There's a new post over on PHPBuilder.com today that has a look at "What's new in PHP5 and PHP6" - a look at the present, and forward to the future of this great language.

Most PHP installations out there are still running PHP 4.x. PHP 5.0 has been out a while, and PHP 5.1.1 has just been released. For those of you who haven't yet upgraded, this month I look at some of the changes you can expect to find in the newer versions of PHP, as well as a preview of what you can look forward to in PHP 6.

They go through PHP5 first, mentioning especially the new object model. PHP 5.1.x is briefly mentioned (especially 5.1.1 just released) but not that many new things were added in that edition. From there, the rest is a look at PHP6 and what we can expect from it - items removed/added to the core, the removal of register_globals, and one of the largest developments: Unicode support.

There's a new post over on PHPBuilder.com today that has a look at "What's new in PHP5 and PHP6" - a look at the present, and forward to the future of this great language.

Most PHP installations out there are still running PHP 4.x. PHP 5.0 has been out a while, and PHP 5.1.1 has just been released. For those of you who haven't yet upgraded, this month I look at some of the changes you can expect to find in the newer versions of PHP, as well as a preview of what you can look forward to in PHP 6.

They go through PHP5 first, mentioning especially the new object model. PHP 5.1.x is briefly mentioned (especially 5.1.1 just released) but not that many new things were added in that edition. From there, the rest is a look at PHP6 and what we can expect from it - items removed/added to the core, the removal of register_globals, and one of the largest developments: Unicode support.

On the Killersoft blog - Random Strings today, there's this opposing look at some of the things that Zend's been doing - things that would get them "coal and switches in their stocking this year".

So here it is -- December. We've got a shiny new PHP 5.1.1, which as been anticipated for weeks, at least. We've also got a zippy new Firefox 1.5 release, another project whose release was fairly well telegraphed and expected for the last month.

And then we've got Zend Studio, a cornerstone of "The PHP Company". After upgrading to PHP 5.1.1 and Firefox 1.5 this week, I was been shocked to discover that Zend Studio 5 and the Zend Studio Firefox Plug-In are both in a state of rectal-cranial inversion: neither Zend Studio 5 or the Firefox Plug-In are expected to support PHP 5.1.1 or Firefox 1.5 until late December/early January.

He notes that the extension claims to work for all Firefoxes above 0.9 and the Studio software for all PHP versions above 5 - but they do neither. And, of course, when he reports these issues, what's the response? "Give us a month."

There's absolutely no excuse for this delay that can be considered acceptable for a company who claims to be "The PHP Company." Perhaps Santa will leave a clue under the tree for these guys.

On the Killersoft blog - Random Strings today, there's this opposing look at some of the things that Zend's been doing - things that would get them "coal and switches in their stocking this year".

So here it is -- December. We've got a shiny new PHP 5.1.1, which as been anticipated for weeks, at least. We've also got a zippy new Firefox 1.5 release, another project whose release was fairly well telegraphed and expected for the last month.

And then we've got Zend Studio, a cornerstone of "The PHP Company". After upgrading to PHP 5.1.1 and Firefox 1.5 this week, I was been shocked to discover that Zend Studio 5 and the Zend Studio Firefox Plug-In are both in a state of rectal-cranial inversion: neither Zend Studio 5 or the Firefox Plug-In are expected to support PHP 5.1.1 or Firefox 1.5 until late December/early January.

He notes that the extension claims to work for all Firefoxes above 0.9 and the Studio software for all PHP versions above 5 - but they do neither. And, of course, when he reports these issues, what's the response? "Give us a month."

There's absolutely no excuse for this delay that can be considered acceptable for a company who claims to be "The PHP Company." Perhaps Santa will leave a clue under the tree for these guys.

On PHPMac.com today, they have this new tutorial posted to help you, the OS X (Tiger) user to get Apache 2 and PHP 5.1.1 installed on your system.

For anyone that has been wishing to switch to Apache 2 on their Mac, this is the time to do it. PHP 5 has also recently been updated to 5.1.1 and this tutorial describes in detail, the best method to both build and install these programmes on your Mac.

Since Apple don't include Apache 2 with OS X yet I have felt it better to keep Apache 2 in its own directory, and to keep PHP for Apache 2, etc. confined the that directory too.

As usual, they give you all of the commands and information to get it all unpacked, placed in the right locations, and configured for your setup. There are also a few "frequent issues" down near the end of the tutorial to watch out for during your process...

On PHPMac.com today, they have this new tutorial posted to help you, the OS X (Tiger) user to get Apache 2 and PHP 5.1.1 installed on your system.

For anyone that has been wishing to switch to Apache 2 on their Mac, this is the time to do it. PHP 5 has also recently been updated to 5.1.1 and this tutorial describes in detail, the best method to both build and install these programmes on your Mac.

Since Apple don't include Apache 2 with OS X yet I have felt it better to keep Apache 2 in its own directory, and to keep PHP for Apache 2, etc. confined the that directory too.

As usual, they give you all of the commands and information to get it all unpacked, placed in the right locations, and configured for your setup. There are also a few "frequent issues" down near the end of the tutorial to watch out for during your process...

On the main PHP site today, there's the announcement of PHP 5.1.1 being released for public consumption.

The PHP Development Team would like to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.1.1.

This is a regression correction release aimed at addressing several issues introduced by PHP 5.1.0, the core changes as follows:

• Native date class is withdrawn to prevent namespace conflict with PEAR's date package.
• Fixed fatal parse error when the last line of the script is a PHP comment.
• eval() hangs when the code being evaluated ends with a comment.
• Usage of \{$var} in PHP 5.1.0 resulted in the output of {$var} instead of the $var variable's value enclosed in {}.
• Fixed inconsistency in the format of PHP_AUTH_DIGEST between Apache 1 and 2 sapis.
• Improved safe_mode/open_basedir checks inside the cURL extension.

So, if you grabbed the PHP 5.1.0 release the other day, go ahead and pull this one down - there are a few smaller bug fixes that were done, but a few majors that could cause problems down the line..

On the main PHP site today, there's the announcement of PHP 5.1.1 being released for public consumption.

The PHP Development Team would like to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.1.1.

This is a regression correction release aimed at addressing several issues introduced by PHP 5.1.0, the core changes as follows:

• Native date class is withdrawn to prevent namespace conflict with PEAR's date package.
• Fixed fatal parse error when the last line of the script is a PHP comment.
• eval() hangs when the code being evaluated ends with a comment.
• Usage of \{$var} in PHP 5.1.0 resulted in the output of {$var} instead of the $var variable's value enclosed in {}.
• Fixed inconsistency in the format of PHP_AUTH_DIGEST between Apache 1 and 2 sapis.
• Improved safe_mode/open_basedir checks inside the cURL extension.

So, if you grabbed the PHP 5.1.0 release the other day, go ahead and pull this one down - there are a few smaller bug fixes that were done, but a few majors that could cause problems down the line..

Most people noted the release of PHP 5.1.1 the other day with a quick blog post on their sites. Ilia Alshanetsky has just a bit more in his extended version, including his rant on the "hurried release" of this latest edition.

The initial and probably the main reason for the PHP 5.1.1 release in such a hurry was a rather interesting problem. One of the features introduced by 5.1.0 was the addition of the native "date" class. The eventual plan was to enable additional ext/date functionality via this class through a series of methods that have already been written.

The real "fun" began a couple of hours after the release when Pierre-Alain Joye posted a message titled "PHP 5.1 (Or How to break tousands of apps out there)", whose title was certain to provoke a reaction and boy, did it ever.

He continues, talking more about the dissention that it caused on the internals mailing list. He does mention, however, that the bugs.php.net site was interestingly quiet the whole time. With Ilia being the "Release Master" for the 5.1 series, he decided eventually to pull it back and wait until a future date to make the date class release...

Most people noted the release of PHP 5.1.1 the other day with a quick blog post on their sites. Ilia Alshanetsky has just a bit more in his extended version, including his rant on the "hurried release" of this latest edition.

The initial and probably the main reason for the PHP 5.1.1 release in such a hurry was a rather interesting problem. One of the features introduced by 5.1.0 was the addition of the native "date" class. The eventual plan was to enable additional ext/date functionality via this class through a series of methods that have already been written.

The real "fun" began a couple of hours after the release when Pierre-Alain Joye posted a message titled "PHP 5.1 (Or How to break tousands of apps out there)", whose title was certain to provoke a reaction and boy, did it ever.

He continues, talking more about the dissention that it caused on the internals mailing list. He does mention, however, that the bugs.php.net site was interestingly quiet the whole time. With Ilia being the "Release Master" for the 5.1 series, he decided eventually to pull it back and wait until a future date to make the date class release...