New from NETTUTS.com today there's a new article listing out some of the tools of the trade, the frameworks that web development professionals use (and not just with PHP).

New web development frameworks, promising rapid development and easy deployment, are sprouting out at a more rapid pace than you can keep up. In the last article, we looked at the various factors you'd have to consider when deciding on a framework. Today, we are going to look at the various frameworks available for each facet of web development.

PHP tools that made the list include CakePHP, the Zend Framework, Kohana and Symfony. Frameworks from some of the other languages include ASP.NET, Ruby on Rails, jQuery and Blueprint.

In this recent post to his blog Doug Brown spends a little time comparing (at a high-level) some of the differences between ASP and PHP.

The difference between PHP and ASP is that ASP is a Microsoft product based on visual basic syntax whereas PHP has C and Java based syntax. ASP works better on Microsoft servers.

He describes the target audience for each language and talks about the environments that they work best in as well as some general statements about their speed and flexibility. Basing his judgment on the facts he noted, he suggests PHP as the best alternative of the two for being more flexible, running in more places and being a bit faster overall.

On the Information World Review's blog today they ask if there's a third way (besides making the choice between PHP and .NET) that could bridge things between the two communities - Phalanger.

Now, at a programming level, a new initiative which could finally reconcile the great divide between PHP and .NET programming languages for the good of everyone - courtesy of WCM vendor Jadu. Development of the Phalanger PHP compiler was funded by the firm, but it is now releasing it into the open source community. It basically enables the creation of PHP applications which can run natively under the .NET Framework, allowing firms to make use of PHP apps without needing to rip out existing .NET/Visual Studio environments.

Phil Muncaster (author of the post) suggests that this technology is another reason to remove the "walled gardens" some .NET developers have put up and left in the flexibility and power that PHP has to offer their online development world (and vice versa).

In a response to these comments made by Paul Jones concerning the Prado framework, Mike Naberezny shares his thoughts on the framework, the "PHP way", and how the majority of site functionality out there can really be divided up pretty simply.

RADO is getting some new attention because it was completely revamped earlier this month. It's certainly matured considerably since the contest and is the most well-known component framework for PHP. However, in all that time since PRADO was first introduced, the idea of a component framework hasn't been adopted by the majority of PHP developers. Why is that?

Although PRADO is a nice piece of software, Paul surmises that a component model as used by Microsoft .NET (Visual Web Developer now free!) and its close cousin PRADO is not the "PHP way" or "PHP spirit". For the most part, I agree with this. Although, I don't think it's necessarily a PHP-specific issue. I think it speaks to a larger architectural decision - how far to abstract out the HTTP request/response paradigm.

He summarizes the functionality in three different methods of handling: "page/file based", "action based", and "component based". He also notes that the interesting fact is that the "page/file based" method seems to be so dominant in the PHP world, only emphasizing the fact that PHP is more of a "get it done" language than anything.

Wez Furlong has posted a request for some questions to help things along for an upcoming panel discussion he's going to be on at this year's MIX.

As I mentioned previously, I'll be at MIX this year on a panel discussing ASP and PHP interoperability, along with Jesse Liberty, Bill Staples, Joe Stagner and Brian Goldfarb.

I've been told that MIX has sold out and that there is a lot of interest in our slot, so I'm sure we'll have plenty to talk about, but I'm looking for questions to break the ice and get things rolling.

If you know a little bit about the topic and would like to help out with questions of your own, send them along to Wez via email - wez@php.net.

On Debianhelp.co.uk, there's this quick guide for those Debian users out there looking to quickly and easily install a full LAMP setup on their machine.

They start with the install of Apache 2 via the package manager/installer apt-get (different packages depending on which style you prefer - mpm-prefork or mpm-worker). With that installed, the web server should be up and working. Next up is MySQL, installed in a similar way and enabled in the php.ini file as a module.

Finally, PHP is installed and support for it is added into the http.conf file for Apache. There's also a brief mention of installing ASP via a mod_perl package as well.

In this article on WebProNews, Andreas Roell praises PHP, nothing several strengths and its flexibility while the fact that it's kept its reliability over time.

PHP has been able to stand its ground as a consistently implemented server-side scripting language. PHP is a general-purpose scripting language that is ideally suited for web developers, and can be easily embedded into HTML.

He mentions the advantage it has of being Open Source as well as flexible enough to run on just about anything out there. PHP can be more cost-efficient than other solutions and, since it is Open Source, you're not left waiting for a company to release their next patch when they feel like it (fix it yourself!). And, of course, what would an article singing the praises of PHP be without a brief mention of its competitor, ASP.

In a new post on his blog today, Paul Jones mentions a framework that might bridge the gap for ASP developers making the move over to PHP, Prado, and some of the issues that more traditional PHP developers might see around it.

An old buddy of mine wants to start using PHP, but the problem is that he's been working with Microsoft technologies for so long, he doesn't get "the PHP way". His background, for many years, has been with ASP.NET, COM, and those sorts of things.

As it turns out, there's a PHP framework out there that maps well to "the ASP.NET way": Prado.

He talks about how the framework is structured and what non-PHPers might find to like about it, but he also wonders if the phrase "the PHP way" might be better replaced by a more definitive term to describe the way most PHP develoers prefer their apps to work.

In this new blog entry, Marcus Whitney talks about the upcoming php|architect webcast he'll be hosting interviewing two people from Microsoft - Brian Goldfarb and Joe Stagner.

I'm pretty excited about this weeks webcast. I'll be speaking with Brian Goldfarb and Joe Stagner of Microsoft about how PHP can be used for enterprise development on the Windows platform.

I think that everyone should consider checking in and asking these guys some questions.

He also mentions that Microsoft, for a long time, only saw PHP in the context of the LAMP "package" and not as a stand-alone language. Seems their outlook has changed a bit - check out the webcast to see just how much...

On LinuxToday.com, there's this new pointer to an article that brings up the age-old struggle between two popular web development languages - ASP vs. PHP.

Both ASP and PHP are languages used to build Dynamic Web sites that can interact with Databases and exchange information. ASP (Active Server Pages) is from Microsoft and is used with IIS (Internet Information Server) that runs on Microsoft Servers. PHP (Personal Home Pages) is from Rasmus Lerdorf, who originally designed this parsing language which was later modified by different people. It runs on Unix and Linux servers and it also has an NT server version.

There are a lot of differences between ASP and PHP.

They go through several topics comparing to two - things like cost, speed, and database connectivity. The information provided here isn't anything groundbreaking, and there's no real conclusive choice (despite their "choice" at the end) between the two. What it really boils down to is the old "right tool for the right job" kind of situation, really...