Microsoft sure has been busy lately, huh? Continuing on from the announcements earlier this week (Web Platform Installer and the PC Advisor preview) a few more new releases caught my eye today. I haven’t had a chance to try them yet, but figured I should at least share the wealth.
Web Application Installer – this one goes alone with the Web Platform installer but takes it another step further. Use the Platform installer to get the nuts and bolts setup and running. Use this Application Installer to install… Apps. For instance, want WordPress on your shiny new IIS server? No Problem.
Like the Platform installer, Vista and Win2008 are the only supported OS’s… (and please note that it won’t even install until you’ve got IIS on the machine)
The Web Application Installer Beta is designed to help get you up and running with the most widely used Web Applications freely available for your Windows Server. Web AI provides support for popular ASP.Net and PHP Web applications including Graffiti, DotNetNuke, WordPress, Drupal, OSCommerce and more. With just a few simple clicks, Web AI will check your machine for the necessary pre-requisites, download these applications from their source location in the community, walk you through basic configuration items and then install them on your computer.
You know, that’s a big ol’ list of open source apps there! Pretty wild to see this coming from Microsoft. Kudos to them. Having configured WordPress on IIS once or twice I gotta say anything to make it easier is a good thing.
Speed Launch – this has actually been available since the end of August but I just heard about it this week (so Twitter can be useful once in a while!). I’m not sure how to describe it beyond another take on the application launcher segment. Drag apps, docs or web pages to it, give them easy to remember names and then use it to launch ‘em. Lots of flexibility and some interesting “function” features.
It is a “spare time” project from some Microsoft employees and shows some interesting potential.
ASP.NET MVC – now officially a beta (finally, after a long series of previews). This will let you build model view controller apps with ASP.NET. I’m intrigued and look forward to some spare time this winter to kick the tires.
That page has some tutorials, videos and other resources to help you get up to speed.
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October 17th, 2008 
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