Why The Web Application Installer Rocks

Scott beat me to it. I had been waiting a bit to talk about the new Web Application Installer from the IIS team but got scooped. This isn’t the same thing as the Web Platform Installer (which Scott talked about here) – it’s a whole different beast that actually installs applications on your machine and configures them (read more from Scott’s post).

Here’s what Scott has to say about the Web Application Installer:

It’s an [sic] bootstrapper that gets you setup for free web development, all in a single application. It’ll setup IIS7, get you Visual Studio, SQL Server, .NET, etc. Cool. And there was much rejoicing (except XP folks, sorry.)
Well, the team just released the Web Application Installer (Beta). Get it? First Platform, now Applications.
What does it do? Well, how about a screenshot.

Yes, that’s Drupal in there. And PHPBB. And WordPress. Sweet.

I think this rocks and I couldn’t have phrased it better than Scott did:

There you go, Microsoft ships an app with a mostly GPL’ed library. Madness. Cats and Dogs, living together, mass hysteria

Awesome sauce. I thought it would be fun, however, to provide a little “insider insight” about the Web App Installer that you may find interesting …

About 5 months ago the IIS team called me and wanted to pick my brain about some feedback I’d received on my blog about Open Source “stuff”. They told me what they were up to, and the ideas they had about putting together a “one-click installer” that would configure IIS so you could run X, Y, and Z. I told them it was a great idea – but they might want to take it a step further and actually install the apps that most people need and use – like WordPress, PHPBB, Graffiti, WikiPedia, etc.

They mentioned they were trying to think of some “value add” like that (I won’t take credit for it- I’m sure we were thinking along the same lines here) but wanted perspective from someone active in the Open Source community. It was a great conversation – we “stair-stepped” ideas and brainstormed for about an hour but I wasn’t sure how much of the goodness we talked about would see the light of day. I’m happy to say that it looks like all of it did – and my virtual hat is off to the team for reaching out and listening to the community.

This is my point: they listened intently. And they did it.

I can’t stress enough how much you should care about a tool like this. Even if you don’t use it. Open Source? Direct community feedback shaping a tool so directly? I think ScottGu needs to be thinking about 2016…

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 17th, 2008 at 4:16 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Comments to “Why The Web Application Installer Rocks”

joe says:

October 17, 2008 at 9:35 am

What’s the criteria for getting an application included in that?

(I have no skin in the game, just curious).

Dave S says:

October 17, 2008 at 10:11 am

I’m not sure I buy into this as a better alternative to using something such as Team City (Enterprise) to control release management on a larger scale.

robconery says:

October 17, 2008 at 10:44 am

Hi Dave – help me with what you mean here; this is for end users (such as yourself) to install apps you might use. Not necessarily for you to deploy your apps.

Daniel says:

October 17, 2008 at 11:08 am

I agree this is great, but what is the functional reason for two different apps? What I _really_ want is one tool to rule them all. Here’s how it would work:

-I click Start -> Install New Programs

-I get a searchable, categorized list of web apps, windows apps, services, platforms, etc.

-I check the boxes next to the that I want

-I enter any info they need in a simple wizard UI.

-I click install.

-I see a report of everything that was installed and the ‘next steps’ for each.

-As a bonus, I can do cool things like save lists of apps to install on multiple pcs, etc.

Since this would require a centralized “App Store” (ehem), this would also be a good place for a single “updater to rule them all”. Instead of 10 different pop ups – at least 2 from MS (Windows Update and Microsoft Update)- Apple Update, antivirus updates, and ClickOnce updates, I want one:

-I get prompted (depending on user settings) that there are updates

-I choose the ones I want and update

This gets into dangerous waters, I’m sure – MS has been good about not creating walled gardens like Apple Store or ITunes, but in this case, it costs in user experience and even security. For example, raise your hand if you’ve tried to explain to a non-computer person which “Your computer is out of date, click here to update” pop ups they _should_ and _shouldn’t_ click.

Sorry, that’s a bit of a rant. =) Good work everybody listening to the community and cranking out cool tools =)

viscious says:

October 17, 2008 at 11:21 am

{quote}

can’t stress enough how much you should care about a tool like this. Even if you don’t use it. Open Source? Direct community feedback shaping a tool so directly?

{/quote}

That is indeed good news however…

Who are these tools supposed to be targeting?

End users don’t install phpbb or DotNetNuke or whatever.

If you are “some guy” trying to “put up a website” you probably have a hosting account with someone (in which case you cant use this tool).

If you are a little more high end, you might have a dedicated/virtual dedicated server. If you are taking responsibility for your own server you should either have someone qualified managing it for you (in which case this tool is of no use to them) or you should know enough to do it yourself.

If you are a developer and not just someone who wants a website, you absolutely should know enough to be able to do this yourself, or you are part of an organization where there is someone with the skills necessary.

I can see these tools being useful for people who already know how to do this stuff, if the tool saves them some time. But i am not sure there was a huge need for that, setting up iis7 and .net doesn’t take that much time and you can set everything up exactly how you want it to be.

I’m sure there are some people who want to run phpbb off their home server on their cable modem, and maybe this tool is useful for them, but I’m not sure that’s a great idea, and even if it is, the market for that must be tiny.

Joe Brinkman says:

October 18, 2008 at 2:00 am

There are many similar offerings in the LAMP space (http://bitnami.org/ is one) that help a user quickly get a full stack and application up and running very quickly. The market is much larger than one might initially think. These installer apps are aimed at people who may be new to the platform, or new to the application, get all the bits they need and really simplify the process. Having been on the inside at DotNetNuke for many years, I can tell you that the number one complaint is installation. We spend a lot of time just helping users get their “platform stack” properly installed/configured, before we can even discuss what the issue is with DotNetNuke. I can create the greatest DotNetNuke installer in the world, but if you don’t have IIS installed or configured properly then DotNetNuke just won’t install.

Looking at some of the other apps included, I can tell you that installation is not always as straight-forward as you might think.

So, my hats off to Microsoft for making a complicated process just a little bit easier.

CyberBlox says:

October 20, 2008 at 1:27 am

2 Questions

1) Is SunSonic included in the installer?

2) Can I add my own programs to the installer?

Dave S says:

October 21, 2008 at 6:01 am

Rob,

Sorry for such a late reply. What I am trying to understand is what do I get out of using this in the future? Less time time spent on configuration? Okay; but am I really spending that much time today?

So, naturally, my thought process goes towards – okay, so how do I deploy my applications with this tool; how do I specify perquisites; and again, what does this buy me?

I’d really like to know, hopefully I just have the wrong impression about this.

Cheers.

robconery says:

October 21, 2008 at 8:20 am

You can’t use it to deploy apps that you create (that I know of – at least not yet). The idea here is that you, as a developer, have a host of MS tools on your machine (most likely). Visual Studio, SQL Server, plus maybe a few others. The idea here is that you now have one spot to check to make sure you have the latest bits (this is in reference to the Web Installer).

The app installer is for people who use the apps listed – these are really common. For someone like me who supports a project like SubSonic, having the ability to setup Graffiti and PHPBB is rockin – those are two great apps that will solve a lot of needs.

True enough that most of them are really easy – PHPBB especially (it’s known for ease of setup). That’s not the point – getting PHP and MySQL setup properly is not easy for some and this tool makes sure it’s done for you and done correctly .

Developer4lease says:

November 5, 2008 at 7:43 pm

The information provided by you looks pretty interesting.Here i got a doubt where can i download installer for my pocket pc? my pc can’t recognize it and i don’t have an installer cd.Can anyone share their opinion in it.

http://www.developer4lease.com/

easy loan says:

June 26, 2009 at 7:31 am

I found blog.wekeroad.com very informative. The article is professionally written and I feel like the author knows the subject very well. blog.wekeroad.com keep it that way.

Why The Web Application Installer Rocks

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