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SproutBuilder: You've Got to See This Drag and Drop Widget Maker

Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / January 29, 2008 1:10 PM / 11 Comments

SproutBuilder is going to explode the world of widgets on the web. This is far and away my favorite product I've seen at DEMO, not just this year but ever in the three years I've attended. Limited beta accounts are available to RWW readers via http://www.sproutbuilder.com/readwriteweb

The product is a drag-and-drop Flash authoring tool built on Adobe's Flex. SproutBuilder lets you build very sophisticated, multi-page widgets with media, analytics and more. In minutes. With ease.


Let's look at some of the widgets that I put together using SproutBuilder. The first is a 3 page RWW Widget - look how cute it is! It displays our RSS feed (updated automatically every 5 minutes), followed by a YouTube video demonstrating Sprout and concluding with a slideshow of photos. Click on the "share" button and you'll see the Gigya distribution platform.

There's all kinds of things that you can include in a Sprout now and features marked "coming soon" include Meebo chat, Ribbit VOIP and PollDaddy polls.

I asked Ryan Stewart, Rich Internet Application Evangelist at Adobe, if he had every seen anything like Sprout. He told me, "Sproutbuilder is one of the absolute coolest use cases I've seen for Flex. I think it lowers the barrier to entry to Flash and I hope it's going to spark a lot of creativity among people who aren't creating Flash content today."

I think that almost any individual or organization publishing online would find great value in using SproutBuilder to put together a nice looking, highly functional widget to distribute their content around the web.

The other widget I built was this one for PulseOfPDX, a site that aggregates Twitter messages from people in Portland, Oregon. I put this together in 2 minutes. Imagine what someone with some graphic design skills could do.

All of this said, Sprout isn't perfect. It's got a few bugs in it still. Thus the very limited beta. I think the potential here is fantastic though. The team behind Sprout originally built the ChipIn fund-raising widget for nonprofit campaigns. They found that there were so many requests for customization and white-labeling that it motivated them to build a builder that anyone can use.

Just before Sprout another, similar tool called FlyPaper (Freshbrew.com) presented. It's slick and well packaged. Sprout though has been build with geekery in mind, it's API friendly, you can get the .swf file itself if you want to and given the orientation of the team this is a tool you can feel good about using.

Hurry over and get an account while they are still available in the closed beta.



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  1. This is fantastic, makes widgets mainstream. Anyone in the diy widget space give up and go home this has you beat.

    Would be a great fit for yahoo or even adobe.

    Reminds me of dashcode on the mac.

    Posted by: Darren | January 29, 2008 4:31 PM



  2. Marshall - Thanks for bringing this to the readers - great stuff - already publishing with SproutBuilder. Thx

    Posted by: G | January 29, 2008 4:59 PM



  3. Nice! I will give it a try!

    Posted by: Daily Tech Impressions | January 29, 2008 6:36 PM



  4. Hello Marshall,

    sorry for breaking the first Widget. Don't know how that happened.

    Franz

    Posted by: Franz Patzig | January 29, 2008 7:35 PM



  5. You have no print button, or if you do i cannot find it. You also have ads from HP. When you get a chance give them a call and ask them about the new technology known as "print".

    Posted by: Popa Chubby | January 29, 2008 8:44 PM



  6. Marshall - you're right, this does look cool - especially the direct integration with publishing platforms.

    Posted by: James Lewin | January 30, 2008 5:49 AM



  7. Looks very cool. I think applications like this open up a totally new "class" of conceptual programmers. The easier it is for us all to create mini-apps and use them everywhere we'd like, the more innovation can be available to everyone. My post on Sprout, Yahoo pipes and Popfly here: http://tinyurl.com/2qp895

    Posted by: Sam Lawrence | January 30, 2008 6:31 AM



  8. I tried to use the beta and it hung up on me. Thanks for the info Marshall.

    John
    http://furrier.org

    Posted by: John Furrier | January 30, 2008 7:20 AM



  9. Yeah, I agree. See this sprout and post I did last night before going to sleep: http://www.salas.com/2008/01/29/see-my-new-sprout/

    Posted by: Pito Author Profile Page | January 30, 2008 7:36 AM



  10. Thanks everyone for checking out Sprout. We are working hard to squash bugs reported by the early private beta users. Keep those comments coming in. We want to build a product that you want to use. Contact me anytime if you have comments or questions.

    Marshall, you made me blush.

    best,

    carnet

    Posted by: carnet | January 30, 2008 8:03 AM



  11. Flash is definitely where it's at! WEB3D.0 here we come! Can't wait to try this*

    ;))

    Posted by: BillyWarhol | January 30, 2008 9:53 PM



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