I’ve used the term “drinking from the fire hose” when describing my first days at Microsoft. However, I believe that a lot of our customers feel this way when approaching the plethora of options for web application development on the Microsoft stack.

This is feedback we’ve received from many sources and as Scott Hanselman pointed out, there’s a concerted effort to make things easier to find and understand here. Much of these efforts will take time to see fruition, but some of them are happening now.

The new Microsoft Web Platform Installer Beta can get you up and running developing on ASP.NET in two easy clicks.

First, you select an option from the first screen. Obviously, if you choose the Your Choice option, it’ll take more than two clicks.

choose-type

I chose the ASP.NET Developer option and clicked Next.

accept-license

The second screen lets you choose to accept the licensing terms. This is nice in that you don’t have to go and click through 20 different EULAs.

installing

Once you click I Accept the installer begins.

If you want more control, you can choose Your Choiceat the first screen which takes you to a screen that lets you choose all sorts of options.

your-choice

This is a great tool for someone who wants to quickly get started learning and developing on ASP.NET. You’ll notice that it doesn’t include ASP.NET MVC yet. Don’t worry, it will once we have a proper beta release.

If you run into any problems with it, be sure to report it on their forums. For more information, be sure to read the announcement on Bill Staple’s blog.

In case you missed my first link to the beta for the installer, it’s here.