Microsoft has announced the public beta launch (meaning a Live ID is required to join) of Popfly, which was previously in alpha invite-only stage. For those that have followed the development of Popfly, which is powered by Microsoft Silverlight, it can now create both Windows Vista Sidebar gadgets and Windows Live gadgets. Also, more properties can now be tweaked for the many output blocks, including Photoshow, Virtual Earth, PhotoSphere, Gauge, and Page Turner. For those who aren"t aware of what Popfly is, please continue reading below.
Popfly is a tool designed to help non-programmers in creating, sharing, and embedding mashups of content, feeds, web pages and gadgets. It is web-based and allows you to drag and drop "blocks" onto a working surface and connect various data sources together. Once you create a mashup, Popfly allows you to publish it directly to your space as a gadget using the "Add to Windows Live Spaces" link. It supports Mozilla Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher (still no Opera or 64bit browser support) as well as JavaScript, AJAX libraries, HTML, XHTML, CSS, WMV, WMA, MP3, Visual Studio Express projects, JPG, PNG, GIF, and EXEs.