Microsoft WebMatrix Installation. “The life of WebMatrix-ista designer is hard and unsightly” - an essay about how things went wrong ... and it started off so beautifully

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Prehistory

What is there to hide, was led like many others to the beautiful Microsoft WebMatrix contest and interesting competitors. I myself have never used site development environments before, always used ready-made CMS (Joomla, Wordpress), but then I wanted to, it started to sparkle, glittered in my eyes ... I decided to try to participate, and at the same time to learn new tools for myself work productively and professionally with my blogs and micro sites.

So, I looked at the official page on the developer’s website, I admired the video presentation, read the specification for the distribution, and without finding any obvious problems with the installation, clicked the “Download WebMatrix” button. Immediately alarmed by the fact that the image proposed for download has the form WebMatrix_1_13_x86_ru-RU.msi and according to all the logic of the genre should work on x86. I checked the specification again, did not find a single mention about the incompatibility with x64, so I think the installer should be launched ... This is the end story.

The history of one package

And this package, as has already become clear above, is nothing more than WebMatrix_1_13_x86_ru-RU.msi , I launch it! Without thinking twice, the package after a couple of clicks “Next” informs me — I need Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 Express , an older → “Complete installation”. I think, okay, read again in the system requirements and specifications, what else does this newfangled animal want? Naturally, no hint of the pre-installation of other packages is indicated (it’s strange that they didn’t write about Framework 4, since it has been standing since time immemorial along with a number of other software applications that are useless for a graphic designer).
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I downloaded Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 Express , installed, restarted the WebMatrix installer, and again, it’s necessary, he says, to install the Microsoft Web Platform . I go to the site, I see two packages, one of extremely suspicious names and unknown contents of WebPlatformInstaller_3_10_amd64_ru-RU.msi , I think it’s unlikely that id will work for i7 because of Russian and white, I ’ve indicated ud , does not work under x64, swing amd64, started up, went, went ...

Continued the installation. The web platform installer tells me that I need to download 39.5 MB of all sorts of different things in order to get my WebMatrix started up, skim through the list, click → I accept.


With the presence of an excellent 10-Mbit Ineta, these 39.5 MB swayed and installed for almost 50 minutes, well, God bless them, where there are no brakes ... I got HabrHabrosty, I'm waiting ...


And now, the window of captivating happiness and the proximity of the launch of WebMatrix finally flashed on the monitor horizon, while the installation’s main window also showed a nice “Installed” mark opposite WebMatrix, without thinking twice, press → “Run”.



And what do I see? A beautiful, modernly designed, stylish window of the application (previously licked, looking at the video presentation on it), and, actually, that's all, absolutely everything ...

Crying about wasted time

Wherever I clicked, and with whatever compatibility parameters and admin rights I didn’t launch WebMatrix, I even tried to trick the window by ticking “Do not show the window next time”, I received only a spittle from the monitor, without any explanation ...




/ * I apologize for such perfectionist graphic details, I just want the money of the “big brothers” not all to spend on marketing and PR, and first of all they would concentrate on software quality * /

By the way, I forgot to specify the workstation specification:
ACPI x64-based PC, Microsoft Windows 7 Media Center Edition SP 1 (official license)
QuadCore Intel Core i7, 1883 MHz, 8192 MB DDR3-1333 NVIDIA, GeForce GTX 580 1536 MB, WDC WD10EARS-00Y5B1 ATA Device (931 GB, IDE), BTC 6311U, Wacom.

Summing up the above, I can’t and don’t want to give harsh assessments to all the good intentions of the “big brothers” to make the life of ordinary people (in particular, graphic and web designers) easier and more enjoyable, but I think the developers of this package will pay attention to my post and will be able to quickly help anyone who has already encountered or else may face a similar problem.

Thank you all, see you soon!