The Official Microsoft Web Platform Team Blog

WebMatrix refresh released.

lmoroney[at]microsoft.com — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:18:36 GMT

We’ve just published a minor refresh to WebMatrix, which you can download and use from the Web Platform Installer today.

We did this to fix some of the top customer issues that have been reported since we launched in January.

If you have any more problems or bugs with WebMatrix, please let us know!

Details

Some of the fixes that we’ve implemented in this refresh are:

Customer report: Ctrl+C/X/V breaks once international characters are entered when using the United States-International keyboard layout with WebMatrix
Exception error when template installer link is broken
Web Deploy hard-coded fallback MySqlDump.exe path will make MySQL app operations fail by default when WebPI starts using new version of MySQL
Web Deploy requiring MySQL installed locally when installing application for use with remote MySQL server
Bin deployment of SQL CE binaries broken in WebMatrix because Web Deploy copies only .dlls and additional .manifest file is required
Add "spotlight=true" to Find Web Hosting URL
Broken xml file for spanish resource file of template
IIS Express doesn't run when My Documents is on a root drive
For non-local documents, introduce a new environment variable that WebMatrix sets and IISExpress reads to determine if it needs to start polling
Redirection.config fallback path is incorrect
For non-local documents, introduce a new environment variable that WebMatrix sets and IISExpress reads to determine if it needs to start polling.
Add a regkey to switch default opening of PHP files in UTF-8 vs. local code page

WebMatrix shipping January 13, 2011

lmoroney[at]microsoft.com — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 21:46:58 GMT

I'm pleased to announce that WebMatrix v1 is ready to go, and starting tomorrow (Thursday, January 13), you'll be able to download it from http://www.microsoft.com/webmatrix

WebMatrix makes it easy for anyone to create a new web site using a template or an existing free open source application, customize it, and then publish it on the internet via a wide choice of hosting service providers.

And yes, it's free.

WebMatrix lets you create web sites the way that you want to. We've spoken with countless web developers, and have learned what they want to create the next generation of web sites.

Watch the event streaming live on January 13 at http://web.ms/enter

Using Open Source Applications

There are lots of web developers who use open source web applications where much of the work has been done for them already, and they want to use the work of these communities. Applications such as WordPress, Umbraco, Joomla!, DotNetNuke, Drupal or Orchard are great examples of these, and many developers would like to take advantage of them.

But they need a way to make them easier is what we constantly hear. It's one thing to host a web site and put a bunch of source code on there, but it's quite another to have an easy way to download that source code, and make sure that it runs with all its dependencies. Maybe it uses PHP, but which version? Maybe it needs a database, but which one, and how do you install that and connect it to PHP? WebMatrix is designed to make all that work easy and let you focus on doing what you want to do -- building web sites. It also makes it easy to publish that work on your hosting provider, and if you are using Windows as your host, and Web Deploy as the deployment technology, well, life gets even easier, as WebMatrix can deploy and configure not just your web files, but also your databases, in one step.

Don’t just take this blogs word for it though – you’ll see lots of great videos and articles demonstrating this in our new content library at http://www.microsoft.com/web/category/walkthroughs starting January 13.

Building your own Web Sites

There are also lots of developers who want to start with a blank slate, write some HTML, add some code to that HTML and get a dynamic web site. They want this process to be as easy as possible, and we've strived to streamline this.

First off, WebMatrix neatly integrates the IIS 7.5 Express web server. This web server is 100% compatible with it’s production-ready big brother IIS 7.5, including supporting the same extensions and capabilities such as HTTPs. With that in mind, developers can build sites on their development box and know that they will run on their web server without further modification!

We also ship SQL Server Compact with WebMatrix. This is a file based database, so you don’t need to have a separate database server. Your data gets deployed as a file (.SDF extension) with the rest of your site files, and the runtime for SQL Server Compact gets deployed as a bunch of DLLs to your \bin directory. It saves time, hassle, and money!

With WebMatrix you get the ASP.NET Web Pages framework. This includes the 'Razor' programming syntax that is so simple it's hard to believe. It has the smartest parser I've ever seen, and this parser makes writing and understanding code that much simpler.

Let me show an example.

Here's some HTML for a <ul><li> list, showing a simple unordered list with the numbers 0-10

In PHP:

Here's how you'd do this dynamically in PHP.

Note that you have to use the echo command to write out the HTML, so you're really mixing up code and markup, which is difficult to maintain.

It’s also hard to see where HTML ends and code begins, and vice versa, making it difficult to separate the two, and harder for design/development workflow.

In Razor:

The parser is smart enough to know where HTML ends and Razor begins, as well as where Razor ends and HTML begins, making your code a lot cleaner and easier to maintain.

Razor also supports Web Helpers which encapsulate common, complex functionality such as integrating Twitter, Facebook or Paypal into your page, and making it a one line-of-code solution. We're shipping a bunch of helpers, but we've also made it easy for any developer to write a helper and publish it to a NuGet feed for any other developer to use, right from within WebMatrix.

There's way too much to list in one post, so take a look at http://www.microsoft.com/web/post/Web-Development-101-using-WebMatrix which is a great step-by-step tutorial on how to build a web site using ASP.NET Web Pages in WebMatrix. It's also part of the new content library for web developers that we're building on Microsoft.com. [[Note, this won't be live until 1/13]]

It's a great day for web developers, and I encourage you to go check out WebMatrix. Download it, build sites, find a web provider from the gallery, seo-optimize your site, and build the next generation of web sites and open source web applications that we can all enjoy!

WebMatrix Beta 3: Now available!

lmoroney[at]microsoft.com — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 13:07:08 GMT

We’re pleased to announce that WebMatrix Beta 3 is now available for immediate download from the Microsoft Web Site.

Microsoft WebMatrix Beta 3 makes it easy for anyone to create a new web site, customize it, and publish it on the internet.

We’ve built WebMatrix based on the three main streams of work that Web developers do

1. Creating web sites:

WebMatrix makes it easy for you to create web sites. Start with an open source application such as WordPress, Joomla, DotNetNuke or Orchard, and WebMatrix handles the task of downloading, installing and configuring the apps for you. Or you can write the code yourself using a range of built-in templates that help get you started. Whatever you choose, WebMatrix provides everything your web site needs to run including the web server, database, and framework. By using the same stack on your development desktop that you’ll use on your web host, the process of going live with your website is painless and worry free.

2. Customizing web sites

WebMatrix lets you customize any part of your web site. The lightweight editor supports commonly used web files such as HTML, CSS, ASP.NET or PHP, and makes you more productive with features such as color coding and tag completion. WebMatrix also includes ‘Razor’, an easy-to-learn, yet powerful programming syntax, and Web Helpers, which give developers a single line-of-code solution for complex coding tasks such as inserting twitter feeds, social links or video. Dozens of these helpers are included, and developers have the ability to create their own and share their work with the community. WebMatrix also provides a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) report that contains feedback to make your site easier to find on Google, Bing or Yahoo!

3. Publishing web sites

WebMatrix makes it easy to publish your site. If you already have a site, you can upload your files using FTP, FTPs or WebDeploy. WebDeploy makes the task even easier by smartly deploying only the files that have changed, automatically configuring your server, and synching your development machine with your live site. If you don’t have a hosting provider, WebMatrix can recommend one with the right technology for your site.

Learn more

We have a wealth of great resources on WebMatrix, which a whole lot more on the way. To get you started though you can try these:

Create a web application from scratch using WebMatrix, ASP.NET Web Pages and ‘Razor’

Free ebook on ASP.NET Web Pages and ‘Razor’

API Reference Guide for ASP.NET Web Pages with ‘Razor’

Losts of WebMatrix walkthroughs

Frequently asked questions:

Does WebMatrix compete with Visual Studio?

No, WebMatrix works seamlessly with Visual Studio. Developers using WebMatrix, can also install the free version of Visual Studio, Visual Web Developer Express and then open their projects in Visual Studio. The code you write with WebMatrix seamlessly work with Visual Studio, and we anticipate this to improve throughout the beta process.

When should a developer use Visual Studio, and when should a developer use WebMatrix?

WebMatrix is a great way for developers to get started building web applications, and makes it simple to take advantage of the world’s most popular Open Source applications like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke and Umbraco. If developers want to use these applications, WebMatrix is a great place to start. WebMatrix is also a great way for new developers to see how simple, yet how powerful Microsoft technologies are for programming on the Web. It’s also a great place to start if you are looking for Web hosting, with integrated deployment tools to your host.

Visual Studio works seamlessly WebMatrix. You can install the free, Visual Studio Web Developer Express from within Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer, allowing you to use this tool to work on your WebMatrix creations. As you grow into needing more professional features, such as debugging, team management, profiling and more, you’ll see that there are plenty of Visual Studio offerings that work for you.

Is Microsoft competing directly with PHP?

No. WebMatrix is an easy way for developers to get started building websites on Windows. It supports both PHP and ASP.NET and makes it simple to take advantage of the world’s most popular Open Source applications like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke, and Umbraco. Developers tell us they want the flexibility to learn new technologies and WebMatrix provides a wide variety of options about how they build their sites.

Does WebMatrix work directly with NuGet (formally NuPack)?

Yes it does. With WebMatrix you can consume helpers, templates or other code published in NuGet. We’re continuing to improve the overall experience of doing so.

There’s a lot of technologies in WebMatrix. Which should I use?

Customers feedback has shown us the need to add features to ASP.NET that simplifies the learning experience and improves the ability to make web pages. WebMatrix has many of the features, including helper libraries for common tasks like social integration, database access, and more as well as a the Razor syntax for ASP.NET which leverages existing ASP.NET technology and languages (C#/VB) to reduce concept count for getting started. WebMatrix also includes rich support for PHP and makes it simple to take advantage of the world’s most popular Open Source applications like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, DotNetNuke, and Umbraco. Developers tell us they want choice and flexibility and the ability to learn new technologies and WebMatrix provides a wide variety of choices about how they build their sites as a result.

Does WebMatrix work with HTML 5?

Yes. WebMatrix allows developers to write in HTML, CSS or JavaScript code. As such, developers can write in HTML5 code using WebMatrix, and browsers that support it will be able to render the HTML5 content. In fact, the templates built into WebMatrix for new site creation use HTML5. Give them a spin!

Does WebMatrix work with Microsoft technologies in addition to open source technologies?

Yes. In addition to connecting developers with popular and free open source Web applications, including DotNetNuke, Umbraco, WordPress, Joomla!, and more, WebMatrix works with Microsoft components including .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Silverlight, SQL Server, SQL Azure, Windows Server, IIS, PHP and MySQL.

What is the difference between WebMatrix, Web Platform and Web Platform Installer (Web PI)?

Microsoft’s Web Platform is a collection of technologies from Microsoft designed to enable developers to build webpages, sites and applications. Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is an installation platform. WebMatrix, and can be installed using Web Pl. Developers can use WebPI to install the complete Microsoft Web Platform including IIS, .NET Framework, SQL Server, and Visual Studio.

Does WebMatrix support cloud development? If so, how?

Absolutely. WebMatrix is an easy way to build websites for Windows. These Websites can be deployed on any cloud that supports FTP deployment like Windows Azure. WebMatrix also supports upsizing databases to SQL Azure.

I have more questions – where do I go?

Visit the WebMatrix forums on ASP.NET or drop me a line: lmoroney[at]microsoft.com

Microsoft announces WebMatrix Beta 2

lmoroney[at]microsoft.com — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 14:56:35 GMT

Today Microsoft released the second beta of WebMatrix, which is available to download now at www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix. As Web development evolves, developers are looking for new ways to build websites faster and make their job easier. WebMatrix meets this by providing a single and free application that gives them the ability to create new sites by writing the code themselves or using existing free open source applications. WebMatrix gives developers the tools to customize their sites by editing their code, data and much more, as well as the ability to publish their sites with integrated deployment tools, and a gallery of hosting providers that meet their needs. As such it’s a great tool for Web agencies who build web sites for others using open source frameworks, as well as web developers who want to find a new and easier way of building web sites, or who want to learn how to build web sites quickly.

Creating Sites

WebMatrix makes it easy for developers to create new websites by offering a one-click solution that allows developers to simply create sites themselves. WebMatrix also provides a number of simple website templates that are already implemented and easily customizable. Additionally, a developer can take advantage of free open source applications such as WordPress, Joomla, DotNetNuke or Umbraco, which WebMatrix will download, install and configure. Whatever the developer chooses, they’ll need the stack on which the Web application runs, including the server, database, and framework. With WebMatrix all of these are in one place, using the same technology on the developer’s desktop that is used on the production server, making the process of going live with the web site painless and worry free.

Customizing Sites

WebMatrix lets developers customize their site to make it the best possible site for their user’s needs. The lightweight editor supports major standard files, including HTML, JavaScript, PHP and ASP.NET, and includes shortcuts to help developers understand code. This includes color coding and tag completion and the new ASP.NET Web Pages framework featuring the easy to learn, yet powerful ‘Razor’ programming syntax that provides inline coding within HTML. But it doesn’t end there: WebMatrix gives developers the ability to use Web helpers, which take complex coding tasks such as integrating Twitter, using social links or video, and gives a single line-of-code solution. WebMatrix ships with dozens of helpers, and beta 2 gives developers the ability to create their own and share with a community of developers. Beyond coding, WebMatrix can also inspect the site in the same way that search engines do, in a process called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and provide a report that contains advice and feedback in how to customize the site to make it rank as high as possible on places like Google, Bing or Yahoo!.

Publishing Sites

WebMatrix gets the site on the internet quickly and easily. Developer who already have an internet server can use to get files onto the server using the standard FTP or FTP protocols, or can use the WebDeploy protocol from Microsoft. WebDeploy makes the task even easier by only publishing changed files and handling the deployment of all the site’s data. Or, if developer want to find a company that provides an internet server and open a hosting account with them, WebMatrix can help find the right one with the right technologies and price. Whatever a developer chooses, WebMatrix gives them the ability to publish and manage sites on the internet as easily as they use it on a development machine.

Conclusion

All components of WebMatrix seamlessly integrate with Microsoft’s developer platform and tools including Visual Studio, SQL Server and Windows Server. Without leaving WebMatrix, developers can build websites from scratch; download and customize free open source web applications available within Microsoft’s Web Application Gallery; select a hosting partner, and deploy their website.

Download the second beta today at www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix

Hello, WebMatrix!

lmoroney[at]microsoft.com — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:26:18 GMT

Over the last few days Scott Guthrie has been blogging about new technologies that we’re delivering to make your life as a professional web developer even easier.

- You saw IIS Developer Express, and how it provides you with a simple and lightweight server that is fully compatible with IIS, allowing you to build and test applications on your developer machine, using a server with the same codebase as its production counterpart.

- You saw SQL Server Compact that gives you a great, lightweight database engine on which you could run Web applications. Not only is it super light, but it is also entirely file-based, so if you use a low-cost hosting provider, you don’t need to have a separate database server, saving you time to deployment, and most likely saving you money too.

- Then you looked at the new inline coding model for ASP.NET, which we’re working on as a new View Engine for ASP.NET MVC. Its syntax is easy to write, simple to learn and works with any text editor.

In addition, we’ve made significant investments over the past year to the Microsoft Web Platform including delivery of the Windows Web App Gallery, the Web Platform Installer (which simplifies acquiring, installing, and configuring the Microsoft Web Platform technologies), URLRewrite, WinCache, FastCGI and many, many more technologies that make Windows the best place to build, deploy and host Web sites. Through these efforts we have seen over 8 million product installations and 2 million community application installations over the last 9 months.

While these technologies in and of themselves are fantastic and will be a great addition to any current Visual Studio user’s toolbox, there is more that is needed to provide a free, simple and end-to-end completed solution. Our goal – a product that is everything you need to get started building websites on Windows, designed for anyone who wants to build or customize a website.

Announcing WebMatrix

We recognized that we needed a new product to complete our portfolio of offerings for Web developers and better service web agencies, small development teams within SMBs, hobbyists, and students. With WebMatrix, we are simplifying how you build Web sites on Windows and including everything you need to build, run and deploy your Web site for free.

WebMatrix is a free, and easy way to build Web sites for Windows. It includes IIS Developer Express (a development Web server), ASP.NET (a Web framework), and SQL Server Compact (an embedded database) all in less than 50MB. It streamlines Web site development and makes it easy to start Web sites from popular open source apps, many of which are available today in Microsoft’s Web App Gallery. The skills and code you develop with WebMatrix transition seamlessly to Visual Studio and SQL Server. When you are all done you can ensure that you have maximized your audience reach through integrated Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and then find the best offer from a hosting provider in your area and put it on the internet. It is an end-to-end solution and experience for creating Web sites.

Get WebMatrix Now

If you don’t have it already – and why would you because we just announced it - scoot over to http://www.microsoft.com/web and from there you can download and install the new Web Platform Installer. Use this to install WebMatrix using the big, friendly ‘Install WebMatrix’ button on the ‘Getting Started’ tab. Then, start giving us feedback on how we can make this even better for you!

Using WebMatrix

Once you’ve installed WebMatrix, you can run it, and you’ll see this welcome screen:

Building a Site

If you don’t want to start building from scratch, then the thing that might strike you about this is the ‘Site From Web Gallery’ option. If you’ve used the Web Platform Installer, then you might be familiar with the Microsoft Web App Gallery, which provides a very straightforward way to get access to the most common open source applications built on ASP.NET and PHP.

It’s great in that it figures out all the dependencies a particular application needs and installs them, along with the application, in a single shot.

WebMatrix takes this a step further, pulling this into your development environment, so you can simply say something like File->New->WordPress or File->New->DotNetNuke. This should save you lots of time when building sites!

Of course, you aren’t limited to open source applications, you can create new sites or applications yourself, and the ‘Site From Template’ option gives you this. We’re shipping with a few templates to get you started, and we’re working on new templates all the time. Some of these templates include databases built on SQL Server Compact, and code to access them that uses the new Razor syntax.

One example of this is the ‘Bakery’ sample application. Create one of these, and it’ll look something like this:

WebMatrix is divided into four workspaces, accessible via the tabbed dialog on the left of the screen.

Site: This tab gives you everything you need to manage your site, including the ability to monitor the requests coming into your site, in real time, allowing you to debug and trace runtime faults. It also includes an integrated list of Windows-based Web hosts, so you can find the one that suits your needs. It also has the ability to allow you to configure your deployment settings, so you can just publish directly to your Web host.

Files: The files tab, as its name suggests, gives you access to all the files of your site, including your source, styles, javascript, database, images etc. You can edit your text-based files here, and get basic developer glitz such as syntax coding. Here’s an example of one of the pages created by the Bakery template, where you can see the inline syntax being used to open a database, query it, and render the results:

One really cool thing about the programming syntax is the addition of Web Helpers. These use a single line of code in most cases to encapsulate common programming tasks. So, for example using this:

@Twitter.Search("Scottgu");

will give you a styled view of Twitter entries that contain my name and that looks like this:

We’ll be shipping with dozens of helpers, including social networking links, database grids, captcha, rich media using Silverlight, Windows Media or Flash, and building a community create thousands more.

Databases: As you might imagine, this gives you the ability to create, edit and update your databases. You can either use the SQL Server Compact file-based databases, using the .SDF extension, or you can connect to other databases such as SQL Server or MYSQL and edit them here. It also has integrated tools to allow you to migrate your database to SQL Server, so if your site needs to grow to be hugely scalable – there’s a solution for you, and the tools to get to it are built right in.

Reports: The Reports tab allows you to run an SEO audit on your site, which will crawl through your site and find any issues that might affect your ranking on a search engine. Because it’s fully integrated, it not only finds the issues, it tells you where it found them, and gives you advice in how to fix the issue, while also allowing you to link directly to the file that caused the issue. You may have used the SEO Optimization tool that I blogged about before [[link to previous blog post]], but having it integrated into your workflow makes it even easier.

Running a Site

Clicking the Run button in the toolbar will launch IIS Developer Express, and execute your site using it.

You can see what IIS Express is doing using its System Tray icon, which allows you to inspect the URL, including the port on which the site is running, as well as giving you the ability to stop the application from running.

As your site is running, you can click on the Site tab, and select ‘Requests’ and see the requests hitting your site in real-time, potentially helping you track down runtime problems, so for example, here you can see that I don’t have a robots.txt file, and when the browser looks for it I get a HTTP 404 error.

Your projects built with WebMatrix will of course work with Visual Studio, so if you are new to developing with Microsoft, and want to upgrade, you can do so easily, and install the free Visual Web Developer Express directly through WebMatrix, and if you have it already, you can launch it directly from WebMatrix. You can see the Visual Studio launch button here (you can see it when you select the Files tab)

This has been a whistle stop tour of WebMatrix, and barely touches the surface of the possibilities. You can learn a lot more on http://www.microsoft.com/web/webmatrix, or on http://www.asp.net/webmatrix !

SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0 CTP2 is now released

lmoroney[at]microsoft.com — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 22:19:44 GMT

It is our pleasure to announce the release of Community Technology Preview 2 (CTP2) of the SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0!

We would like to thank all who provided feedback and bug reports on our CTP1 release (April 19th) the SQLSRV (our native API) and PDO_SQLSRV drivers. Last week we shared our plans for our next CTP in our blog, and today we are happy that we were able to achieve our release criteria earlier than we anticipated.

To recap, here are the changes in this release:

Code completely re-architected with the functional core layer and the API layers
SQLSRV driver is rebuilt with the code re-architected (no new features)
PDO::__construct(): a design change from CTP1, Connection Options now need to be specified in the DSN string instead of the driver_options[] array
PDO::SQLSRV_ATTR_DIRECT_QUERY: new custom driver attribute to provide more flexibility to the developer
- Ability to execute two queries within the same context or different contexts, useful when using temporary tables or other circumstances
- Ability to bind parameters for queries within the same context
Errors are now encoded per the setting of CharacterSet / PDO::SQLSRV_ATTR_ENCODING
Bug fixes to SQLSRV as well as PDO_SQLSRV drivers
Our documentation now includes a new example application using the PDO_SQLSRV driver

We will always include both drivers in our releases from now onwards, and our CTP2 package is available for download on MSDN Download Center. As we blogged yesterday on what we mean by a CTP release, this CTP is the last one for this version as we have made the design changes required. We are working thru our internal processes to publish the source code, and we plan to release it with our final version.

At this point, we anticipate a relatively short feedback period of 4 to 6 weeks. We want these drivers to meet your needs and expectations, so we invite you to download it to give both drivers a good workout and report any issues you run into!

As always, we continue to actively monitor our MSDN forum and this blog to listen and respond to your feedback.

Announcing phpBB: Available for the Microsoft Web Platform

Mark J Brown — Fri, 07 May 2010 16:02:23 GMT

Today Microsoft is announcing that the Windows Web Application Gallery and Web Platform Installer (Web PI) now supports the download of the new phpBB release, which supports Windows, IIS and SQL Server.

Version 3.0.7-PL1 of phpBB takes advantage of a number of features for PHP applications on the Microsoft Web Platform with Windows, IIS and SQL Server including:

SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1, provides key interoperability for PHP applications to use SQL Server for data storage. Released under the OSI approved MS-PL license and available on CodePlex.
WinCache Extension for PHP 1.0.1, provides increased performance for PHP applications on Windows and IIS. Released under the BSD license, is available from the PHP Extension Community Library (PECL) website.

Microsoft is committed to enabling interoperability of the Microsoft Web Platform. As part of our efforts with the open source community, Microsoft contributed a patch to the phpBB project to allow it to interoperate with SQL Server using Microsoft's SQL Server Driver for PHP, and then worked very closely with Nils Aderman, Chris Smith and Henry Sudhof of the phpBB Core Team to accept our patch contribution. The SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1, released in October 2009, provides UTF-8 support, Multiple Active Record Sets (MARS) and the option to leverage SQL Azure providing the option to deploy as a full or partial cloud solution.

Additionally Microsoft worked with the phpBB Core Team to help enable phpBB to leverage the WinCache Extension for PHP. WinCache provides performance benefits for PHP applications on Windows and IIS and is released under the BSD license with the source hosted and maintained on the PHP Extension Community Library (PECL).

This release by the phpBB community is another great example of how Microsoft is working with the PHP community to provide higher levels of interoperability and performance as well as providing customers the option to run the applications they want on the Microsoft Web Platform.

Try phpBB on the Microsoft Web Platform today!

SQL Server Driver for PHP Adds Support for PHP Data Objects

lmoroney[at]microsoft.com — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:49:21 GMT

This week, Microsoft is participating in the DrupalCon San Francisco Conference at the Moscone Center. The event marks an important milestone for Microsoft, as we announced the release of a Community Technology Preview (CTP) for the new SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0, which includes support for PHP Data Objects (PDO).

The SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0 with PDO will enable popular PHP applications like Drupal 7 to use the PDO “PHP style” and interoperate smoothly with Microsoft’s SQL Server database. Alongside our efforts, the Commerce Guys, a company providing ecommerce solutions with Drupal, is also presenting a beta version of Drupal 7 running on SQL Server using this new PDO Application Programming Interface (API) in the SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0.

You can read more about how Microsoft’s SQL Server Driver for PHP 2.0 CTP is adding PHP’s PDO style data access to SQL Server by visiting here.

Visual Studio 2010, .NET Framework 4, ASP.NET 4 Released

lmoroney[at]microsoft.com — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:28:40 GMT

Yesterday, Microsoft launched the final release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4, which includes many of the frameworks, tools and languages utilized when deploying solutions on Microsoft’s Web Platform. As part of this launch, deploying ASP.NET applications gets a lot easier! The newest versions of both ASP.NET 4 and ASP.NET MVC 2 are now immediately available for download. Also, the team just finished updating the Microsoft Web Platform Installer to include the latest version of the framework, web server, database and tools you’ll need to build and run Web sites and applications on Windows. To read more about the launch technologies and capabilities, visit here.

Also, check out the ASP.NET Spotlight at: http://www.microsoft.com/web/spotlight/asp.net.aspx

Free training on Microsoft Web Platform in Web Camps

lmoroney[at]microsoft.com — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:23:43 GMT

function webCamps() {
   day1.Learn();
   day2.Build();
}

Interested in learning how new innovations in Microsoft's Web Platform and developer tools like ASP.NET 4 and Visual Studio 2010 can make you a more productive web developer? If you're currently working with PHP, Ruby, ASP or older versions of ASP.NET and want to hear how you can create amazing websites more easily, then register for a Web Camp near you today!

Microsoft's Web Camps are free, two-day events that allow you to learn and build on the Microsoft Web Platform. At camp, you will hear from Microsoft experts on the latest components of the platform, including ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC, jQuery, Entity Framework, IIS, Visual Studio 2010 and much more.

Web Camps also provide the opportunity to get hands on with labs and get creative by building in teams. All this with Microsoft experts on hand to guide you through.

We look forward to seeing you at camp soon!