Matthew Turland has posted a quick tutorial where he aims to simplify some of the functionality that the Zend Framework's Zend_View_Helper_Url view helper has to offer.

When I first began working with Zend_View on a project at work, I noticed that the Url view helper was a bit of a pain to use. It was rare that I didn't want to specify one or more of the action, controller, and module in my call along with the other Route assembly parameters.

He wanted to be able to get around some limitations of the helper - use arrays to help label the calls more readable and to be able to refer to other actions in the same controller. He actually made another view helper, one that extends Zend_View_Helper_Url with a few optional parameters including the extra data he wanted in an array. You can see the code at the bottom of his post (he credits Andy Best with development on the idea too).