Tibo Beijen has a recent post to his blog about using a popular component of the Zend Framework, Zend_Form, without having to use the entire framework to get it.

Most components of Zend Framework can be used without using the entire framework and Zend_Form is no exception. It's a versatile component that can be customized to great extent. The payoff is that seemingly easy tasks can seem quite complex to complete and involve concepts like Decorators and View Helpers. Complexity is increased by the fact that most tasks can be achieved in multiple ways.

He looks at creating a Zend_Form object and using it to: create a simple email field, make a multi-checkbox, add in custom validators to each field, add decorators to the object and render it in a page.