For those out there that have complained that the Zend Certification Exam is just "so PHP4", you might want to check out what's coming up from Zend.

Two years after launching the industry standard for PHP Certifications and certifying over 1,300 engineers, Zend has once again teamed with a group of leading PHP experts to bring you the "Zend PHP 5 Certification" exam.

Topics that will be covered by this new exam will include:

• PHP Basics - syntax, constants, control structures
• XML and Web Services - SimpleXML, XPath, SOAP
• Functions, Arrays, Strings, Pattern Matching
• Design and Theory
• Streams and Network Programming

and much, much more. So, keep an eye out for Zend's announcement of the new exam's release. We'll post it here as well.

For those out there that have complained that the Zend Certification Exam is just "so PHP4", you might want to check out what's coming up from Zend.

Two years after launching the industry standard for PHP Certifications and certifying over 1,300 engineers, Zend has once again teamed with a group of leading PHP experts to bring you the "Zend PHP 5 Certification" exam.

Topics that will be covered by this new exam will include:

• PHP Basics - syntax, constants, control structures
• XML and Web Services - SimpleXML, XPath, SOAP
• Functions, Arrays, Strings, Pattern Matching
• Design and Theory
• Streams and Network Programming

and much, much more. So, keep an eye out for Zend's announcement of the new exam's release. We'll post it here as well.

Björn Schotte has posted this anticipatory post for the powerful Ajax + PHP tool coming from the TurboAjax.com group - a virtual data grid.

If you use Dojo, have a look at the fabulous widgets called TurboWidgets from TurboAjax.com: it's available for non-commercial and commercial usage. One of the great widgets is a data grid which can be customized in a wide variety.

As I've discovered in the TurboWidget forums, they're working on a virtual data grid. Imagine you want to display a list of 100,000 or more items which can be a major pita especially when working with slow internet connectivity. The solution is a real virtual data grid

He points to a demo they've posted and includes two screenshots, one of the previous situation with data grids like this, and a shot of theirs in action (loaded with 100,000 rows).

Björn Schotte has posted this anticipatory post for the powerful Ajax + PHP tool coming from the TurboAjax.com group - a virtual data grid.

If you use Dojo, have a look at the fabulous widgets called TurboWidgets from TurboAjax.com: it's available for non-commercial and commercial usage. One of the great widgets is a data grid which can be customized in a wide variety.

As I've discovered in the TurboWidget forums, they're working on a virtual data grid. Imagine you want to display a list of 100,000 or more items which can be a major pita especially when working with slow internet connectivity. The solution is a real virtual data grid

He points to a demo they've posted and includes two screenshots, one of the previous situation with data grids like this, and a shot of theirs in action (loaded with 100,000 rows).

PHP developers all over the world can rejoice now if what Jim Plush is predicting in his new post will be coming soon - a major resurgence of major companies looking for skilled PHP developers.

You can almost feel it in the air. You can almost sense that PHP hasn't even come close to hitting it's peak in the world. Jobs man, I'm talkin jobs. I remember 3 years ago getting my daily emails from monster.com on PHP positions open in my area and maybe I was lucky to see one every couple of weeks. Fast forward to today and there are no less than 5-10 per day! I mentioned this on the PHP podcast interview I did last with with Marcus and I noted how this quick explosion in PHP positions could be troublesome if trained coders aren't there.

With this rush right out on the horizion, Jim recommends a little preparation - getting your ceritification, contributing to an open source project, know your basics, make a name for yourself somewhere on google, and get out as much in the PHP-related media as you can.

PHP developers all over the world can rejoice now if what Jim Plush is predicting in his new post will be coming soon - a major resurgence of major companies looking for skilled PHP developers.

You can almost feel it in the air. You can almost sense that PHP hasn't even come close to hitting it's peak in the world. Jobs man, I'm talkin jobs. I remember 3 years ago getting my daily emails from monster.com on PHP positions open in my area and maybe I was lucky to see one every couple of weeks. Fast forward to today and there are no less than 5-10 per day! I mentioned this on the PHP podcast interview I did last with with Marcus and I noted how this quick explosion in PHP positions could be troublesome if trained coders aren't there.

With this rush right out on the horizion, Jim recommends a little preparation - getting your ceritification, contributing to an open source project, know your basics, make a name for yourself somewhere on google, and get out as much in the PHP-related media as you can.

On Stuart Herbert's blog, there's a new post with his look at the PHP implementation with in the structure of the Gentoo linux distribution.

We're three months after our original planned date of the 8th October 2005 for stabilising PHP 5 on Gentoo. Until we do stabilise, the PHP Herd encourages everyone to use the unstable dev-lang/php packages, either from Portage, or the very latest packages from the Gentoo PHP Overlay. The PHP Herd already considers the old-style PHP packages (dev-php/php et al) obsolete - and the sooner we can finally get rid of them the happier we will be.

I can't give you a timetable for when this will be done, as it's not the PHP Herd that does the stabilising [...] the PHP Herd hasalready stopped supporting the dev-php/php style packages (we all use dev-lang/php). January 2006 is a great month to start switching to dev-lang/php, if you haven't done so already!

It's mainly a message to end-users out there looking for information on the PHP support in this OS. It's wonderful to see the progress that's being made to keep one of the more popular linux distributions up-to-date in the realm of PHP...

On Stuart Herbert's blog, there's a new post with his look at the PHP implementation with in the structure of the Gentoo linux distribution.

We're three months after our original planned date of the 8th October 2005 for stabilising PHP 5 on Gentoo. Until we do stabilise, the PHP Herd encourages everyone to use the unstable dev-lang/php packages, either from Portage, or the very latest packages from the Gentoo PHP Overlay. The PHP Herd already considers the old-style PHP packages (dev-php/php et al) obsolete - and the sooner we can finally get rid of them the happier we will be.

I can't give you a timetable for when this will be done, as it's not the PHP Herd that does the stabilising [...] the PHP Herd hasalready stopped supporting the dev-php/php style packages (we all use dev-lang/php). January 2006 is a great month to start switching to dev-lang/php, if you haven't done so already!

It's mainly a message to end-users out there looking for information on the PHP support in this OS. It's wonderful to see the progress that's being made to keep one of the more popular linux distributions up-to-date in the realm of PHP...

According to this post on Mike's blog today, it looks like "PHP 5.1 is around the corner" (at least according to the latest copy of the news file).

Here's a tidied up excerpt of the current NEWS file with all relevant changes since PHP 5.0, which may help on the decision to upgrade (even from PHP 4).

Some of the things mentioned include:

• More than 350 fixes
• Some extensions moved out to PECL (11)
• PEAR upgrades
• Upgrade of the bundled Windows libraries
• Loads of Improvements and Addons

You can check out his post for the complete list...

According to this post on Mike's blog today, it looks like "PHP 5.1 is around the corner" (at least according to the latest copy of the news file).

Here's a tidied up excerpt of the current NEWS file with all relevant changes since PHP 5.0, which may help on the decision to upgrade (even from PHP 4).

Some of the things mentioned include:

• More than 350 fixes
• Some extensions moved out to PECL (11)
• PEAR upgrades
• Upgrade of the bundled Windows libraries
• Loads of Improvements and Addons

You can check out his post for the complete list...