On NetTuts.com today there's a new article from Gabriel Manricks looking in to the future of the PHP language at what's slated to be included in PHP 5.5., the next major release.

The first PHP 5.5 alpha has been publicly released. After having some time to test and experiment with it, we can now bring you our in-depth overview of what to look forward for!

He walks you through the installation (compiling, not via packages) of this latest release once you've downloaded it. He then goes down the list of features, some of which are pretty recent additions to the planned release including: generators, lists in foreach, the new password API, cURL updates (SMTP) and a few smaller updates.