This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
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Posts tagged as:
Windows
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:
…and another is a chronology of Windows’ boot screens:
This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.
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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 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 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:
Web Platform Installer has three tabs:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
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:
To start the installation, click the I Accept button, and Web Platform Installer will do its thing:
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:
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.
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.
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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