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. 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 Web sites to get your products – with the WebPI, you can do this all through one integrated experience – and all on one Web site – www.microsoft.com/web.
In addition, 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.

The new Windows Web Application Gallery and the Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta is now available. The Windows Web Application Gallery provides a streamlined way for users to explore, discover, install and deploy popular Web applications on the Microsoft Web Platform.

With this release, Web developers can now submit ASP.NET and PHP applications into the Gallery for distribution to millions of Microsoft Web Platform users worldwide. The Web Platform Installer installs Microsoft Web Platform tools and technologies, and new in the new release you can install and configure community ASP.NET and PHP applications that have been made available through the Windows Web Application Gallery.

Features

· The Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta now includes new Platform features and IIS extensions as well as support for installing and configuring PHP v5.2.9-1 for Windows.

· The Windows Web Application Gallery contains community .NET and Open Source applications. Check out what’s available for categories such as ecommerce, content management, publishing, digital marketing and more and keep coming back to see new applications as they are added. Also be sure to explore the process and documentation for submitting an application to be included in the Windows Web Application Gallery.

Try it Out

· If you haven’t tried the Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta, take it for a test drive yourself. Especially on a clean installation, see how easy it is to install and configure the Microsoft Web Platform from scratch. Also be sure to install all of the IIS Extensions to see the full functionality of the platform for Windows and PHP.

· Install one of more of the applications from the Windows Web Application Gallery to get a feel for the experience. Try out the new rating system and the forum areas for community feedback.

· The Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta and Windows Web Application Gallery is a key strategy to reach millions of Web developers worldwide with streamlined way to download and install the Microsoft Web Platform on their machines as well as a way to easily get the most popular community Web applications for building solutions available.

· The new functionality of the Windows Web Application Gallery gives developers a great way to share the applications they’ve built with millions of other developers and helps to build a strong Web application community for the Microsoft Web Platform.

· The PHP Community will find much new and exciting including: installation of PHP 5.2.9-1 using the Web Platform Installer 2.0 Beta, PHP support through IIS Extensions and the new Windows Web Application Gallery with community PHP applications ready to download.