Announcing Microsoft Web Platform

Available now is a new preview release of .NET RIA Services, technology which brings the ASP.Net platform together with the Silverlight platform and the Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta, a tool that simplifies the installation and maintenance of Microsoft’s web stack as well as other free components. This release lets users download both PHP and the final release of ASP.NET MVC 1.0. It’s available on on this page alongside the final version of the 1.0 release. With the new beta, you can easily install popular open source ASP.NET and PHP web apps and other extras like the latest community version of PHP for Windows.

Along with the Web Platform Installer beta 2, there’s now a Windows Web Application Gallery available where developers can discover, explore and download applications and components that can help them build web apps. This gallery doesn’t just feature Microsoft products either – it includes links to other online resources like Acquia Drupal, DotNetNuke and WordPress. The gallery divvies up the types of apps into categories and includes both a featured app section and a “top 5” section.