As per this announcement on the Zend Developer Zone website, the Zend Framework group has released the latest version of their application framework - Zend Framework 1.5.

Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, today announced the availability of version 1.5 of Zend Framework, the popular open source PHP framework [...] Additional features in Zend Framework 1.5 include support for several new services and enhancements to already popular features that make building modern web sites easier and faster than ever.

Updates include changes to Zend_Form, Zend_Layout, the LDAP authentication component, an update to the Lucene support, more Ajax functionality and much more. There's also a new service Zend has launched to provide more "official support" for developers/companies using the framework. You can find out more information about the service here.

In a new post to his blog today, Matthew Weir O'Phinney dives in to some of the more advanced features that the Zend_Form component of the Zend Framework has to offer.

I've been working on for the past few weeks, and it's nearing release readiness. There are a number of features that Cal didn't cover in his DevZone coverage (in part because some of them weren't yet complete) that I'd like to showcase.

These additional features include internationalization, element grouping and array support. He looks at each of these, including some sample code where needed, and shows you how they can be useful to you and your ZF application.