Hidden Gems: Why .NET Developers Need to Take a 2nd Look at Project Rosetta

Many of you have heard of Project Rosetta by now, but for those who have not here is an excerpt from the site:

The goal of the project is to help designers and UI developers learn new technologies by relating concepts and skills in a visual way from one technology to another.

One of the first areas this site has focused on is helping bridge the gap for those transitioning from Flash to Silverlight. There is a great guide on the site titled “Flash to Silverlight Guide” that walks through concepts in Flash and applies them to how they are tackled in Silverlight.

OK, so why am I telling you all of this if its focused on Flash developers? Good question, so let me get to my main point. The site is NOT just for Flash developers. It also has some awesome content for getting up to speed on Silverlight development aspects you use (or should use) every day. Got your attention? Good!

The content on this site is an excellent source at bringing a .NET developer up to speed on some design skills. So before you say “yeah right”, take a look at the tutorials on this site. They are very easy, take just minutes, and demonstrate ways to create very compelling results.

For example, check out this set of tutorials called “Through the Eyes of Expression Blend” (see below). The tutorials are very straight forward and show how to draw shapes/pictures, create transforms, animate elements, play video, manipulate text, import images, skin controls, and work with behaviors. These are key skills in designing and developing Silverlight applications.

1. Drawing an emoticon in Expression Blend
First steps in getting to know the tools and workspace in Blend
2. Element Transformations
Learn to use Scale, Rotate, Skew and 2.5D Transformations
3. Get Started with Animation
A Quick Overview on Creating Time-Based Animations
4. Playing Video with the MediaElement
Using the flexible MediaElement control as a reusable Surface
5. Arranging Pictures to Learn Layout
Use the Grid, StackPanel, ScrollableViewer and Border to position Images
6. A Look at Text in Silverlight
Learn about Displaying Text, Font Properties and Embedding Fonts
7. Import an Adobe Photoshop File into Blend
Convert the assets from a Photoshop file into Interactive Controls
8. Styling and Skinning Controls
Customize the Look by Setting Properties and Building Templates
9. Styling and working with Design-Time Data
Explore how Templates and Bindings are used to display dynamic data
10. Giving Behav iors a Test Drive
A brief overview and walkthrough of the Behaviors included with Blend