Sun is trying to decide which of the PHP frameworks is wants to support in its next version of NetBeans. The symfony group wants you to vote for them if you're a fan of the framework and want to see the support included.

NetBeans, the open-source development environment sponsored by Sun, is planning to include support for PHP frameworks in its upcoming versions. As there are so many PHP frameworks, NetBeans developers have organized a public election to choose the two PHP frameworks that will be initially supported.

Instructions on how to vote are included (you will need to register to get to the voting form).

As mentioned on the Zend Developer Zone, there's a new tutorial from Christoph Dorn about combining the Zend Framework with the FirePHP debugging tool that now comes included in the latest release (ZF 1.6).

The long awaited day has arrived. Zend Framework 1.6 just shipped and with it native support for FirePHP! This means that if you use Zend Framework (ZF) you can now log to your Firebug Console via FirePHP without needing to download any other PHP files such as the FirePHPCore library.

The two new components - Zend_Log_Writer_Firebug and Zend_Db_Profiler_Firebug - are used in the debugging and his tutorial shows you how to get started.

John Mertic passed along a note about a new post to the SugarCRM developers blog detailing how to enable IMAP support for PHP on an OS X machine.

With the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard last fall, Apple (finally) included a modern version of PHP (currently version 5.2.6 as of this writing). [...] However, the default install of PHP that Apple included didn't include all of the available PHP extensions. Most notable is the IMAP extension, which is used in SugarCRM for the Campaigns and Emails modules. However you can build this extension and have it loaded dynamically, without affecting the rest of the default PHP install.

He shows where to get the packages and libraries you'll need to get the support working. The method involves building a shared module and including it to be loaded in your php.ini. This way it doesn't disrupt anything the current build has and you don't have to recompile everything over again.

Max Horvath has called for some help in getting a feature included (and fully working) into the next release of the Eclipse PDT extension - phar support.

With Eclipse PDT 2.0 to be released in September (or October) support for namespaces is already on the roadmap. Support for Phar archives has not been listed, yet. But in my opinion Eclipse PDT 2.0 must support handling Phar archives when PHP 5.3 will hit the street.

He points out some of the current lackings that the Eclipse extension has including the inability to browse phar archives and that there is no way to debug the archives. He's opened a feature request for the functonality to be added and suggested fleshing it out on the wiki.

This is where you come in - he wants to know what sort of support that developers out there would like for phar in this next release. Just leave comments on his blog with your ideas.

Helgi has posted about an update to the next alpha release of PEAR to remove support for certain versions of PHP:

For the next alpha release of PEAR that will happen in 2 - 4 weeks we'll have a min dep of PHP 4.4 and 5.1.6, so basically excluding 5.0.0 - 5.1.5 Now why am I going to do that?

This pushes more people up from the PHP 4.3.x series (to the 4.4.x that was the last PHP4 release) and up to a more recent PHP5 version for the future. Eventually, PHP4 support will be dropped all together, but for now there's a bit of a hold out.

On TheServerSide.com (a Java community) there's a post about the latest release of the Netbeans software (version 6.1) and how they've integrated more PHP-ness into it.

The NetBeans 6.1 release is mostly a release of the candidate announced a few weeks ago - definitely a lot of changes in the overall release, with a heavy focus on web services and re-integration of some of the JSF/JPA tooling. However, the PHP platform - a 16MB or so download that provides a PHP-targeted IDE based on Java - is .. interesting.

Comments on the post talk a lot about the other language support for the IDE with only a few mentioning the PHP support (though the ones that do show promising results).

The Zend Developer Zone has come across an interesting face about the SourceForge website - it uses the Zend Framework to add OpenID functionality to its pages.

According to the press release from SF about their OpenID support:

OpenID is getting tremendous traction and we're happy to be jumping into it. it's bringing us back in touch with fresh web (2.0) technology. [...] We've spent the past couple weeks on it - integrating the Zend Framework OpenID component into our site code. we like the framework as a whole and I personally hope to use more of it in the future.

There might be a few kinks in the process, so if you're seeing issues with your OpenID working on their site, check out the FAQ they've posted to help.

As per this announcement on the Zend Developer Zone website, the Zend Framework group has released the latest version of their application framework - Zend Framework 1.5.

Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, today announced the availability of version 1.5 of Zend Framework, the popular open source PHP framework [...] Additional features in Zend Framework 1.5 include support for several new services and enhancements to already popular features that make building modern web sites easier and faster than ever.

Updates include changes to Zend_Form, Zend_Layout, the LDAP authentication component, an update to the Lucene support, more Ajax functionality and much more. There's also a new service Zend has launched to provide more "official support" for developers/companies using the framework. You can find out more information about the service here.

In a new post to his blog today, Matthew Weir O'Phinney dives in to some of the more advanced features that the Zend_Form component of the Zend Framework has to offer.

I've been working on for the past few weeks, and it's nearing release readiness. There are a number of features that Cal didn't cover in his DevZone coverage (in part because some of them weren't yet complete) that I'd like to showcase.

These additional features include internationalization, element grouping and array support. He looks at each of these, including some sample code where needed, and shows you how they can be useful to you and your ZF application.

Feel like giving a bit back to something open source but aren't sure quite where to go? Well, the PHPWomen group is asking for donations to help further the women's group and its efforts:

As you know, we like to give out our free t-shirts at conferences to help spread the word about our group. [...] We also want to help out those who may be in need of training materials, help with the ZCE exam, or who want to speak at conferences, but may not afford to be able to do it.

They also have some other fund raising ideas in the works to help accomplish some of these goals too. You can also get involved and help out even if you don't have extra cash. Volunteer for the mentoring program or just offer a helping hand when they might need it.

Check out Elizabeth Naramore's blog post for more details.