Microsoft, long known for catering to the geekiest of programmers, recently unveiled the alpha version of Popfly Creator, its new platform aimed at building rich Internet applications and social networking software for nonprogrammers.
Popfly Creator, which combines a set of visual tools online for building web pages and mashups, along with Popfly Creator, Microsoft has also launched Popfly Space, an online social networking community of creators that lets you host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly designers.
Mashups are Web applications that combine content from more than one source.
Projects shared via Popfly Space can be rated, “remixed,” and embedded on web publishing platforms such as Typepad, Blogger, and Microsoft’s own Windows Live Spaces.
However, Popfly, which utilizes a unique interface, based on three-dimensional blocks, allowing users to integrate services such as Flickr with a few clicks. But the real power of the new online service — that sets Popfly apart from Yahoo Pipes — is the ease in which it can be done, without any technical know-how or development experience.
There is an obvious desire or need for people to want to create online applications, but it is too difficult today. So our goal is to democratize development, said Dan Fernandez, Microsoft’s lead project manager for Visual Studio Express, of the Popfly project.
The service utilizes Silverlight, the company’s proprietary “Flash-killer” development platform, giving users the ability to create complex online projects without the knowledge of HTML, XTML, CSS, AJAX, or other code.
Instead, Popfly is based on the concept of “Blocks,” akin to Lego blocks, which users can snap together to create applications and build Web sites to share with others, Fernandez said.
Popfly includes a builder tool that allows people to create an application by dragging and dropping block icons onto a design page. These blocks represent tasks or services, such as a widget that displays photos in a slide show, with which a person can build.
Microsoft has included 40 blocks that include content from Flickr, Windows Live Spaces, Virtual Earth and various news services. Behind these block icons are JavaScript, XML and Silverlight code. The company says more third party blocks are on the way, and developers can build them using Silverlight.
Popfly is Microsoft’s first technology based on the company’s Silverlight cross-browser, cross-platform technology for building RIAs (rich internet applications). The service itself is written using Silverlight, Microsoft’s browser plug-in.
The motivation behind Microsoft’s decision to create Popfly was that it wanted a software development tool for nonprofessionals. Microsoft is also considering offering a mashup authoring tool for business users, Fernandez said.
Popfly features four basic categories of Blocks: data services, logic blocks, transformation blocks and presentation blocks, the company said.
The app’s Web site creator is powered by Office Live Web Designer. Users can chose from more than 150 themes, add code, and embed mashups created with the service.
While Microsoft already has Visual Studio Web Express, which is a free low-end version of its professional development tool. But the company found that consumers had trouble working with it, in part because it required writing code. Popfly joins a group of existing web-based do-it-yourself authoring tools and services.
Google recently introduced a wizard for building mapping mashups, while Yahoo has Pipes for combing RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds to create new applications.
Popfly is compatible with both Internet Explorer and Firefox on Windows, and Firefox on the Mac. The free service gives users 25MB of space to store their creations in.
Due to load constraints, however, not everyone can take part in building applications online using Popfly at this point. Still in closed alpha stage, Popfly is currently invitation-only.
Microsoft plans to distribute invitations in phases, and is accepting requests on the Popfly homepage. Existing users will also receive invitations to distribute virally.