You're right, i was loading them straight into firefox.
Ok, so now I've moved my php programs into the C:\xampp\htdocs folder. Then i went to http://localhost. But i didn't see any ' run php script ' button or prompt. Strikes me as odd, because that xampp page seems to have a lot of functionality, why did they leave out a 'run php script' function?
so I just drag dropped my php code file windows icon into the browser ontop of the xampp page, and got the same blank page result. Still isn't working :/