Laravel setup failed to open stream

Laravel setup failed to open stream

I'm trying to setup laravel but its proving to be a right mere! I've
cloned it from github and also used composer to clone laravel and I've got
both of these techniques working which is good because its something I
really wanted to learn. Simpler than I thought.
However when I try to navigate to my laravel directory which is called
iProject so I type into my browser localhost/iProject I get a list of
directories which is not what I expected, I expected to be directed to at
least the hello.php page.
I've tired another technique as described in a Net-tuts tutorial which is
setting up a listening port and there I am then going through
localhost:8888, but when using this technique the following error message
appears:
Warning: Unknown: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in
Unknown on line 0
Fatal error: Unknown: Failed opening required 'public/'
include_path='.;C:\xampp\php\PEAR') in Unknown on line 0