In a recent post to the 3 Engineers blog, they take the usual "Two Step" approach the Zend Framework takes to generating view data (Zend_View + Zend_Layout) and takes it up one more step by using Three Step Layouts with a simple wrapper.

While the Two Step View pattern creates a reasonable paradigm for seperating layout presentation from page presentation, enabling Three-level Inheritance allows for even better separation. In other words, using 3 Step Layouts is a possible and often necessary investment to make when implementing front-ends in Zend Framework projects; they allow fine grain re-usability that provides for a DRYer presentation layer.

They have a three step process you can follow (complete with code snippets) that'll have you working with their 3 layers easily. The wrapper is a sort of "boostrap" for the layout. The nested layout is then pulled into this wrapper (for example's sake, theirs is called "default") and then the view can be served as normal and placed into the content location. There's also a bit of code showing how to switch out the layout if there's ever a need - like different layouts for the admin, user and main parts of your application.

Padraic Brady has released the latest chapter from his "Zend Framework: Surviving the Deep End" online book - chapter 10, a look at Zend_View, Zend_Layout, HTML5 and working with CSS in the YUI.

The new chapter explores setting up the example blog application's web design using Zend_View and Zend_Layout. I also spend some time exploring HTML 5, the future standards update for HTML. [...] The web design itself makes use of the Yahoo! User Interface Library's CSS components.

He's also posted the source code divided up by the different chapters. You can find out more about the book and read the contents so far on the book's website: Survivethedeepend.com.

Padraic Brady is on part five of his series looking at making a blogging tool with the Zend Framework today. This time he focuses on the database side of things, working with models and making an admin module.

First of all I decided to add an Entries Model and Authors Model to the mix, primarily to get ready for when we can add new entries to our blog. This leads to where we can create new Entries; we add an Administration Module to the application with it's own distinct Layout.

He starts by making the database schema, an entries and authors table, before starting in on the models. They're made based off of the Zend_Db component's structure and they let the application interact with the data in the tables easily. His code for the modules is included as well as the controller and view for the admin module.

Padraic Brady has posted part four today detailing his development process for a piece of blogging software with the Zend Framework. This part focuses on the design stage of the application.

In this article we're going to take a stab at setting up a default blog style, using some filler content, and finally capturing the design with a Zend_View template to be consumed by Zend_Layout as a common HTML Layout for the entire future blog.

He uses the Blueprint CSS framework for his projects, a simple system that helps you lay out pages it a bit more sensible fashion without having to worry about the underlying CSS so much. He shows how to integrate the library into his project and gives some sample HTML to style with it. Then, with a little help from the Zend_Layout component, he splits it up into a layout that can be used over the entire website (code included).

The IBM developerWorks website has a new article/tutorial posted today about the new features and functionality that's included with the latest release of the Zend Framework, version 1.5.

The popular open source Zend Framework just got some slick enhancements. Learn what's new in V1.5 and how upgrades, including Zend_Form, Zend_Layout, and Zend_View, enhanced support for GData Web services, and improved Ajax support can help PHP developers easily roll out cutting-edge Web applications.

They walk through each of the new components (or features in them) like Zend_Form and Zend_Layout/Zend_View with examples included. There's also mention of other miscellaneous updates like the addition of OpenID and InfoCard support, a LDAP authentication module and an interface with Google's GData service.

There's an announcement over on the Zend Developer Zone today about the posting of a recorded webinar that Zend had concerning some of the latest updates to the Zend Framework - Zend_Layout and Zend_View enhancements.

The problem of maintaining a consistent look and feel while encouraging best practices is what Zend_Layout, as well as the Zend Framework 1.5 Zend_View enhancements, attempt to solve.

The recording (and accompanying slides) cover the updates made to these two components and how they help the goal of uniformity and give a "two-step" solution to make it happen. The presenter for the webinar was Ralph Schindler.

Rob Allen has updates his tutorial that gets developers started with the Zend Framework for the latest release of the Framework - version 1.5:

Zend Framework 1.5 has now been released to mark the occasion I have significantly updated my Zend Framework Tutorial! The tutorial was first released on 16th August 2006 and was written against version 0.1 of Zend Framework and had one major revision to bring in support for the ViewRenderer component.

The updates include the addition of some of the "goodies" the new release offers - like Zend_Form's additions and Zend_Layout - as well as other smaller features that can make a Zend Framework-er's life easier.

Matthew Weir O'Phinney has posted happily about an upcoming release of the popular PHP framework from Zend - Zend Framework version 1.5:

As many know, Zend Framework 1.5.0 is almost ready for release... heck, it might even be released by the time you read this. There are a ton of new features worth looking into, but I'll list some of my own favorites here - the ones I've been either working on or using.

The list of updates for the release includes:

• Zend_Layout and Zend_View enhancements
• Zend_Form
• Zend_Search_Lucene
• Zend_Db_Table Improvements
• Context Switching and REST

If you want to get things prepared on your application, you can always download the latest release candidate (RC 3) of 1.5.0 and get to testing.

Padraic Brady has posted some of his comments on the newly included Zend_Layout and Zend_View_Enhanced components for the Zend_Framework:

These two (now much more polished!) components were both designed to solve the concerns a lot of developers were having in achieving truly complex, structured and modular Views using Zend_View.

Indeed there are months of blog postings, debates, experimental and not-so-experimental code, proposals, IRC sessions and countless emails pouring over how to accomplish the goals of these components. The end result is something I feel will serve Zend Framework users faithfully for months and years to come.

He thanks the developers (Matthew and Ralph) and notes that the inclusion of these two components is one of the largest advancements of the display layer for the Framework in a while.

Matthew Weir O'Phinney notes today that the Zend_View_Enhanced and Zend_Layout components for the Zend Framework have officially joined the core.

With these two components, you can now create some truly complex views for your application with relative ease. [...] By having these as a standard part of the library, there are now standard ways to perform these tasks -- meaning consistency between applications.

He gives some brief examples of the use of the two newly included components: echoing out a DOCTYPE, adding a script to be loaded in the header and a more complex layout with a header, meta data, content and a footer section.