 1994, when MSCOM ran on 4 servers. Today MSCOM runs on 80 servers and two data centers. For the record - I'm not responsible for most of these. I started in 1998, so I designed the last one...

Chris Sells asked how I created the handwriting font I use so often . It’s quite simple, just a bit tedious. Font creation/editing programs range from free to $350 for Macromedia Fontographer and $550 for FontLab . I chose High Logic’s...

I’m Peter Stern a User Interface Designer for Microsoft - currently working for MSDN. In the past 5 years I’ve designed a lot of web applications , content management tools and various other software and systems. I also do a lot of concept...