Posts tagged as:

Windows

How Fanboys See Operating Systems

by Joey deVilla on December 16, 2009

how fanboys see operating systems

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

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24 Years of Windows Packaging and Boot Screens

by Joey deVilla on October 17, 2009

TechRadar UK is publishing a series of “Windows 7 Week” articles, some of which take a look back at the history of Windows. One of the articles presents a timeline of Windows packaging, from version 1.0 to 7:

windows_packaging

…and another is a chronology of Windows’ boot screens:

windows_boot_screens

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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The Sub-$1000 Opportunity?

by Joey deVilla on July 24, 2009

U.S. $1000 bill

Here’s a thought experiment for you Windows developers out there: the fact that Apple pretty much owns the $1000+ computer market is in fact an opportunity. Discuss.

(This article appears with slightly different wording – to try things from a different perspective – on the official Microsoft Canada developer blog, Canadian Developer Connection.)

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Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2: RTM and FTW!

by Joey deVilla on July 22, 2009

 XBox 360-style achievement: "Achievement Unlocked: Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 RTM'd" Windows 7 logo

Windows 7 Released to Manufacturing

It’s been announced on the Windows Blog: Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing!

Brandon LeBlanc explained that “RTM” happens only after it’s been signed off. One of the release candidate builds becomes a contender for release to manufacturing after it goes through significant testing and passes all the validation tests for RTM including having all languages for that build completed. Build 7600 crossed all those hurdles and got signed off today.

The beta and release candidate period for “Seven” was quite unusual. Rather than hand it out to a closed group of beta testers, it was made available for download and I was given piles and piles of DVD-ROMs to hand out like candy. And strangely enough, people were asking for it. At the EnergizeIT installfests this spring, we played to packed rooms of people who took time out of their Saturday mornings and schlepped to Mississauga to install the beta. Even people with Macs, who ran it under Boot Camp or Parallels. It’s unusual for an operating system in beta – especially one from The Empire – to be in such demand.

I’ve been using the beta since January and the release candidate for the past few weeks as my primary operating systems with nary a hitch, glitch or blue screen. I’m looking forward to getting the final version of Windows 7, which will be the first of many new goodies coming from The Empire over the coming months,

If you’re a developer with an MSDN subscription or an IT pro with a TechNet subscription, you’ll be able to download the English Windows 7 RTM on August 6th, with other language versions on October 1st. Windows 7 will go on sale to the general public on October 22nd.

Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2008 R2 logo Windows Server 2008 R2 was also released to manufacturing today. As they state in the Windows Server Division Weblog, the simultaneous release is no coincidence but a design goal. “R2”, as I prefer to call it, boasts a lot of features such as Hyper-V, Live Migration, File Classification Infrastructure, an improved Active Directory, Pervasive PowerShell, IIS 7.5, server scalability, DirectAccess, BranchCache and improved Remote Desktop.

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This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Yesterday, I showed you how to install MySQL Server 5.1 (Community Edition) onto your Windows-based development machine. The reason I wrote the article was to help you prep your machine for installing PHP and PHP-based applications using Microsoft’s Web Platform Installer.

What is Web Platform Installer?

Web Platform Installer is, as the website puts it, “a free tool that makes it simple to download, install and keep up-to-date with the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform”. Yes, this is stuff you can do yourself, but I’m all for tools that automate away drudgery.

As of this writing, there are two versions of Web Platform Installer available: the original 1.0 version and the beta 2.0 version. In this article, I’m going to focus on the 2.0 version.

Here’s what you’ll see when you fire up the Web Platform Installer 2.0 beta:

wpi_01

Web Platform Installer has three tabs:

  1. What’s New?: This lists the newest applications that are available for download and aren’t already installed on your system. This is the tab that is automatically selected when you launch Web Platform Installer.
  2. Web Platform: This lists web platform applications that are available for download and whether they’re installed on your system. These apps are divided into the following categories:
    • Web Server Applications: Extensions for IIS as well as other server software such as the FTP server
    • Frameworks and Runtimes: Both Microsoft and open source frameworks and runtimes, such as .NET Framework and ASP.NET MVC. This is where you’ll find PHP.
    • Database: SQL Server Express and management tools.
    • Tools: Applications for web development, such as Silverlight and Visual Web Developer Express.
  3. Web Applications: This lists web applications that are available for download and whether they’re installed on your system. These apps are divided into the following categories:
    • Blogs: A selection of .NET blogging apps such as BlogEngine.NET and DasBlog, as well as WordPress.
    • Content Management: Applications like DotNetNuke and Acquia Drupal.
    • Galleries: Photo gallery applications.
    • Wiki: Wikis and apps with wiki functionality, such as the PHP-based Acquia Drupal and the ASP.NET-based ScrewTurn Wiki.

Installing PHP

If PHP isn’t on your system, it will appear on the What’s New? tab page. If you click on the “information” icon beside the checkbox item for PHP, you’ll be shown its information page:

wpi_02

You can choose to install PHP by checking PHP’s checkbox in the list of applications or the Click to include in your install button.

You can choose to add other applications to your install. Once you’ve chosen all the apps you want, click the Install button. You’ll be presented with a list of the apps you chose for review, along with any dependencies for those apps:

wpi_04

To start the installation, click the I Accept button, and Web Platform Installer will do its thing:

wpi_05

Taking PHP for a Quick Spin

Let’s write a very quick script to confirm that PHP is up and running:

<?php

phpinfo();

?>

In case you’re not familiar with PHP’s built-in phpinfo() function, it returns information about your PHP installation, its configuration and its current environment. It’s useful for all sorts of things, not the least of which is checking to see if your PHP installation worked.

Enter the script above using your favourite editor, and save it as test.php into the web root directory, c:/inetpub/wwwroot Note that in order to save to this directory, you’ll need to be running the editor with administrator privileges. Alternately, you can save to another directory and then copy the file to c:/inetpub/wwwroot, giving your administrative approval when prompted by the dialog box.

Then point your browser at http://localhost/test.php — you should see something that looks like this:

wpi_06

Next Steps

With PHP up and running, you can install PHP-based apps. PHP apps are like old-school ASP apps; installing them is often a matter of moving the files into the webroot directory and perhaps running an install script by typing its URL into your browser.

phpMyAdmin

One app you might want to consider installing is phpMyAdmin, a PHP-based web application for administering MySQL databases. While it’s possible to administer MySQL solely through its command-line interfaces, phpMyAdmin makes it so much easier. I can’t recommend this utility enough.

Cover of "Wicked Cool PHP"

If I had to recommend just one PHP book, it would be No Starch Press’ Wicked Cool PHP. I find No Starch books to be both informative and enjoyable reads, and this book is no exception. If you’ve got at least a little programming experience under your belt. I think that you’ll find this book and its very useful examples, coupled with the online documentation at PHP.net, will serve you very well.

Happy PHPing!

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Bryan Lunduke’s “Linux Sucks” Presentation

April 29, 2009

Here’s a presentation that’s worth watching, regardless of what operating system you use: it’s Bryan Lunduke’s presentation from Linux Fest Northwest – a Linux conference for “Rebel Scum” deep in the heart of The Empire — and it’s titled Linux Sucks, in which he talks about what needs to be fixed in desktop Linux. His [...]

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Windows 7’s Groovy Desktop Backgrounds

April 26, 2009

Among Windows 7’s Release Candidate 1’s Best New Surprise Features in Gizmodo are the funky (and quite unexpected!) new desktop backgrounds that come with “the Vista that should’ve been”. I have a couple of favourites. One is the one below, which is reminiscent of one of my favourite videogames of all time, Katamari Damacy:

I also [...]

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More Thoughts on Windows Whatever-it-is-That-Runs-on-Phones

February 16, 2009
A sad kid wearing a Darth Vader helmet

The Developer Angle

In case you don’t recognize the photo on the right, it’s the “Sad Darth Vader” photo from my earlier article titled This is How the Current State of Windows Mobile Makes Me Feel. I posted it in response to The Empire’s seemingly directionless efforts with its phone platform, Windows Mobile. Or, as it’s [...]

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This is How the Current State of Windows Mobile Makes Me Feel

February 11, 2009

Photo courtesy of Alex Brown Photography.

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Taking Windows 7 for a Spin

December 15, 2008

I had my first look at the next version of Windows – Windows 7 – at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles back in October, a week after I joined the company. By the powers vested in me as a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, I got my paws on an installer for a [...]

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“The Onion” Compares Apple’s OS X “Snow Leopard” Against Windows 7

November 10, 2008

…and hilarity ensues:

Links

The Onion: OS X Snow Leopard vs. Windows 7
Apple’s page on Mac OS X “Snow Leopard”
Microsoft’s site on Windows 7

Technorati Tags: It’s Funny Because It’s True,operating systems,Apple,Microsoft,OS X,Windows,Snow Leopard,Windows 7,The Onion

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“Windows 7″, Eh?

October 13, 2008

Purported Windows 7 screenshot, taken from MegaLeecher.net.
More will be revealed at the upcoming PDC (Professional Developers Conference) and WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference), but for now, we know the name of the next version of Windows: Windows 7. The only other hint that Mike Nash drops in his post on the Vista team blog is [...]

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Evans Data Survey: Less Than 1 in 10 Developers Writing Apps for Vista

June 16, 2008

c|net cites an Evans Data report: “A recent report from Evans Data shows fewer than one in 10 software developers writing applications for Windows Vista this year. Eight percent. This is perhaps made even worse by the corresponding data that shows 49 percent of developers writing applications for Windows XP.” Here’s VentureBeat’s take on this [...]

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Eric Sink on Windows XP and Listening to Customers

April 28, 2008

Eric Sink on Windows XP and Listening to Customers: “My overall posture toward Microsoft is still friendly. I still use Windows every day…I’ve used Vista, and while I didn’t find it to be a compelling “must-have” upgrade, I rather liked it. But none of this means that I’m going to give my blanket agreement [...]

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After a Month in Vista, This Pretty Much Sums Up My Feelings About Operating Systems

April 9, 2008

When I moved to my current position as Nerd Wrangler at b5media, I arrived to discover that the computer waiting for me was a Toshiba P200, a 17″ beast of a laptop that I’ve named “The Coffee Table”. This is the first time in about 5 years that I’ve worked with Windows as my primary operating system, and after a month in Vista, my feelings about operating systems are pretty much summarized by the picture below:

\"I\'m a Mac. I\'m UNIX. I\'m Vista.\"

More on my experiences in a later post.

[Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.]

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