So — how's that for a Microsoft-ism? — a friend forwarded me a link to Project Rosetta, and — not knowing a thing about design — I found it to be an interesting resource. Not just an interesting resource, but potentially an interesting _training_ resource.

What Is It?
Project Rosetta, to my untrained eye (trust me on that, I really know nothing about design; I mean, you have *seen* my blog's design, haven't you?), looks to be a series of articles on how to accomplish a variety of design and development tasks in Microsoft's Silverlight. If you are interested in learning about how to mark up XAML, as well as program a variety of activities using your favorite .NET development language, these articles could prove to be extremely helpful in learning more about Silverlight. Moreover, these articles show you how to use Expression and Visual Studio to accomplish the tasks. Most articles include easy-to-understand screen shots, downloadable source code, and live, running applications to illustrate the runtime behavior.

I've read a couple of the article, and skimmed several more. According to my way of thinking, they an "atomic" example, basically building block pieces (like make a dot appear with a mouse click or have some swank animation follow the mouse pointer), that illustrate a single, specific core technique or a small group of related techniques. With a little bit of study, you could combine those techniques into more robust applications. From there you can begin to experiment upon the solid foundation and start creating real applications that do even swankier stuff.

But Wait! There's More!
Not only is Project Rosetta a potentially valuable training resource for nascent Silverlight developers, the authors go one step further by essentially offering side-by-side examples in Flash to help Flash-savvy designers and developers see the parallels in technique using Silverlight. It's a great approach to help experienced and new designers alike learn more about another potential tool they can stash in their technology bag of tricks.

And all indications are Project Rosetta is just at the beginning of a continued series of how to articles on using Silverlight, with parallel examples in Flash. So go check it out.