Stumping for Silverlight
Microsoft is getting busy trying to make its Silverlight rich Internet application
platform more attractive for developers and users alike. Last week the company
announced an
alpha
release of Popfly, a vehicle for developing mashups, Web sites and Silverlight-driven
rich content through drag-and-drop chunks of code called "blocks."
The alpha will be open to about 2,000 testers.
The Popfly effort has two main parts. Popfly Creator is the toolset. Popfly
Space is an online "community of creators," in the words of Developer
Division head S. "Soma" Somasegar, for hosting and sharing projects
built with the technology.
According to Microsoft statements, Popfly is intended to appeal to a broad
audience, from nontechnical users pushing together dynamic Web experiences to
coders sharing Windows apps. Users write their Popfly blocks in JavaScript and
use AJAX, DHTML or Silverlight for the user interface, Microsoft said. A Block
Builder SDK includes pre-built blocks and source code, as well as tools for
writing custom blocks, according to Microsoft.
Popfly doesn't provide any support for server-side processing, nor does it
support Silverlight 1.1, which includes a version of the Common Language Runtime
for more robust application delivery. Still, Popfly should help Microsoft counter
recent mashup rollouts, such as Yahoo Pipes, while providing a vehicle for promoting
Silverlight uptake.
Do you plan to get on the Silverlight bandwagon? E-mail me at mdesmond@reddevnews.com.
Posted by Michael Desmond on 05/23/2007