Oh, sorry. Guess I should've been more clear on that. What I meant by "loading" was basically this: Most PHP web developers, I would assume, do their initial development on their own box, whether that box is a Linux box with its own Apache webserver or Windows 9x running PWS or Windows NT running IIS.
For example, I have a production webserver where my PHP code eventually goes once I've written and tested it. However, when I am first writing that PHP code, I do it on my own box, which also happens to be an NT box running IIS (this way I can testbed the script before putting out in production). So here I am, writing let's say a file called MyCode.PHP which I store in the root web directory on my own box (for this example we'll use C:\InetPub\wwwroot as the root directory of the IIS website on my computer). Now I want to test this code to make sure it works. If I am smart, I will run my web browser and type in a URL which points to my box as if I were somewhere else on the Internet (e.g., http://mycomputer/MyCode.PHP).
HOWEVER, if I am new to the game of writing PHP, I might try to run my web browser and use the File | Open... menu option in say Netscape or IE and open the file directly off the hard drive...kind of like opening a file in MS Word or whatnot. So in effect I am using my browser to open C:\InetPub\wwwroot\MyCode.PHP.
This will NOT work properly. The reason is that when I do this, the browser is simply opening a file off the HD just like NotePad/MSWord/etc. would open a file to edit it. So I end up just staring at the original PHP code in my browser, not the results of the PHP code running.
To make the PHP code execute and generate the output I want, I must provide the browser a URL so that my browser talks to IIS and has IIS serve up the webpage /MyCode.PHP. As IIS looks in the root web directory for the file to serve, it realizes the file has extension .PHP, which prior I had configured in the MMC to be mapped to run through PHP.EXE. (This is that whole posting where I talk about right-clicking on the website, then selecting Properties|"Home Directory" tab|[Configuration...]|AppMapping and mapping the extension .PHP to "C:\PHP\php.exe %s %s" etc.) End result: IIS feeds MyCode.PHP to the CGI program PHP.EXE and the results are then passed back to your browser, which is exactly what you want.
Does this make any sense? Basically I was trying to warn newbies of something I see them do a lot. They write their PHP code into a file, then they load the PHP file directly into the browser off their HD. This doesn't make it execute. You need to have IIS serve up the page to the browser, just like any webpage you get on the Internet. When you put a URL in your browser that makes the browser talk to IIS, it's just as if you had gone to the command line and typed in "C:\PHP\php.exe C:\InetPub\wwwroot\MyCode.PHP", the result of which is the generated HTML which you want IIS to pass back to the browser.
If you do your PHP development on one box, but you must first transfer that PHP code to another box to test it (i.e., you write PHP files, then FTP them to a box running a webserver), odds are you won't make this mistake. You usually can't simply do File | Open... in the browser to open a file on another computer like you would a file on your own HD. But as I said, I believe many PHP coders first do all their dirty work on the same box, and in such cases, newbies sometimes get confused and load the file directly into the browser.
Hopefully I'm not running around in circles here on ya. Using the Metallica parody of "Napster Bad", "Loading PHP file straight from HD BAAAAD. Loading PHP file off webserver GOOOOOD." :-)
