Popfly is a free online game & mashup creator from Microsoft. Popfly enables users to create and share web pages, mashups and applications in trouble-free way.  This blog explains the steps involved in creating a Silverlight based Popfly Block using Visual Studio 2008.

 

Popfly Explorer

Before you start creating your popfly block you need to install Popfly Explorer plug in for Visual Studio 2008 which can be downloaded free from here.  Once you install the plug in, Popfly Explorer will appear within visual studio as shown below

 

After you login successfully using your windows live Id, list of popfly projects and list of friends will be displayed within visual studio.

 

Creating a Silverlight Popfly Block

 

 

  • Select New -> Web Site from ‘File’ menu.
  • From the templates dialog box select Popfly block as indicated below

 

 

  • From the Popup Block Wizard select Silverlight Display Block and click Finish.

     

 

  • This will create a new Popfly project with default Silverlight code. You can modify this code (.xaml file) to suit your requirements. For example I have created a Silverlight block to show photo carousel. This can be accessed from here.

  • Once you are done with your Silverlight code, you can upload the block directly to Popfly website by clicking the Save Popfly block option under Popfly menu.

     

 

 

You can mashup this block with any data store of your choice. For instance I have mashedup the Silverlight carousel Popfly block with windows live image search.  You can view this from here.