The Zend Developer Zone has announced the release of the latest preview of the Zend Framework - the Preview Release for 1.7.

We are excited to announce that the Zend Framework 1.7 Preview Release is now available from the Zend Framework download site! While 1.7PR is not a feature complete release in the 1.7 series, it nevertheless contains some very important features scheduled for the 1.7 production release.

Updates included in this release are things like the Zend_Amf component, an update of the Dojo toolkit, support for the dijit editor, some performance enhancements and other locale and internationalization changes.

You can download this latest release from the Zend Framework download page and be sure to log any problems you find into the issue tracker and help the ZF team make the framework even better.

According to this new post on Lukas Smith's blog today, the PHP project has started a new effort aimed at helping out developers upgrading their PHP installations - a new README file with details on each upgraded version and its install.

In order to make the transistion for users upgrading to new minor (middle number increment) and major (leading number increment) version of PHP easier, the PHP project has recently begun adding a README with upgrade information with new releases. This guide steps through any issues that users are likely to be faced when upgrading their PHP installations.

Lukas also reminds developers that testing these releases is the only real way to find the bugs that are there and catch them before the final release for that version. Bug issues can be reported to the tracker and, if you'd like to see an example of this new README file for PHP 5.2, check out this example.

Back with more from his experiences at this year's OSCON, Chris Shiflett has posted a few of the more random things he experienced while there.

One of the great things about OSCON is how it brings people together, and this year's conference was no different. I had the privilege of meeting a number of people for the first time.

People on his list include Cal Evans, Andrew van der Stock, Kevin Yank, Jeremy Johnstone, and Ed Finkler. He also mentions a "cool idea" from Zak Greant - the use of a bug/issue tracker to deal with community issues.

Chris also briefly mentions the "PHP trading card game", the PHP Security Hoedown, and the OmniIT book signing.

The Zend Developer Zone has posted a new article about the latest offering when it comes to the Framework - the introduction of a bug tracker/source browser application on the Framework's site to help manage the project.

The post also includes some screenshots from the application, showcasing each of its many pages of functionality - source browser, issue tracker, timeline, and the search function.

For direct access to the site, head over to the Zend Framework site and click on the Developer tab.