Over on his blog today, Chris Shiflett has posted this new entry with some of the things that he got out of the php|architect webcast concerning the Zend Framework.
The core focus of the framework is Extreme Simplicity. In order to achieve this, it must be very easy to use. This doesn't just mean that it must be simple to write code - it also needs to be useful in existing PHP environments without the need for external libraries or custom modifications. In many cases, this means that features must be implemented in pure PHP, so that they're available everywhere. For example, the search component is a pure PHP implementation of Lucene, and the front controller doesn't rely on a sophisticated collection of mod_rewrite rules.
I just finished listening to the Zend Framework Webcast, hosted by php|architect. The recording will be available soon, and I'll update this post to provide a link as soon as it is.
He continues, talking more about the components system and the examples they gave (ZActiveRecord, ZMail, and ZSearch). He doesn't gve much in the way of opinion, though...