The Zend Framework project has released the next version of their framework brining them closer to the 1.0 stable release - version 1.0.0 RC3. According to the Zend Developer Zone:

This update contains fixes for 75 issues since the RC2 release. Zend Framework has been in the "release candidate" phase since May 28. During this phase, we have been concentrating on documentation and quality improvements, and postponing adding any major new functionality for future releases after 1.0.

In addition to the updates to the framework, they're also making a major overhaul to the documentation and contents of the Framework's website and want to know about any other Zend Framework-based applications out there.

As per php|architect the XAMPP Group has released ther results of a survey for users of the package.

Included in the spotlights of the results were things like:

• Almost half of the XAMPP users would like to also have ASP.NET bundled with XAMPP
• XAMPP is popular not only in private use (91%) but also in the non-profit and educational sectors
• XAMPP users are generally pretty neutral when it comes to frameworks and add-on packages like phpBB and Wordpress being bundled with the package
• Over half would like to see PostgreSQL bundled also, not just MySQL

Aaron Wormus has dug up some old notes that he made at the International PHP Conference back in 2005 on the topic of Unicode in PHP that he wanted to share.

He mentions:

• A case study of an online survey generator
• info about Unicoding and UTF-8
• Iconv and mbstring
• and the migration of the application to support Unicoded characters (a nine step process)

And also, a word of warning:

Everything was much more complex than expected. Don't do this because you think that UTF-8 is cool, it's difficult, not well supported in PHP, and don't do it without needing it. Don't do this without a CVS.

Zend wants to know a bit about your PHP IDE preference, so says Cal Evans in this new post to the Zend Developer Zone:

Zend (Disclaimer:Zend pays the bills here at DevZone) is running a survey on IDE usage and gathering opinions on IDE features. If you would like to participate and give us your opinions please fill out the survey. It should only take about 5 minutes of your time.

It's not just for fun, though. There will be prizes awarded for certain lucky voters, 21 of them to be exact including an iPod and Zend T-shirts. Get your vote in now!

The Zend Developer Zone has posted about a new survey that Adobe is doing to try to get to know some of the web developers out there.

Adobe is hoping to play a little SHOW and TELL with PHP developers. We SHOW you what we are working on, you TELL us if you think we've got it right. Please take a minute to complete the survey we have posted here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=540413426135

If they think you're a good match, they'll get in contact with you. There's also a gratuity of $150 to compensate for your time for the talk.

On the O'Reilly OnLAMP.com site today, they've published the results of their 2005 survey.

We recently ran our annual ONLamp.com survey to find out more about you, our readers. As usual, we learned many interesting things, not just about you but also about our questions and our survey itself. Here are some of the gems.

They give stats like readers of their site, what they read, and if they use feed readers to browse the content. More interesting, though, are the responses to the technical questions - most of their readers choose Linux over Windows for their OS, MySQL is the database of choice, and 61 percent of them use PHP over other programming languages.

Be sure to check out the full article for all the information!

PHPBuilder.com has published the second part in their "Creating an Online Survey" series, picking up right where part one left off.

Last time we set up our form, took the data from that form and emailed it to an email address of our choosing. This time we're going to take the same form data, put it in a database, read the total values and display them on a page.

They start out by giving all of the SQL that you'll need to make the corresponding database for the survey, and move quickly into dumping data into the table and displaying the results from the user's entries...