Rob Allen bids a fond farewell to a part of the Zend Framework that's been there since the beginning - the Zend.php file and all of its associated classes.

This is good news as the Zend class was schizophrenic and provided functions responsible for file loading, registry, debugging and version information! Another side effect is that the entire Zend Framework is stored within the Zend directory making those who use svn:externals on their lib directory happier.

He mentions some of the other classes that have replaced it including the Zend_Loader and Zend_debug components) and changes to the Zend_Filter component too. Rob has also updated his tutorial to match this latest version for those just starting out.