Screen Shots: Microsoft's Popfly Mash-up Tool

Here are some of the primary features of Microsoft's new Popfly mashup tool, which went to alpha testers on May 18.

By Mary Jo Foley, Senior Contributing Editor May 18, 2007 at 4:15 a.m. PT

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Microsoft unveiled on May 18 its Web mash-up tool for the masses, codenamed "Springfield," and now officially christened "Popfly."

Unlike Yahoo Pipes, Popfly is not aimed at tech-savvy users. Microsoft is hoping to attract non-professional programmers and hobbyists who are interested in building mash-ups, gadgets, simple Web pages and basic applications.

Popfly Blocks -- 40 of which are currently available -- will allow users to snap together existing Web pages, data and syndicated information. Microsoft and third-party developers are building more custom blocks.

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The Popfly design surface is where users can drag, drop and connect their blocks to build mash-ups and applications.

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Popfly users who are slightly more tech savvy can switch to the custom HTML view in order to tweak their HTML, CSS and and JavaScript code.

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Popfly provides further levels of customization, allowing users to choose from 150 themes, 10 styles and 30 colors.

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Popfly users can embed their own or others' customized mash-ups, gadgets and applets into existing Web sites.

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Popfly also includes the Office Live Web designer for users who want to visually design Web pages without having to write code.

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More Web 2.0 functionality in Popfly: Users can rate and rip projects, save them as Vista sidebar gadgets and/or integrate them directly into TypePad, Windows Live Spaces and other blogging platforms.

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To make Popfly more interesting to the "MySpace generation," Microsoft is adding in social-networking capabilities, allowing Popfly users to create their own Popfly communities.