Andi Gutmans has pointed out an effort that Adobe has proposed that would go a long way towards adding AMF support to the Zend Framework.

This ZF component will allow for client-side applications built with Flex and Adobe AIR to communicate easily and efficiently with PHP on the server-side. Leading the design of the component for Adobe is Wade Arnold. Wade already has a track record of bringing the Adobe RIA technologies to PHP as a result of all of his work on AMFPHP.

Andi sees this as a next logical step to helping the framework become more "Enterprise oriented" and to compliment the recent Dojo integration. The plan is to release it with the 1.7 version of the framework, but the actual timing may vary due to the approval process.

Andi Gutmans (of Zend) has posted an update on the status of the Zend Framework for the month of May:

This [May 15th maintenance release] reinforces our commitment to high quality and we will continue to release periodic mini releases on an as needed basis. [...] Not only is the Zend Framework user base growing rapidly but we are also seeing a sharp rise in adoption of ZF in business-critical commercial applications.

He mentions several major sites moving to use the framework like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and IGN Entertainment as well as the update they've made to the contribution process to allow for easier submission and review.

Vidyut Luther has started up a new service that aims to help answer the question "what sites out there are running on PHP?" - PHP Powered:

Welcome to PHP Powered. The point of the site is simple. We want to create a comprehensive list of sites that use PHP. The list of sites here is contributed and updated by you, the users/visitors. To add a site, you must have a valid account with the site. Create an account, respond to the verification email, and proceed to add your site.

The site allows developers/users/anyone really to signup and add the sites they know are running on PHP to share with the world. You can also check out the listing page that lets you search and sort by the type of site, the PHP version that it's running, and the operating system it runs on.

A note about a new framework that's been release was passed along to us today - the WebMesh framework PHP5.

WebMesh is a framework developed to serve of base for the creation of projects with PHP5. It offer an API with various abstractions to facilitate the application development and a module implementing the MVC pattern (Model2) using Smarty in the View.

Some of the goals for the framework include:

• Force a better organization of the your project classes
• Encorage the usage of the PHP version 5
• Becomes it a collaborative framework where others can contribute with new classes, abstrations, libraries, modules or frameworks to be integrated

Tobias Schlitt, on the heels of the "PHP Eats Rails for Breakfast" posting on Ohloh has helped Sebastian Bergmann get the eZ components project entered into their database for some tracking with some interesting results.

eZ components consists of 171,025 lines of code (including markup and code itself). If you subtract the XML, eZ components consist of 96,424 lines of pure PHP code (no docs included, if I got it correcltly), which is rather much in my eyes.

He gives other stats for the component framework including a price estimate for manhours put into the project and how much, on a per-developer basis, has been contributed to each (including things like a code to documentation ratio and total lines of code contributed).

Have you ever wanted to contribute a package to Pear but were unsure where to start? Well, thanks to PHP Magazine you can now learn from my experience contributing my own first Pear package in this practical, informative online article. Formerly published as the cover story in the print edition (at a price of nearly ten euros per issue), the entire article is now available online for free. Thanks again to PHP Magazine for supporting the PHP/Pear community in this way.

The article covers the creation of his package, Net_Monitor, including the code for this small utility to test for server availibility. He goes through the creation, submission, feedback, and votign stages in detail before finally getting approved and uploading his packages for the world to use...