On March 18th, Microsoft released Web Platform Installer 2.0 (beta). The Web Platform Installer is a small utility you can use to download, install, and maintain your Microsoft "Web Platform" (new buzzword?) applications. This includes Internet Information Services (Microsoft's web server), or IIS, MS SQL Server Express, Silverlight 3 Visual Studio tools, and much more.

I recently wrote an article about the release of the ASP.NET MVC Framework that was released on the same day. Like the ASP.NET MVC release, the Web Platform Installer (or Web PI) release was announced at Mix '09. Again, good timing here on Microsoft's part that allowed them to get this beta version out to lots of people that will be downloading new stuff (ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight 3, just to name a few).

Mix '09 is an annual conference on web design and web development. The 2009 conference was held March 18th to March 20th in Las Vegas. Microsoft made a few announcements regarding new product releases this year. A vast amount of information from the conference is available at the main Mix '09 website.

I actually didn't realize initially that the Web PI 2.0 beta came out today (although I should've, since it was mentioned in the haacked article I found the link on). So, I opened up the Web PI site  and stared at it for a moment. Should I download 1.0 or 2.0 beta? Decisions, decisions. I decided to shoot the breeze and go for the new stuff.

Using Web Platform Installer 2.0 beta

Hold on. So you want me to download and install a program to... download and install stuff?

I know, I know. I was skeptical, too. But hey, live a little! If this is the biggest risk you're taking this week, you need to get out more.

So I downloaded & installed Web Platform Installer 2.0 beta and was greeted with this elegant, web 2.0-reminiscent screen:

I like what I see so far. I downloaded this thing so that I could install ASP.NET MVC, and there it is. Good. I'm also intrigued by this "SQL Server 2008 Management Studio Express" thing. I know I've heard of it before, but it was probably when I was in shock from seeing so many SQL Server tools, and was thus ignored. I noticed there was a little blue information icon, so I clicked on it.

Cool. A little information the tool was just what I needed. With this in hand, I can decide whether or not I want to install this thing (I did). One other thing I just noticed while writing this: the release date listed is 3/17/2009. The guys over at Microsoft must've been working their asses off to get all this stuff out in time for a release simultaneous with Web PI and Mix '09.

Clicking "Web Platform" on the left gives me a better list of stuff I can install (and a better idea of what this "Web Platform" encompasses. Components are listed in these categories: Web Server, Frameworks and Runtimes, Database, and Tools.

This is cool, but I notice that the checkboxes indicate a partial install for a few of those items. What happens if I click on this "Customize" link? Hmm...

Ah, there we go. That's what I was looking for. They really hit this one out of the park. I really like the granular control here. A lot of these IIS components are not necessary for my local development machine, but I am itching to run Web PI on the server sitting in my closet and make sure it has all the components I want it to have. Web PI seems to provide a great one-stop solution for installing most of what you need on your server without having to remember them or hunt them down on the web.

After clicking on "Install," you have to agree to the various license associated with the products you selected. Blindly clicking right through that, I find the installation screen:

Nice. It is intelligent enough to start installing as soon as the first component is downloaded, and continues to download the other packages while it does so. I like. My download speed may be a bit high here, but the download went much faster than the installation. That's pretty much what I've come to expect from Microsoft though - long installs are just part of the territory.

My (eventually) installation finished and I was presented with this final screen confirming the components that were installed successfully. Woohoo!

The Silverlight Debacle

You'll notice above that my "Silverlight 3 Tools for Visual Studio Beta" install unfortunately failed. I must admit that I left a bit out before so that the article flowed well, but there's no hiding it from you now, is there?

When I first tried to select to install the Silverlight 3 tools, I was greeted with this error message:

Oh, come on. The tool is not smart enough to give me an automatic or one-click uninstall of Silverlight 2 in order to install Silverlight 3? Wait, why is that even necessary? Boo.

So I head over to my Add/Remove Programs panel and uninstall my "Microsoft Silverlight 2 SDK." Nope. Not it. Still getting the error. Digging a little deeper, I find a rather cryptically labelled Visual Studio 2008 SP1 tools for Silverlight 2 (I can't remember the wording exactly). I uninstalled this, too, and then I was able to proceed with my Silverlight 3 tools installation, which means that the first thing I uninstalled was wrong. Great.

So, of course, after Web PI was finished, I got the failure message shown way above. I clicked on the log, which was a not-so-useful, but that's okay. Maybe this is because I uninstalled the wrong Silverlight component, or maybe this piece is a half-baked. In either case, it could use some lovin', but I do understand that this is Web PI 2.0 beta, so I won't complain (much).

Web PI refused to install the  Silverlight 3 tools for me, and I ended up grabbing them from here.

Keeping up-to-date with Web PI

One of the selling points about Web PI is that it will let you keep your Web Platform components up-to-date. How does it do this, you ask? I was wondering, too. I opened up Web PI again to look for the answer, and found the answer staring back at me:

Simple enough! Web PI loads its list of Web Platform software everytime you run it. So, all you need to do is run Web PI periodically to make sure you have the latest versions and all the fun, new stuff Microsoft has been putting out lately.

Now I understand the Web PI model a little bit better, too. At first, I was surprised that Microsoft wanted me to download this program I would only use once (like you were, because of that question you asked, remember?) However, now I see that they want you to run it frequently and have it installed for future occassions when you want to download Web Platform goodies. Clever. If you're having trouble finding Web PI on your Vista machine, try typing "web platform" into your Start Menu, like so:

Final Thoughts

Overall, I liked what I saw. As a developer, the idea of having a tool to keep my tools up-to-date is appealing. As an adminstrator, having a one-stop-shop tool I can run on my server to get all the components I need is appealing. Barring the issues I had with the Silverlight 3 tools (which I'll chalk up to this being a beta release), I give it two thumbs up. I look forward to the release candidate.

Download the latest Web Platform Installer from Microsoft.