The International PHP Magazine has conducted a poll on its website over the past week, this time asking "You Did Not Know That...", asking developers which of the true statements about PHP they didn't know about.

The options this time were:

• The trailing '?>' in PHP is Optional
• You can embed other programming languages in PHP
• Objects can be made to look like arrays by using Standard PHP Library
• require is faster than require_once
• Anything Less than 5.1.0 is Silly
• All

Be sure to cast your vote in their latest poll that asks readers that they're really looking for in their frameworks.

The International PHP Magazine has conducted a poll on its website over the past week, this time asking "You Did Not Know That...", asking developers which of the true statements about PHP they didn't know about.

The options this time were:

• The trailing '?>' in PHP is Optional
• You can embed other programming languages in PHP
• Objects can be made to look like arrays by using Standard PHP Library
• require is faster than require_once
• Anything Less than 5.1.0 is Silly
• All

Be sure to cast your vote in their latest poll that asks readers that they're really looking for in their frameworks.

Adam Trachtenberg is looking for some help in the COM department, specficially in using it with PHP5.

I'm trying to use PHP 5.2 to talk to Skype via the COM extension and Skype4COM interface.

I'm using this example from the Skype Forum, but I get a COM exception of "Skype client is not installed."

He also points to someone else with the problem, but still hasn't quite found a solution. Anyone want to help?

Adam Trachtenberg is looking for some help in the COM department, specficially in using it with PHP5.

I'm trying to use PHP 5.2 to talk to Skype via the COM extension and Skype4COM interface.

I'm using this example from the Skype Forum, but I get a COM exception of "Skype client is not installed."

He also points to someone else with the problem, but still hasn't quite found a solution. Anyone want to help?

Justin Silverton has posted a comparison between PHP and Perl, with the first part coming more from the PHP side comparing it to Perl and the second the opposite.

He starts off with some of the differences between the two langauges, including that PHP was made for the web, Perl was not and that PHP scripts take less overhead for the web server to run that Perl scripts as CGIs. There are also four larger topics that he looks at:

• PHP has separate functions for case insensitive operations
• PHP has inconsistent function naming
• PHP has no lexical scope
• PHP has too many functions in the main namespace

All but the top item (that one could be argued either way) are reasons that a Perl user might cite against using PHP. For each of the items, there's a bit of description following to give you a better idea where they're coming from.

Justin Silverton has posted a comparison between PHP and Perl, with the first part coming more from the PHP side comparing it to Perl and the second the opposite.

He starts off with some of the differences between the two langauges, including that PHP was made for the web, Perl was not and that PHP scripts take less overhead for the web server to run that Perl scripts as CGIs. There are also four larger topics that he looks at:

• PHP has separate functions for case insensitive operations
• PHP has inconsistent function naming
• PHP has no lexical scope
• PHP has too many functions in the main namespace

All but the top item (that one could be argued either way) are reasons that a Perl user might cite against using PHP. For each of the items, there's a bit of description following to give you a better idea where they're coming from.

It seems like all of the buzz in the PHP community lately is about the proliferation of several PHP frameworks including the Zend Framework, Symfony, and eZ Components. In response to this surge, several developers are offering their opinions on the matter, including Wolfgang Drews, maintainer of DynamicWebPages.de.

There are now so many Frameworks out there for php (just have a short look at dmoz, there are 46 listed, missing some wellknown ones like ezComponents, ZendFramework, Solar, Symfony, Code Igniter, ..., and what about PEAR??) - but which one are you going to use? Well, i guess it is a challenging question, especially if it is now up to you to decide this for a new starting project. Probably all frameworks have some strengths and weaknesses, but how long does it take you to evaluate them? You need some faster criteria to decide, and maybe these one will help you.

The "must have" questions he shares include:

• Is the framework well documented?
• Is the framework backed by a well known company?
• Does the framework fit into your IT-landscape?

It seems like all of the buzz in the PHP community lately is about the proliferation of several PHP frameworks including the Zend Framework, Symfony, and eZ Components. In response to this surge, several developers are offering their opinions on the matter, including Wolfgang Drews, maintainer of DynamicWebPages.de.

There are now so many Frameworks out there for php (just have a short look at dmoz, there are 46 listed, missing some wellknown ones like ezComponents, ZendFramework, Solar, Symfony, Code Igniter, ..., and what about PEAR??) - but which one are you going to use? Well, i guess it is a challenging question, especially if it is now up to you to decide this for a new starting project. Probably all frameworks have some strengths and weaknesses, but how long does it take you to evaluate them? You need some faster criteria to decide, and maybe these one will help you.

The "must have" questions he shares include:

• Is the framework well documented?
• Is the framework backed by a well known company?
• Does the framework fit into your IT-landscape?

Justin Silverton/i> has written up in this blog post the five reasons he sees not to use the popular OSCommerce E-Commerce software.