The timetable for Zend Framework 1.7 is now out and Wil has announced that it will be released on November 16th.
Lots of goodies will be in this release including Flex integration using Zend_Amf and also the ability to write to config files using Zend_Config_Writer. Also, support for JQuery will be coming to Zend Extras and also Matthew has been working on some performance enhancements which will be very welcome!
Zend Framework 1.6 has been released. I especially like how the home page of the website has evolved and is now very appealing.
The big new features are:
Lots of interesting stuff! There’s now two download files to choose from. If you want a copy of the Dojo JavaScript library, the ZF unit tests along with Zend Framework itself, then choose Full, otherwise choose Minimal which is just the Zend Framework code. As always it’s available at the download page.
Andi Gutmans has written an article with the full details which is definitely worth a read. I’d like to also extend my thanks to the whole ZF team, both the Zenders and those in the community, for creating such a great framework.
In terms of the book, everything in it will work with version 1.6, but we do not cover most of the new functionality as it has arrived too late in the publishing cycle. This of course, does not affect what a great book Zend Framework in Action is!
I thought I’d draw attention to the Resources page. I’ve recently updated the list of tutorials and have also added a link to the book Website Optimization by Andrew King as I’ve been finding his analyser on http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ useful.
If you know of any other resources that you think really should be there, then please let me know.
Matthew Weier O’Phinney has posted an article entitled Zend Framework 1.6.0 Preview, or, PHP4 is Dead in which he picks out the new features of the upcoming version 1.6 of Zend Framework.
He looks at:
Go and have a read and drool over what’s coming our way!
Release Candidate 1 of Zend Framework 1.6 is now available for download. DevZone have published an overview of the new features, the key ones being:
Grab a copy and test your applications – there’s bound to be bugs that need fixing before the main release!
According to news coming out from @media, the BBC will be using Zend Framework for the presentation layer for bbc.co.uk.
Federico of PHP::Impact has more information here.
The benefits of Zend Framework that have been identified are:
It’s good to see Zend Framework being used in more and more places.
We’re a bit late with this information but for the sake of completeness we have to echo the news that Zend Framework and the Dojo Javascript toolkit are now partners.
Matthew Weier O’Phinney’s post has some interesting code examples while Andi Gutman’s post goes into more detail about the agreement itself.
Zend Framework 1.5.2 has been released. This is a bug fig release in the 1.5 series which fixes 50 issues.
The list of all the issues that have been addressed with this release can be found on the issue tracker.
I know I’ve downloaded it a few times but the Zend April Newsletter is suggesting there must be a few more of you doing it too; Five million in fact!
It’s interesting that half of those downloads have been made in the last six months. If you consider that the more feature-rich version 1.5 was only released recently, I’d be surprised if that download rate didn’t continue for a while yet. Hopefully long enough to have one or two people interested in our book?!
If downloads convert to adoption then clearly knowledge of Zend Framework is going to be useful for PHP developers. For early adopters it’s also hopefully an indication that the gamble we took on the framework was worth it.
Last week, Ralph Schindler’s webinar on Zend_Layout and Zend_View was released along with the slides in PDF format. Cal has the details on Devzone. Ralph has also released a demo application showing how to put into practice the ideas he talks about.
