Of course, most important this morning is the fact that late yesterday, PHP 4.2.1 was released for the public to use. This latest release contains several bug fixes as found in PHP 4.2.0. These include fixes for the session, com and mbstring extensions, as well as a major upgrade of the DomXML extension. Also a few extra checks for safe_mode were added. For more information, see the PHP 4.2.1 release announcement. (You might want to try a mirror site to get it though...things are pretty slow.

Over on Evolt.org this morning, there's an interesting opinion piece on some PHP Guidelines that lots and lots of beginners never even think about. An article like this could be page after page after page after, well - you get the idea. But, the author doesn't ramble on and on with little things. The four things he mentions are things that all newbies need to learn - plus it just makes for cleaner code. Programming needs not to be so much about getting the job done, as getting it done nicely. I know sometimes that extra time it takes just isn' there, but the end result is always nicer.

And, lastly, I just wanted to wrap things up with a nice, happy, fuzzy article about XML and what it's good for. There's not really much technical content to this article over on DevArticles.com, but it is a nice, solid intro to the world of XML and what it's really all about. If you haven't started using XML in your scripts/code, you should consider it. It can make things worlds easier - especially with PHP's built-in XML functionality....