If you haven't already, the first step is to download Lazarus 0.9.22 [41MB]. The download will probably take a while as the file is quite large, so you might want to leave it going while doing something else, such as reading through the rest of this tutorial.

When the download finishes, you should have a "Lazarus-*.exe" file on your computer (the asterisk [*] is a symbol meaning that any number of characters can be in that position). To install Lazarus, firstly run the "Lazarus-*.exe" file (by double-clicking on the file or by any other means). Then select the appropriate language and follow the on-screen prompts.

This can be done by just clicking Next until the following screen is reached.

Then click Install to begin. It might take a while to complete, but eventually you should see the folloiwng screen.

Click Finish to exit the installer. Now go to Start - Programs - Lazarus - Lazarus to launch the program. You should see the following screen (click to enlarge).

The interface above is an example of an IDE, which basically means that all you need to write programs in that language is in one place. You can have a look at the different sections in more detail yourself, but the main ones are as follows:

• Lazarus Main Menu - the part at the top with a menu bar, tool bar and component bar. The menu and tool bars have all the normal editing features such as loading, saving, printing and searching, as well as some programming-specific ones such as project settings and the ability to compile and run your program.
• Source Editor - this is where you write your code. It is very similar to a word processing application except that it doesn't do formatting, but instead does syntax colouring to make the code easier to read.
• Form Design - this is where you design the GUI aspects of your program, which we will be getting onto in a later section.
• Object Inspector - this is where you fine-tune the GUI components of your program.

At first all the options will probably seem confusing, but once you get to know the IDE you'll learn to love it.