With summer upon us, it's time to update Popfly again. Yesterday we updated our servers with a host of new features including updates to the game creator, the mashup editor, and many overall site improvements. Adam Nathan has written an excellent post on a lot of these improvements, but some of the biggest are:
Full Facebook applications. For a long time you've been able to publish Popfly creations to Facebook, but now you can make them full Facebook applications, including the features necessary to use Facebook's friends network to invite your friends to use your applications.
New mashup editor UI. The mashup editor is now consistent with the game creator UI, which should make it a lot easier to use.
Publish your own game actors. Until now, if you created an actor for your game you couldn't share it. Now you can.
Better project page. We've improved the page that's generated for each project, making the layout easier to understand and adding information such as the number of views each project has gotten.
There's a lot more in this release, so come back and visit.
Our announcement two weeks ago of the Popfly Game Creator caused a lot of people to come to the site and build interesting, fun games. Some of the team's personal picks are now on our Wiki. Check them out!
The Popfly Game Creator comes with a set of video tutorials on the Popfly Wiki that show you how to use it. If you just watch one video today, you should probably watch something else, but if you are going to watch two, watch oneofthese.
Today we’re adding something special to Popfly: an early version of our Popfly Game Creator. That’s right: Popfly is about more than mashups and web pages. It’s about making it fun to build things and share them with your friends. And one of the things we’ve heard loud and clear is that games are the kinds of things that people would like to try to build.
What kinds of games can you create? Just about any kind of two-dimensional game, a category that includes things like the original Super Mario™, Frogger™, Asteroids™, and a host of other old arcade games. To make it easy, Popfly is still focused on getting as much done as possible without having to write any code. The game creator has over 15 pre-built game templates for you to try, hundreds of images, animations, backgrounds, and sounds for you to use in the games you create, and, of course, a way for you to write code if you reach the limits of what the user interface can do for you. Since this is Popfly, you can still save, share, and embed your creations everywhere from your blog to your Facebook page to your Windows Vista Sidebar.
We’re not forgetting mashups either. We revamped the interface for embedding mashups in other web pages, improved performance and caching, updated the Twitter block, and even created a nice World of Warcraft™ mashup that you can add to your Facebook page.
On Saturday May 3 -- that's a week from today -- members of the Popfly team will be at O'Reilly's Maker Faire in San Mateo, CA.
If you remember last year's Maker Faire, we did two things: we debuted Popfly and we set up shop and painted rubber ducks. Both were obviously important -- historic, in fact -- events, so this year we will be showing more new stuff and we'll have more duck painting. So come on by and visit.
Popfly has been nominated for the CNET Webware 100 awards – the top 100 coolest online apps! We’ve been selected as one of the 300 finalists by CNET editors. That's a huge accomplishment, but now it’s up to you to decide which services are the Webware 100 winners by voting for your favorites.
As you can imagine, we’re pretty pleased just to be nominated, but we’d be more pleased if we actually won and to do that, we need your help: we need you to vote. They’ve made it pretty simple: just click on this link and you’ll be directed to a page where Popfly is automatically checked. You’re allowed up to three votes per person. Winners are announced on April 21.
There’s a lot of great competition, so please help Popfly win!
Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of this day, we are sending you an updated version of Popfly, including two user contributed logos from Jimmy Baw and Shaan Agarwal from Bentley College. If you have an image that’ll make a good logo send it our way (though keep in mind you need to own the copyright on any image you submit to us). You can test out your logo ideas with this handy mashup.
Also in this version:
Data sources, a.k.a. yellow blocks. 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.
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.
We’ve also updated the Popfly privacy statement. To see the updated statement, please see the privacy statement link in the footer of the site.
'Twas the day of deployment and all through the house, a few creatures were stirring, mostly our developers. We just deployed our latest build of Popfly and Popfly Explorer, so it's a good time to tell you what to expect:
Integrated block creation. You can now create, debug, and publish Popfly blocks directly from Visual Studio. This is a huge advance for our block creators since you can use the powerful Visual Studio JavaScript editor rather than the Popfly block editor. Documentation for that is here.
Block editor IntelliSense in Popfly Explorer. With full IntelliSense for creating the XML and JavaScript, producing a block description is now easier than ever..
Improved search. In the past, Popfly Explorer search is a bit limited; the new search UI makes it easy to find projects of different types created by different people.
Popfly
WSDL block generation. Point Popfly at a WSDL file and it will automatically generate the stub of a block.
Panning. Ever opened a mashup in edit view and the blocks go off the screen? Well you can now scroll left and right. This one was, as you can imagine, a big customer request.
Developer keys in preview. Wonder why your Facebook mashups don't show your friends in preview? So did we, and so we fixed it: Popfly now uses your developer key for any given service if you have one and only use our preview keys when you don't have one.
Mashups mash more smoothly. We’ve improved the parameter matching when you connect blocks.
Block editor preview. Get a quick preview of changes to your block by clicking the Save and Run button within the block editor.
Documentation. We've been a bit remiss in documenting particularly the changes to the block creation experience. Now with the integration into Visual Studio through Popfly Explorer we've updated the documentation. And check out the documentation for advanced mode in the Mashup designer
PC World just announced its list of the top 25 most innovative products for 2007 and Popfly is on it! This is obviously a huge award for the Popfly team -- we've spent a year working long hours to get a pretty non-traditional Microsoft product out the door and awards like this mean a lot to us. There are a lot of people we'd like to thank for their support: Somasegar, our VP for believing us, the editors at PC World for recognizing us, and especially we owe thanks to the people who have been willing to spend the time using Popfly and giving us feedback and asking questions in our forums.
Of course in the minds of a bunch of software developers, there's no better way to say thanks than by adding new features, so here are a few:
Email notifications. If you have a Popfly account you probably got an email from us recently letting you know that we've added a feature so that Popfly will send you email when certain things happen, for example, when someone adds you as a friend.
Advanced Halo 3 Gamer Card. We've created a new block that shows Halo 3 statistics for you and your friends, with special attention to working well on Facebook.
E-Cards. It is the holiday season, and what holiday would be complete without being able to send your friends your mashups as e-cards?
We have a lot more in the pipeline, but if you haven't been back to Popfly in a while, give it a try.
Microsoft® Popfly™ is a beta release right now. What that means is when the terms of use talk about the software being provided "as is," we mean it. Most other people only kind of mean it. We really, really mean it. Stuff will break. We’ll just apologize in advance. Sorry.
So what do you need to know? Here are the top things you probably want to know about our site. If you find others, feel free to visit our forums and give us as much information there as possible.
The Basics
You need a Windows Live ID associated with an email address to create a Popfly account. You can get a Live ID at http://login.live.com.
You need IE 6, IE 7, or Firefox 2.0. We support IE 6 and 7 (Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista) and Firefox 2 (Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X).
On Firefox, you may get a message about not being able to verify the identity of the site; it’s a minor certificate problem that we’re fixing very soon.
Popfly Mashup Creator
You may get some strange IntelliSense behavior when you’re using the advanced view.
Some display blocks that use Silverlight can only display images in the PNG and JPEG formats. Other formats, such as GIF, will not be displayed, and you may see an error message.
Popfly Web Editor
We don’t let you type in your own HTML and JavaScript. If you want custom HTML and JavaScript, download Popfly Explorer and use Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer Express.
Popfly Embedding and Project Handling
Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets are small so some output types (such as Virtual Earth-based mashups) won’t display well.
You can't rename projects. If you need to, open the project, click "save as," then delete the old copy or use Popfly Explorer.
Popfly Explorer
You’ll get an error when you try to open a project that is not supported by the SKU you are currently running Popfly Explorer in – so, for example, you can’t open VB projects in Visual C# Express (which makes sense when you think about it).
Renaming a solution when it’s open will break the association with the version on the web site.
Last month we took the Popfly web site into beta with better gadget support, tweaking support, and some new blocks. This morning at 5AM PST at Tech Ed EMEASomasegar (our divisional vice president) and Dan Fernandez (our marketing lead) showed off the new version of Popfly Explorer, the Visual Studio extension that enables you to save and share Visual Studio applications on the Popfly web site. Enhancements to Popfly Explorer include:
You can create and host full web pages using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS on Popfly
You can embed Popfly mashups into HTML pages
It works on Visual Web Developer Express
It works on Visual Studio 2008 (beta 2 and later) as well as Visual Studio 2005
Microsoft® Popfly™ is a beta release right now. What that means is when the terms of use talk about the software being provided "as is," we mean it. Most other people only kind of mean it. We really, really mean it. Stuff will break. We’ll just apologize in advance. Sorry.
So what do you need to know? Here are the top things you probably want to know about our site. If you find others, feel free to visit our forums and give us as much information there as possible.
The Basics
You need a Windows Live ID associated with an email address to create a Popfly account. You can get a Live ID at http://login.live.com.
You need IE 6, IE 7, or Firefox 2.0. We support IE 6 and 7 (Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista) and Firefox 2 (Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X).
You need Silverlight™. To use some of our site you’ll need Silverlight™ 1.0 from http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/install.aspx. Don’t worry, it’s small and we’ll even check if you have it installed for you and give you a link to install it.
On Firefox, you may get a message about not being able to verify the identity of the site; it’s a minor certificate problem that we’re fixing very soon.
Popfly Mashup Creator
You may get some strange IntelliSense behavior in Firefox 2.0.
We’re still working through some Silverlight-on-Mac issues.
If you installed either the December or February WPF/E CTP, you'll need to remove it before installing Silverlight 1.0 .
Display blocks that use Silverlight (such as Carousel or PhotoTiles) can only display images in the PNG and JPEG formats. Other formats, such as GIF, will not be displayed, and you may see an error message.
Popfly Web Editor
We don’t let you type in your own HTML and JavaScript, but you can create a mashup with custom HTML and JavaScript then embed it in the page. If you want custom HTML and JavaScript, you can use the Custom HTML view from the Mashup creator.
It’s a little wonky in Firefox 2.0.
Popfly Space
Our support for Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets is still developing – the sizes of the gadgets in particular will probably come out wrong.
You can't rename projects. If you need to, open the project, click "save as," then delete the old copy.
Popfly Projects
Our support for Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets is still developing – the sizes of the gadgets in particular will probably come out wrong.
You can’t rename projects. If you need to, open the project, click "save as," then delete the old copy.
Popfly Explorer
Popfly Explorer won’t work on Visual Studio 2008. You may be able to install it and it may even pretend to run, but we haven’t tested it.
Popfly Explorer won’t work on Visual Web Developer Express 2005.
You’ll get an error when you try to open a project that is not supported by the SKU you are currently running Popfly Explorer in – so, for example, you can’t open VB projects in Visual C# Express 2005 (which makes sense when you think about it).
Your first login may take a while and you may need to press the sign-in button more than once.
Popfly Explorer enables you to create, save, share, and open Visual Studio® 2005 projects onto the Popfly network. It doesn’t enable you to open Popfly projects (e.g. mashups).
Conversely, you can’t open Visual Studio 2005 projects using Popfly without using Popfly Explorer.
Renaming a solution when it’s open will break the association with the version on the web site.
Yes, you can invite yourself to be your own friend. It’s weird, but self-affirming.
Over the last few weeks we’ve added many features and polished the user interface. We’ve taken feedback from our alpha testers, and ironed bugs. We’re not “done,” but we’re certainly feeling good enough about the release to move from calling it alpha to beta.
In fact, we feel good enough about Popfly to remove the invitation-only restriction: as of today, all you need to get into Popfly is a Live ID. More than that, we’ve introduced many features:
Gadgets. Popfly can create both Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets and Windows Live gadgets.
Tweaking and Properties. Last iteration, we added “tweaking,” but many blocks didn’t have a lot of properties to tweak, so we added properties to a host of our output blocks including Photoshow, Virtual Earth, PhotoSphere, Gauge, and Page Turner.
Tweaking and the color picker. When you tweak a mashup you now have a color picker so you don’t have to remember the alphanumeric codes for colors.
New and updated blocks. Popfly has a category for new and updated blocks.
New screencasts. Updated videos explaining how to use Popfly.
One of the fun parts of building on pre-release technologies (as Silverlight 1.0 was when we started Popfly) is that you get little oddities throughout the process. One of these has come in the form of a namespace change: If you have any references to Sys.Silverlight replace them with Silverlight. Even better is to call createSilverlightBlockEx – take a look at the block building guide to see how this works. If you don’t make the changes, you’ll find that your blocks start to throw errors.
Want to know more about how to use the Facebook block and other Facebook-related features in Popfly? Check out some video tutorials we put together: (It's a three part series.)
Hopefully these help you to get started with this popular block and give you some new ways to share your creations. Let us know if you have any other video tutorial requests.
This morning we deployed the latest version of Popfly to our servers. Here are three cool new features (among many) that you'll find with this release:
Tweaking. Easier than ripping someone else's project, tweaking enables you to change basic properties of that project and save it. For example, if see a great mashup that uses photos of cats, but you want to see dogs, you can now do it without needing to rip the entire project.
Integration with Dapper. Dapper is a tool that transforms web sites into other content types (e.g. RSS feeds or straight XML), so you can now take web sites that may not have associated blocks, create a Dapper "Dapp," then use the Dapp within Popfly. See the Dapper tutorial here.
Embed in Facebook. Before, Popfly would publish a link to your profile page. Now you can embed an entire application.
In addition, you'll see some other nice changes:
A new, cleaner (and faster-loading) user interface
Blocks organized by category
Searching for projects, top projects, and top contributors
The ability to email links to your friends
Block properties so, for example, you can change things such as the frame color
Silverlight is growing up! The beta version has now expired, and the release candidate is out. For the smoothest installation experience, we recommend you uninstall the beta before installing the latest version.
As you may have noticed, we've changed the Popfly logo from the ducks to something a bit more subtle, but something that opens the door to a lot more creativity. We call them "thought bubbles." The logo consists of the Microsoft Popfly "lockup" with the addition of two circles set at a specific angle.
We wanted to have something that we could change with new imagery and new ideas when the mood struck us. The two circles can be used in myriad ways. You can put just about any image into them. We've tried it with birds, the Popfly ducks, people, street signs, and you've probably already met Attention Dog.
Want to create your own Popfly logo? The coolest thing about the new logo system is that it is open to interpretation by anyone. If you wanted to create your own Popfly logo, you'd just need to follow a few simple rules:
Size and Proportion. The circles must always assume the same size, proportion, and angle position. The icon and the logo may be used independently of each other but must always appear on the same visual plane (for example, the same side of a printed piece).
Clear Space. For consistency, the Popfly logo should not be placed too tightly against type, other graphic elements, or page trim. Use the height of the lowercase “o” in “Popfly” (x-height) as a measurement unit. Allow a minimum distance of 1 x-height around all four sides of the logo.
Minimum Size. To establish the minimum size for the Popfly logo, measure the distance from the left side of the “P” in “Popfly” to the right side of the icon. This distance should never be less than 1” for print or online.
When you're done, you can email the logo to poplogo at microsoft dot com.
Many of you have asked about the "Invite a Friend" link that Popfly sports. When you clicked on it, you got the message that you had no invitations remaining.
But today that's changing.
As of today, every Popfly member gets 5 invitations that you can send out to whomever they want. (Yes, whomever. We're pretty sure that's grammatically correct, even if it does sound weird.)
What does it take to send an invitation? Not much. Your invitees do need to have Windows Live IDs for an email account, but that's not a huge deal for most people. It doesn't have to be an @hotmail.com account or an @msn.com account either -- any email address can have a Live ID. If they don't, they're going to need to visit http://login.live.com and create one -- it takes between one and five minutes. They can even create the Live ID after they've received the invitation email.
Here's how to do it:
Step 1:click on the Socialize menu and pick "Invite a Friend."
Step 2: start typing in the email addresses of folks you'd like to invite. (Yes, I have 163 invitations remaining -- I work here. ;-) You can enter one email address per line. When you're done, click the Next button.
Step 3: if you want, enter some personal text for the email invitation. You can also leave it blank. We fill out the basic form for you with the information that the invitee will need. When you're done, click the Next button.
Step 4: preview the result. You get a last chance to see to whom you're sending your invitations (yes, whom again) and any custom text that the invitees will see. If it looks OK, click on "Send the Invitations." In a few moments they should receive an email from your Live ID with a link inviting them into Popfly.
People who join Popfly after today won't get invitations for a while (that is, they will start with 0 invitations and eventually we'll grant them some invitations).
Popfly Team SitePhotosProfileFriends
Tools 
Print
On Saturday May 3 -- that's a week from today -- members of the Popfly team will be at O'Reilly's 
