Web development is complex and changing rapidly. Just installing all the different tools that you need to do you job is a task in itself and when you have to keep all those pieces updated with the rapid product releases it becomes even more demanding.
Enter Microsoft Web Platform installer! It’s an amazing tool that analyses your computer and carves out a path to upgrade it to the latest bells and whistles. Also lists everything out in a single place where you can just check-check-check and Install instead of finding compatible installers and installing them separately. It also gives you jump starter web applications instead of reinventing those yourselves. Here’s how you configure the web platform installer to include the developer tools (silverlight, Azure and more..) in the mix.
Click on the “Options” on the bottom left corner.
And check the “Developer Tools” box. And click OK.
It will rescan your machine and come up with the dev tools suggestions.
I also like to just fire up the web platform installer every once in a while just to see if there are any interesting updates that are available that I can take advantage of, in fact that’s how I found the Azure tools v1.2 release.
Hope that helps.
