Announcing the Microsoft Web Platform: Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta and Windows Web Application Gallery!

On Wednesday, March 18 at MIX ’09 the Developer Division will announce a number of new products and initiatives designed to build on the company’s multi-faceted investment in the Web. As always, we welcome your help in generating awareness and buzz around this news via your blogs. Since your blogs are commonly read by the press and the community, the information below provides some general guidelines and information on the announcements to consider as you plan to blog.

Announcing

Announcing the Microsoft Web Platform: Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta and Windows Web Application Gallery!

Key Announcements

· The Microsoft Web Platform has the vision and the goal to deliver the best platform to developers for building their Web applications. Microsoft is committed to delivering the platform, tools, and applications that development organizations, communities, and developers need and value; with the long-term idea of supporting a lucrative market to benefit developers and end-users. The Microsoft Platform is designed to interoperate with both ASP.NET and PHP, and integrate easily with community applications and products in the market today.

· The Web Platform Installer (WebPI) is a simplified download/install experience for all of Microsoft’s free web products. It includes everything that you need to get up and running to build your web solutions – from servers, tools, and technologies, including the most recently updated products. No longer will we be asking you to go to 10 different websites to get your products – with the WebPI, you can do this all through one integrated experience – and all on one website – www.microsoft.com/web. Additionally, the WebPI installs the community version of PHP so you have easy integration with popular web applications.

· The Windows Web Application Gallery is a community hub of free and popular .NET and PHP applications for you to use as building blocks for creating dynamic web solutions. Additionally, if you have a free web application you’d like to add to the Windows Web App Gallery – you can do so – and we’ll market & distribute these apps – your apps - to millions of Windows developers worldwide. Our goal here is to accelerate the speed of developing web solutions for your business – as well as provide all the guidance, building blocks, and products you’ll need to be successful.

Specifics about the Windows Web Application Gallery:

· www.microsoft.com/web/gallery

· Web Application Gallery is a destination to browse and discover community applications that install and deploy well on Windows

· The application developer owns the distribution point. Web App Gallery provides links to application ZIP packages with Web Development Tool integration on the application developer’s web site. We are not snap-shotting code and storing it on Microsoft servers. We point to community servers for the packages with Web Deployment integration, which is maintained and supported as part of the community app package by the community.

· Integration with the Web Deployment Tool is designed to work with existing application packages. You need to add a couple of manifest files to the root of your existing ZIP package using the Application Packaging Guide<https://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/578/application-packaging-guide-for-the-windows-web-application-gallery/>, test to make sure that you work on the platforms supported by Web Platform Installer, and follow the other Web Application Gallery Principles<https://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/605/web-application-gallery-principles/>.

Thanks!

Chris Samson

Senior Hosting Technology Specialist