14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's Popfly project went live in 2007. Debuted into alpha stage at the beginning of the past year, Popfly evolved rapidly into beta and went live to all users in October 2007. In beta stage Popfly came to the table with a revamped graphical user interface and a range of enhancements across the board, including resolved bugs in the service. Designed to take advantage of Microsoft's Flash killer - Silverlight, Popfly is essentially a service that offers a collection of online visual tools set up to permit users to build mashups, gadgets, and even Web pages. At the end of the past week, Microsoft introduced its latest update to Popfly offering a few examples of how the evolution will benefit the end users.
"For everyone who has ever wanted to bring their own data into the mashup creator, we present the data source editor: comma separated values are converted into yellow data source blocks for use in the mashup designer. Improved search interface. Search for projects and users through the search bar located at the top of most pages. We've improved searching in Popfly Explorer as well. Build a better block. For the block creators out there, you now have the ability to upload images or any other supporting files to your block. Comments on profile pages. Reach out to other community members through profile page messages," revealed a member of the Popfly team.
Popfly is of course not only a way for Microsoft to spread Silverlight. It is also a way to make JavaScript, Ajax libraries, HTML, XHTML, CSS development accessible to a much broader audience than hardcore coders. The process associated with building and sharing mashups, gadgets, and Web pages has been streamlined to a maximum with the visual tools made available to end users. And on top of it all, Popfly is also an attempt of building a social networking hotspot, where users can host, share, rate, comment and redesign Popfly creations.
"Better ways to invite friends. We've improved the intelligence of the contact list import feature - find your friends who already have Popfly accounts, and invite others to play around with Popfly. New blocks. MovingSlideshow (smooth panning and zooming transitions) and RSSList (would look great in a blog sidebar). Help Wiki. Find more tutorials and getting started information at a new location: www.popflywiki.com. Help being relocated to the wiki - for now the team will be updating the wiki, but we're looking into opening this up to the entire community. Silverlight support in Popfly Explorer. You can now add Silverlight to your Popfly Web Site," added the Popfly team member.