The changes for this version are:

• Chapter 16, Creating PDFs, has been significantly reworked to include a running example.
• New appendix A, A whistle stop tour of PHP syntax, mainly intended for programmers coming from another language wanting a quick overview of PHP syntax.
• Tidy up of all chapters to fix styles and typos.

It’s a good read and once you’ve read it you should buy his book!

He includes sample code that shows how to create a view helper that is responsible for retrieving the feeds and then creating the the HTML output.

I also recommend having a browse through his other articles about Zend Framework as clearly GM-RAM have been using ZF on quite a few projects.

Federico of PHP::Impact has more information here.

The benefits of Zend Framework that have been identified are:

• Zend Framework’s extensive unit tests, required for all contributed code, mean that exact situations can be recreated and problems diagnosed and pinpointed.
• The high-quality implementation of the MVC web application architecture provides a foundation for all Zend Framework applications.
• Supports data adapters for all major databases.
• Internationalization (i18n) and Localization (l10n).
• Authentication, authorization and session management.
• Web services.
• Ajax support.
• Security.
• A vast community of talented developers.

It’s good to see Zend Framework being used in more and more places.

Matthew Weier O’Phinney’s post has some interesting code examples while Andi Gutman’s post goes into more detail about the agreement itself.

The list of all the issues that have been addressed with this release can be found on the issue tracker.

This will make deploying a Zend Framework application even easier!

The biggest changes are:

• Chapters 2 through 7 have been edited
• New chapter 8 (forms)
• New chapter 16 (PDFs)
• Far more source code released

Let us know your thoughts on it over on the MEAP forum.

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.

The series will culminate with a complete blogging solution for my personal needs. I’ll cook it, bake it, beat it into submission, and then deploy it to replace this existing Serendipity installation. Along the way I’ll revisit numerous Zend Framework components, and probably praise or dissect them for problems or shortcomings. Along with my own mistakes, no doubt!

Part two continues by looking at the MVC architecture which is a good introduction into the design pattern and a must read for everyone!