Microsoft Project Rosetta

With Silverlight, Microsoft is challenging Adobe's Flash position of the ubiquitous tool for the development of web-based Rich Interactive Applications. Now at Silverlight 2.0 Beta 2, the Redmond company is working not only to spread the technology as much as possible to end users, but also to attract developers, even beyond those already coding in .NET. This is where Microsoft's Project Rosetta comes in, which, while being focused on Silverlight, is in fact aimed at attracting Flash developers to the software giant's alternative.

“Project Rosetta is a site dedicated to helping designers and developers build applications in Silverlight while taking advantage of skills they already know. Each article on the site will focus on one technology, and through multiple lessons, demonstrate how existing knowledge and skills can be transferred to another technology. Articles will include assets and source code and show a direct comparison between accomplishing the same task in each technology,” reads a message posted on the website.

The project has been christened after the Rosetta Stone, the black stone slab discovered in the Nile Valley of Egypt by the French army in 1799, which served as the key to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphics. And just as the stone features multiple scripts, so does the Rosetta Project offer a palpable comparison between development in Flash and in Silverlight, side by side. The website features a link to “The Next Iteration” whitepaper put together by Jaime Rodriguez and Karsten Januszewski, but also the “From Flash to Silverlight” article authored by Rick Barraza.

“As we explore visual programming in Silverlight over these next 10 lessons, we will use popular Flash techniques as a common ground and reference. Flash is clearly an industry standard for creating dynamic visuals for the web and it is usually a designer's first taste of interactive programming. Those of us who have been working and playing with Flash from its earliest days almost a decade ago have seen it grow and mature over the years into a great tool for our interactive designer's toolbox. But with Silverlight 2.0 rapidly moving into the market of rich online experiences, we may be finding ourselves wanting or needing to expand our toolbox yet again to master this young but powerful contender,” Barraza indicated.

Here are the downloads for Silverlight 2 Beta 2 from Softpedia:

- Microsoft Silverlight 2.0.30523.6 Beta 2 - Microsoft Silverlight 2.0.30523.6 SDK Beta 2 - Microsoft Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008 2.0 - Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 June 2008 Preview.