Microsoft Popfly (internally codenamed
Springfield) was a Web site that allowed users to create
web pageA webpage or web page is a document or resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a computer screen....
s, program snippets, and
mashupIn web development, a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason...
s using the
Microsoft SilverlightMicrosoft Silverlight is a web application framework, integrating multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment. Initially released as a video streaming plugin, later versions brought additional interactivity features and support for .NET languages and...
rich internet applications runtime and the set of online tools provided. It was discontinued on August 24, 2009.
The Popfly included four tools based on
SilverlightMicrosoft Silverlight is a web application framework, integrating multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment. Initially released as a video streaming plugin, later versions brought additional interactivity features and support for .NET languages and...
technology, which are described as follows.
The Game Creator was a tool that allowed you to create your own game or extend a game already built.
Microsoft Popfly (internally codenamed
Springfield) was a Web site that allowed users to create
web pageA webpage or web page is a document or resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a computer screen....
s, program snippets, and
mashupIn web development, a mashup is a web page or application that combines data or functionality from two or more external sources to create a new service. The term mashup implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs and data sources to produce results that were not the original reason...
s using the
Microsoft SilverlightMicrosoft Silverlight is a web application framework, integrating multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment. Initially released as a video streaming plugin, later versions brought additional interactivity features and support for .NET languages and...
rich internet applications runtime and the set of online tools provided. It was discontinued on August 24, 2009.
Tools
The Popfly included four tools based on
SilverlightMicrosoft Silverlight is a web application framework, integrating multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment. Initially released as a video streaming plugin, later versions brought additional interactivity features and support for .NET languages and...
technology, which are described as follows.
Game Creator
The Game Creator was a tool that allowed you to create your own game or extend a game already built. It could be exported to
FacebookFacebook is a global social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and...
, or be used as a Windows Live Gadget.
Mashup Creator
The Mashup Creator was a tool that let users fit together pre-built blocks in order to mash together different web services and visualization tools. For example, a user could join together photo and map blocks in order to get a geotagged map of pictures on a topic of their choice. An advanced view for blocks allowed users to modify the code of the block in
JavaScriptJavaScript is an object-oriented scripting language used to enable programmatic access to objects within both the client application and other applications. It is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as an integrated component of the web browser, allowing the...
, as well as giving users flexibility in designing the programs. Additional
HTMLHTML, which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows images...
code could also be added to the mashups. A feature similar to
IntelliSenseIntelliSense is Microsoft's implementation of autocompletion, best known for its use in the Microsoft Visual Studio integrated development environment...
, with autocompletion of HTML code, was available as well.
The Mashup Creator also provided a preview function, with live preview in the background as users link blocks. Tutorials were available, and error notices were given to users when incompatible data was sent between blocks.
Web Creator
The Web Creator was a tool for creating Web pages. The user interface layout was similar to the ribbon
user interfaceThe user interface is the aggregate of means by which people—the users—interact with the system—a particular machine, device, computer program or other complex tool...
for Office 2007. Web pages were created without HTML coding, and could be customized by choosing predefined themes, styles, and color schemes. Users could embed their shared mashups in the Web page. Completed Web pages could also be saved in each user's Popfly space.
Popfly Space
Completed mashups and Web pages were stored on Popfly Space (100MB maximum per user), where users also received a customizable profile page and other social networking features. Public projects could be shared, rated, or "ripped" by other users. Popfly allowed users to download mashups as gadgets for
Windows SidebarThe Windows Desktop Gadgets is a widget engine for Microsoft Gadgets. It was introduced with Windows Vista, in which it features a sidebar anchored to the side of the desktop, but this was removed in Windows 7. Its widgets, called Gadgets, can perform various tasks, such as displaying the time and...
or embed them into
Windows Live SpacesWindows Live Spaces is Microsoft's blogging and Social Networking platform. The site was originally released in early 2004 under the MSN Spaces name to compete with other social networking sites...
, with some support for other blog service providers.
Another feature of Popfly Space was the Popfly Explorer plug-in for
Visual Studio ExpressMicrosoft Visual Studio Express is a set of freeware integrated development environments developed by Microsoft that are lightweight versions of the Microsoft Visual Studio product line...
. Users could utilize Visual Studio Express (Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions or higher required) to download the mashups and modify the coding, as well as perform actions such as uploading, sharing, ripping, and rating the mashups.
Shutdown
On July 16, 2009, the Popfly team announced that the Popfly service would be discontinued on August 24, 2009. All sites, references and resources would be taken down.
Adam NathanAdam Nathan is a technical author/speaker, and currently works as a software developer at Microsoft. Adam is the core architect of Microsoft Popfly. He has been involved with .NET technologies from the beginning, and has written a 1,600-page book on .NET/COM Interoperability...
and Ben Anderson from the Popfly team have made a piece of software which allows Popfly users to download any shared game on Popfly.
Link to software.
See also
- Google Mashup Editor
Google Mashup Editor was an online mashup creation service created by Google that is now deprecated.-History:On 15 January 2009, Vic Gundotra, Google's VP of Engineering, announced that the Mashup Editor would be migrated to the Google App Engine: "Existing Mashup Editor applications will stop...
(Deprecated, since January 14, 2009)
- JackBe
JackBe, founded in 2001 in Mexico, is a privately-held software provider of enterprise mashup software. JackBe's corporate headquarters are located in Chevy Chase, Maryland...
- Mozilla Ubiquity
Ubiquity, an add-on for Mozilla Firefox, is a collection of quick and easy natural-language-derived commands that act as mashups of web services, thus allowing users to get information and relate it to current and other webpages...
- Yahoo! Pipes
Yahoo! Pipes is a web application from Yahoo! that provides a graphical user interface for building data mashups that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps...
- Scratch programming language
Scratch is an interpreted dynamic visual programming language based on and implemented in Squeak. Being dynamic, it lets code be changed even as programs are running...
- EMML
EMML, or Enterprise Mashup Markup Language, is an XML markup language for creating enterprise mashups. EMML is currently a proprietary language that a vendor uses and is trying to have adopted as a standard. Enterprise mashups are logical entities that consume and mash data from variety of data...
- Open Mashup Alliance
The Open Mashup Alliance is a non-profit consortium that promotes the adoption of mashup solutions in the enterprise through the evolution of enterprise mashup standards like EMML. Enteprise mashup usage is expected to grow tenfold in the next five years...
External links