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October 18, 2007

Microsoft Launches Drag-And-Drop App Builder Popfly

Erick Schonfeld

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Microsoft just demoed on stage at the Web 2.0 conference a slick Silverlight application development service called Popfly, which just opened up in beta. Popfly lets anyone, even non-coders, create web mashups without writing a single line of code. It’s all drag-and-drop in the browser (based on Silverlight, Microsoft’s answer to Flash/Flex and Ajax). The demo showed how to build a digital photo book of all your Facebook friends. It started with a box representing Facebook, and in a pane on the left were listed other data sets that can connect to Facebook, such as photos on another service or Technorati rankings. By simply dragging and dropping icons representing these sets of data and connecting them together with lines, a Silverlight application was built on the fly. Of course, like any demo, this one was a bit canned. But if Popfly turns out to be half as easy as Microsoft made it look on stage, it should have lots of takers.

Any TechCrunch readers who check it out, please report back your impressions in comments.

popfly.png

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 9:12 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles, Web 2.0 News & Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

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    October 18th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

  2. Aqua Regia - Mashups and the Implicit Web

    October 18th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

  3. 94files » Blog Archive » Microsoft Launches Drag-And-Drop App Builder Popfly

    October 20th, 2007 at 3:27 am

  4. Marc’s Voice » Blog Archive » Getting ready for a big November - and blogging about it

    October 21st, 2007 at 2:58 pm

  5. SharePointed » Archive » Microsoft Popfly goes to public Beta, and SharePoint users can join in on the fun, too!

    October 31st, 2007 at 10:25 am

  6. PopFly: My First Mashup | blog.merge.nl

    November 2nd, 2007 at 4:52 am

Comments

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  1. Deals and Coupons

    October 18th, 2007 at 9:21 am

    This is exciting as I am a .NET developer interested in learning Silverlight. I can see this takes off easily.

  2. Jamie Thomson

    October 18th, 2007 at 9:23 am

    I’ve been using Popfly on-and-off for quite a while. Tr principles are pretty good but its still got some way to go.

    For example, the things it produces (gadgets for Live Spaces, applications for Facebook) don’t function particulalry well once theiy are embed (in my opinion anyway). They seem to appear as two left arros (i.e.

  3. whoopie

    October 18th, 2007 at 9:32 am

    this will be another dud from msft

    the simple truth is that developers no longer see any value in msft-sourced platforms

    .net hasn’t made a substantial dent in java use, resume searches don’t indicate a spike in adoption either

    rejoice! we complained about msft’s proprietary crap for years and now we have open alternatives that are indeed dominant (web, open networking, etc)

    msft will discover far too late that its day as make of platforms is over

  4. magnusdopus

    October 18th, 2007 at 9:34 am

    I gave it a shot and my browser is crawling from the Silverlight embed. Looks pretty cool overall. I couldn’t figure out how to drop a pinpoint on a map. Seems to have 3D support. Can anyone confirm this?
    And since when did Microsoft have their own TLD (.ms)?

    Like I said before, MSFT will really push the Silverlight pretty hard. I predict that Facebook’s video, music platform will be based on it. Hence MSFT’s 5% pre-ipo investment.

  5. Bartek

    October 18th, 2007 at 9:39 am

    Reminds me of Yahoo Pipes. Otherwise, this looks pretty fun and I messed around with it for about 10 minutes but apart from that I see no potential for it. As a developer, I could not see myself using this thing for any serious projects.

  6. Rob

    October 18th, 2007 at 9:39 am

    This seems more like Microsoft’s version of Yahoo Pipes perhaps? I wouldn’t really call it their answer to Ajax, since while they rarely get the credit, they actually invented it.

    http://blog.thetechnonaut.com

  7. Jonathan

    October 18th, 2007 at 9:43 am

    That’s funny, most people will think Microsoft have their own tld, good marketing. Two letter TLD’s are assigned to countries: http://www.iana.org/root-whois/index.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ms

    Look forward to more silverlight demos, so far my experience is it’s clunky and not lightweight enough for the web (at this moment).

  8. Sriram Krishnan [MSFT]

    October 18th, 2007 at 9:49 am

    @Jamie - I work for Popfly. Can you mail me (sriramk@microsoft.com) and tell me the name of the Popfly project you’ve created that is not displaying correctly?

    Thanks,
    Sriram

  9. Jamie Thomson

    October 18th, 2007 at 9:54 am

    Whoopie/Bartek,
    Why did you mention the word “developers”. This isn’t aimed at developers - its aimed at your average joe web user that haven’t got the talent to write decent code (i.e. people like me).

    Rob, Erick didn’t say that Popfly is an “answer” to AJAX, he said SilverLight was. I would agree with you that that is not really true.

    Regards
    -Jamie

    P.S. Half of my earlier reply has disappeared. I know not why.

  10. Amy Wilsch

    October 18th, 2007 at 9:57 am

    I like it; what’s on the java side that’s equivalent? I like writing in C#

    Something that’s not nearly as robust and only for the Mac but I sat in on a demo for SandVox the other day - it’s too basic for probably most of the TC readership but it’s nice to pass along to anyone who wants to build a website with drag and drop tools. Simple enough to use. They have several design skins to use, mostly personal vs. business feel but still very easy to use and cheap, like $35 or something. http://www.karelia.com/

  11. Barry

    October 18th, 2007 at 10:03 am

    Install Silverlight just to kick the tires on this (or any) app? No thank you. Maybe I’ll get it the next time I upgrade my browser, but until then, no way. I’m only a fair-weather early-adopter.

  12. Thricer

    October 18th, 2007 at 10:17 am

    whoopie,

    You’re just a troll. There are tons of .NET developer positions. And I guess the .NET platform has not had an impact; why else would they have created on open-source implementation - Mono - based on it? /sarcasm

  13. Thricer

    October 18th, 2007 at 10:19 am

    should clarify, “they” being Novell-Ximian, not MS

  14. Moljen

    October 18th, 2007 at 10:28 am

    Popfly would be very nice to have on a multitouch screen like the Microsoft Surface. Or Jeff Hans Interactive Wal

  15. David

    October 18th, 2007 at 10:28 am

    Used it for a while…far better than Yahoo pipes…although I find the apps a bit slow when running them

  16. Moljen

    October 18th, 2007 at 10:28 am

    Popfly would be very nice to have on a multitouch screen like the Microsoft Surface. Or Jeff Hans Interactive Wall

  17. FakeMA

    October 18th, 2007 at 10:38 am

    Launched??? This has been around for like ages now…and i posted link to it in comments so many times only to be ignored…???

  18. Kylie B.

    October 18th, 2007 at 10:46 am

    I am looking forward to playing around with this technology. Microsoft really needs to take the lead in this area IMO.

    http://www.popflyforum.com

  19. markus941

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:15 am

    I played with it. It is a bit like Yahoo Pipes, but with a slicker interface. I don’t really get it though. It seems as if though they are targeting the not-as-savvy with a product that still requires understanding of programming concepts or how a mashup works.

    I’ve yet to find a good example of why someone would use this in a practical application, outside of putting your flickr photos on a rotating cube.

  20. blaze

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:17 am

    The drag and drop reminds me of Authorware
    I personally don’t think this will go far. As a designer and developer, I see no point in using it to handle projects.

  21. John Stoltenborg

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:29 am

    Microsoft can’t be serious.

  22. whoopie

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:32 am

    @Thricer - mono was started when .net was initially announced, my only guess is that miguel and co. saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of something they though was going to be big.

    miguel was wrong, arguably he fell for a massive marketing campaign. mono is hardly used even on linux…very few apps use it, it has not been a game-changer.

    even msft has more or less bailed on .net. it was supposed to power msft’s own desktop apps but that never played out

  23. bartipoo

    October 18th, 2007 at 11:51 am

    I have been using it for a few weeks.

    It looks really cool but it is not as user friendly in real life. It also does seem clunky.

    I triend putting it on my website and had a bunch of problems.

  24. Sriram Krishnan [MSFT]

    October 18th, 2007 at 12:17 pm

    @bartipoo - can you mail me (sriramk@microsoft.com) and tell me what problems you faced (or point me to your site)?

  25. Tim Sweeney

    October 18th, 2007 at 12:32 pm

    Yet another web site that requires going to some other web site to install some proprietary browser plug-in. Web standards are a nice thing; Microsoft ought to use them.

  26. Denis - MashupMania

    October 18th, 2007 at 12:47 pm

    Folks,

    We are launching an alternative to Yahoo Pipes and PopFly, it’s called MashupMania.com. It’s still (early) beta, but we’d love to get some feedack from people who are obviously interested in Mashup tools.
    Oh, be aware this only runs in Firefox - we really meant ‘alternative’ to PopFly :-)

    Here’s the quick info on MashupMania:
    MashupMania is an expandable web-based ajax platform for rapid web mashup development.
    Its straightforward visual approach allows for the building up of simple to complex web-data processing and recombining applications, that is mashups that can be easily redistributed or recombined themselves.

    Feel free to provide some feedback - Apologies is this sounds like a shameless plug to you - we are just eager to get people’s reaction to an approach that’s different from the well known tools out there.

    Denis

  27. Hyder

    October 18th, 2007 at 12:57 pm

    @magnusdopus

    The .ms domain belongs to the British overseas territory of Montserrat. It’s located in the Caribbean Islands.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montserrat

    http://www.101domain.com/ms.htm

  28. Alex

    October 18th, 2007 at 1:06 pm

    Anybody tried AlchemyPoint, from Orchestr8? It’s another mashup tool, but doesn’t require any sort of Silverlight/etc runtime. Also worth checking out is MashMaker, from Intel.

  29. Hammer

    October 18th, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    Givin r00t to M$ in my boxen?

    hahaha nice try M$!

  30. EH

    October 18th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

    Cue “Microsoft’s pathological not-invented-here business model” music.

  31. EH

    October 18th, 2007 at 1:13 pm

    er, that should be “…not-invented-here syndrome business model”…

  32. EH

    October 18th, 2007 at 1:16 pm

    “Oh, be aware this (MashupMania) only runs in Firefox - we really meant ‘alternative’ to PopFly”

    Running on only one browser is hardly alternative.

  33. Sriram Krishnan [MSFT]

    October 18th, 2007 at 2:23 pm

    Regarding Popfly and Silverlight, I wanted to clarify something - the mashups you create using Popfly need not use Silverlight (they could be plain old HTML+JS).

    Think of Popfly as an IDE built using Silverlight using which you can create any type of mashup- both using Silverlight and without Silverlight.

    Regarding browser support, Popfly runs on Firefox 2.0+ and IE6.0+ on Windows and Mac.

  34. Pradeep Sethi

    October 18th, 2007 at 2:45 pm

    Check out a simple app that I built using Popfly in

  35. Pradeep Sethi

    October 18th, 2007 at 2:46 pm

    Check out a simple app that I built using Popfly in less than 5 minutes at http://www.siteindia.com & also my blog post on Popfly earlier this month.

    http://psethi.wordpress.com/20.....ft-popfly/

  36. Pradeep Sethi

    October 18th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

    Btw, by default Popfly puts a Popfly logo & the link to Popfly site, if you try to embed the Popfly code in your site.

    However, you can get rid of the Popfly logo etc by not using the embed code provided by Popfly & pointing directly to the “RunViewer.aspx” from Popfly.ms . Ffor instance (you would need to point to your pop-fly & the project name however) :

    http://popflycreator.ms/Viewer.....ul%20delhi

  37. phenom

    October 18th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    wow that is pretty cool….although saying that I prefer open source apps

  38. Denis - MashupMania

    October 18th, 2007 at 4:34 pm

    …MashupMania… “running on firefox only’s hardly an alternative to PopFly”…. which only runs on Windows only right? :-).
    But point taken though, MashupMania might not be presented as alternative in the sense that you can’t do all the things you could do in PopFly with MashupMania, and vice-versa.

  39. Ric

    October 18th, 2007 at 4:54 pm

    Sriram,

    I joined PopFly back in May, and was not impressed. However, upon review it seems your team has done a great job improving the interface! I am a Microsoft developer by day and and very excited about SilverLight (I own the #1 site on XAML) - however, I am also interested in OpenAjax - can you point to some resources on how does PopFly work with other frameworks?

    Thanks
    Ric
    OpenAjax

  40. Dev

    October 18th, 2007 at 6:07 pm

    Launched????
    Yea like months ago..
    Well not suprised.. another blog by Eric

  41. chunnibabu

    October 18th, 2007 at 8:24 pm

    I love this. This will ultimately engulf google docs and other such ajax initiatives. With a full-fledged development environment like silverlight anything is a possible and can be done lot faster. MS will make sure silverlight is in everydesktop and ppl still trying to push ajax to its limits will be left far far behind. The future has been predicted. Amen.

  42. chunnibabu

    October 18th, 2007 at 8:27 pm

    Sriram sir,

    congrats for a job well done. pls have a maximize window option - scrollbars are looking ugly, let it scale and fit the window.

  43. James

    October 18th, 2007 at 8:29 pm

    Techcrunch writers need to spell check or review their articles before posting. I seem to be seeing more typos lately.

  44. Jon

    October 18th, 2007 at 8:42 pm

    Microsoft forgot the extra o in the name of this application - use your imagination as to where it should go.

    Jon

  45. Tony Chen

    October 18th, 2007 at 8:45 pm

    Popfly has been around here for quite a while (in Internet time).

    Techcrunch already had a posting here:

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....lverlight/

    Quite old!

  46. Sriram Krishnan [MSFT]

    October 19th, 2007 at 12:42 am

    @Ric - regarding other frameworks, you can put pretty much any JS code you want inside Popfly. So if you copy paste the framework code when you write custom code in Popfly, it should ‘just work’. Popfly uses Microsoft ASP.NET Ajax internally so that is included by default.

    @chunnibabu - that is the iframe tag’s height and width attributes you’re running into. We cant expand that ourselves from inside the iframe but you can change the attributes before you embed the iframe.

  47. zach

    October 19th, 2007 at 1:34 am

    Isn’t this — except the part about the presentation — really old news?

  48. zach

    October 19th, 2007 at 1:36 am

    Maybe TC should get peer edited; so many simple typos and misspellings. Instead of most of your comments being corrections, just let users suggest edits.

    There’s your startup. That one’s for free.

    takemorephotos.com

  49. corle

    October 19th, 2007 at 8:15 am

    Think of Popfly as an IDE built using Silverlight using which you can create any type of mashup- both using Silverlight and without Silverlight.

  50. Eran Shir

    October 19th, 2007 at 10:24 am

    Congrats to Popfly! We’re happy to work with them to lower the barrier for people to fulfill their web dreams. The Dapper block in Popfly lets you work with any site on the web.
    Kodus John!

  51. Alina Barbuceanu

    October 19th, 2007 at 4:46 pm

    Created a wiki for Popfly here : http://www.iterating.com/products/Popfly/wiki

  52. Scott

    October 20th, 2007 at 10:47 am

    There are plenty of interesting alternatives to this service, and MS is seeming a bit behind. IBM has one for enterprise users called QEDWiki: http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/qedwiki/ which is a free service. They even have researchers at IBM working on how to best use mashups in enterprise: http://domino.research.ibm.com.....index.html

    There is a lot of interest in deploying easy to use mashups to non-developers.

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