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Microsoft® Popfly™ Beta Release Notes

Microsoft® Popfly™ is a beta release right now. What that means is when the terms of use talk about the software being provided "as is," we mean it. Most other people only kind of mean it. We really, really mean it. Stuff will break. We’ll just apologize in advance. Sorry.

So what do you need to know? Here are the top things you probably want to know about our site. If you find others, feel free to visit our forums and give us as much information there as possible.

The Basics

  • You need a Windows Live ID associated with an email address to create a Popfly account. You can get a Live ID at http://login.live.com.
  • You need IE 6, IE 7, or Firefox 2.0. We support IE 6 and 7 (Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista) and Firefox 2 (Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, and Mac OS X).
  • You need Silverlight™. To use some of our site you’ll need Silverlight™ 1.0 from http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/install.aspx. Don’t worry, it’s small and we’ll even check if you have it installed for you and give you a link to install it.
  • On Firefox, you may get a message about not being able to verify the identity of the site; it’s a minor certificate problem that we’re fixing very soon.

Popfly Mashup Creator

  • You may get some strange IntelliSense behavior in Firefox 2.0.
  • We’re still working through some Silverlight-on-Mac issues.
  • If you installed either the December or February WPF/E CTP, you'll need to remove it before installing Silverlight 1.0 .
  • Display blocks that use Silverlight (such as Carousel or PhotoTiles) can only display images in the PNG and JPEG formats. Other formats, such as GIF, will not be displayed, and you may see an error message.

Popfly Web Editor

  • We don’t let you type in your own HTML and JavaScript, but you can create a mashup with custom HTML and JavaScript then embed it in the page. If you want custom HTML and JavaScript, you can use the Custom HTML view from the Mashup creator.
  • It’s a little wonky in Firefox 2.0.

Popfly Space

  • Our support for Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets is still developing – the sizes of the gadgets in particular will probably come out wrong.
  • You can't rename projects. If you need to, open the project, click "save as," then delete the old copy.

Popfly Projects

  • Our support for Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets is still developing – the sizes of the gadgets in particular will probably come out wrong.
  • You can’t rename projects. If you need to, open the project, click "save as," then delete the old copy.

Popfly Explorer

  • Popfly Explorer won’t work on Visual Studio 2008. You may be able to install it and it may even pretend to run, but we haven’t tested it.
  • Popfly Explorer won’t work on Visual Web Developer Express 2005.
  • You’ll get an error when you try to open a project that is not supported by the SKU you are currently running Popfly Explorer in – so, for example, you can’t open VB projects in Visual C# Express 2005 (which makes sense when you think about it).
  • Your first login may take a while and you may need to press the sign-in button more than once.
  • Popfly Explorer enables you to create, save, share, and open Visual Studio® 2005 projects onto the Popfly network. It doesn’t enable you to open Popfly projects (e.g. mashups).
  • Conversely, you can’t open Visual Studio 2005 projects using Popfly without using Popfly Explorer.
  • Renaming a solution when it’s open will break the association with the version on the web site.
  • Yes, you can invite yourself to be your own friend. It’s weird, but self-affirming.
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