Archive for April, 2009

CUPERTINO, Calif., May 1, 2009 – Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, announced today a new version 1.8 release of Zend Framework.  The project is an open, collaborative web application framework for PHP development and deployment that includes contributions from the open source community and Zend partners.

Rapid application development (RAD) is now possible with Zend Framework 1.8’s automated and customizable creation of PHP-based web applications.  This feature lets users create their own standards and processes for specific business needs when creating Zend Framework-based applications.

Cloud programming support for Amazon’s infrastructure is now also a part of Zend Framework, with both S3 (simple storage service) and EC2 (elastic compute cloud) components to help users quickly build web applications to both store and serve data, and to manage application instances in the Amazon cloud.  Cloud deployment means less upfront investment is needed by organizations seeking to leverage utility computing and scalable services and making some classes of web applications easier to scale and faster to develop.

“With true customizable RAD programming for PHP as well as support for cloud-based development, Zend Framework is the premier choice for businesses ranging from small to very large who are wanting to develop and deploy web applications in the quickest way possible,” said Zeev Suraski, co-founder and chief technology officer at Zend Technologies.

“Zend Framework is clearly the most popular PHP framework for professional use in the industry today and the timing could not have been better—with the availability of Zend Server released earlier this month, users can deploy our enterprise-grade framework and additionally get the performance and reliability of our new web application server,” Suraski continued. “Zend Server has been tuned to be the best solution for running Zend Framework applications in production, bar none.”

Zend Framework is freely available as part of the recently announced Zend Server ( http://www.zend.com/zendserverannounced ), as well as in a standalone download, and is supported by Zend Studio and Zend Server integration points for both development and deployment phases of the web application lifecycle.  Zend Studio’s built-in support allows users to easily code and customize their Zend Framework application in development and specific Zend Framework performance enhancements in Zend Server enable easy, reliable, and high speed deployment in production.  Zend Framework can be obtained as part of the free Zend Server Community Edition available here: http://www.zend.com/products/server/downloads-all

New Zend Framework 1.8 features and their benefits are listed below:

• Rapid application prototyping is achieved with the Zend_Tool component.  It provides an advanced infrastructure for generating and managing Zend Framework applications.  Zend_Tool comes with a command line client (for instance, just type ‘zf create project’), however its additional remote procedure call-based (RPC) interface allows tooling components to be consumed via other RPC clients that may be custom-built for a user’s business need.  Additionally, while developers may use the provided functionality, they may also drop in their own tooling classes for Zend_Tool to auto-discover and consume—making this a versatile solution for rapid application development and code management.
• Take your Zend Framework applications to the cloud. Zend Framework 1.8 adds components that support Amazon Web Services S3 and EC2, providing developers with the ability to both store and serve data redundantly for their applications as well as manage virtual machines in Amazon’s elastic compute cloud.
• Zend Server backend for Zend Framework (ZF): use the Zend_Cache ZF component for Zend Server’s caching API to dramatically improve the performance of your PHP applications.
• Re-usable and extensible application bootstrapping and initialization using Zend_Application.  This component provides an object-oriented and configuration-driven mechanism for setting up your PHP environment, for autoloading library code, and for application startup, making it very easy to create reusable and selective resource initialization routines for your particular application.
• Internationalization with translation-aware web address routing by using locale-specific URLs in your Zend Framework MVC applications, plus locale support in numeric validation components, phone code support for locales, and support for filtering localized data to a normalized form and vice versa.

Other Zend Framework 1.8 updates too numerous to itemize include:

• Ajax/JavaScript programming updated with Dojo version 1.3 plus arbitrary Dojo dijit types; comprehensive SOAP headers for enterprise data connectivity; Lucene search keyword fields with query strings and search across multiple indices; PDF document page scaling, shifting, and skewing; tag cloud creation and management; configurable site navigation elements like breadcrumbs, sitemaps, menus, and more; file upload progress meters for console and web applications; and JavaScript callbacks and literals for JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) data transfers.

To find out more about Zend’s support for community-based and open-source projects like Zend Framework, please visit: http://www.zend.com/community

About Zend Technologies
Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP Company, is the leading provider of products and services for developing, deploying, and managing business-critical PHP applications.  PHP is used by more than 20 million Web sites and has quickly become the most popular language for building dynamic Web applications.  Deployed at more than 27,000 companies worldwide, the Zend family of products is a comprehensive platform for supporting the entire lifecycle of PHP applications.  Zend is headquartered in Cupertino, California.

For more information, please visit http://www.zend.com or call +1 408-253-8800.

Press Contact:
Bradford Cottel
Zend Technologies
pr@zend.com
+1 408 253 8812

Greetings Developers,

Just a quick note, Editor's Pick Category is LIVE!

We've gotten some great apps submitted to Developer Relations and have selected a few to spotlight here.  This list will be periodically rotating as we find more great apps to spotlight.

Thanks again for your participation and we look forward to seeing some more great apps!

Rhonda

As a developer, you’re currently limited to selecting only one recipient per app invite. For a user to send app invites to multiple friends has required developers to force the user to loop through the app invite process for each selected recipient.  Not ideal for a number of reasons for either the developer or user, especially for large recipient lists.

We’re happy to announce that we’ve now released native support for multiple app invites. As a developer you can now pass in an array of up to 10 recipients. From the end user’s perspective we’ve made a number of UI enhancements as well.  The user can now add or delete recipients directly from the invite modal using the standard multi-select component used in MySpace mail. This tool will auto recommend friends as users type. Best of all, it automatically filters out invalid recipients on the fly (eg. users who are not receiving app communications or already have the app installed).

Multiple Recipients

Once submitted, the user will receive a quick success confirmation that will automatically dismiss after a few seconds or list recipients whose invites could not be delivered in case of an error.

Since we’re providing native multiple app invite functionality and to preserve the app user experience we’ll be phasing out support for the existing looping invite process. We’ll shortly be updating our terms of service which will require the user to navigate away from the invite process page before allowing them to send another round of invites. We basically don’t want to encourage the same experience users have right now, but just on a larger scale. We’ll be providing a sixty (60) day grace period from the point the feature launches to fully phase out looping app invites for single recipients. In either case, you will not be allowed to loop multiple recipients.

Start implementing multiple recipient invites in your app now by checking out the docs.

We’ve recently made some updates to our Open Canvas feature. As most of you know, one of the primary benefits of using Open Canvas functionality in your apps is that it gives you immediate access to basic user info such as the user’s public photos and display name. Ideally, this means users can immediately start using basic functionality of your app without having to go through the add app process. For example, they can "try" your app from the gallery when they click the "try it" link. When a user does add your app you’ll automatically get access to their friends list. From that point, you can then request specific permissions on an as needed basis. This allows you to design Apps with a low bar of entry that can quickly engage the user and can incrementally request permission for deeper functionality.

We’ve updated the app settings page to better reflect the new Open Canvas model through three sections: "Apps I’ve Added", "Apps I’ve Blocked", and "Apps I Haven’t Added".

The New Apps Settings Page

The "Apps I’ve Added" section provides a cleaner, friendlier way for users to manage their existing apps. The new layout highlights the apps they have and uses less vertical space then the current layout so users can quickly get to the apps they want. It also provides quick links to the most popular app management options.

With new larger icons, the user can better manage the apps they’ve blocked from the "Apps I’ve Blocked" section.

Finally, from the "Apps I Haven’t Added" section, the user can manage the global privacy permissions. Privacy conscious users can prevent apps they haven’t explicitly installed but whose canvas they are viewing, such as Open Canvas apps, from having access to their basic info. They can also prevent apps they haven’t added from receiving unsolicited communications (for example receiving app invites or profile comments).

You can find out more about implementing Open Canvas functionality in our "How Open Canvas Works" primer or check out our "Open Canvas FAQ".

Earth Day was founded to inspire awareness and appreciation for our environment, and while today might be the official Earth Day, at Six Apart, we believe that every day is new opportunity to help make our planet clean and healthy. That’s why we’ve partnered with Cisco to promote the One Million Acts of Green website.

One Million Acts of Green is a collaborative environmental campaign encouraging everyone to go green one act at a time. The goal? One million acts of green. Because, as we all know, we’re more powerful together than we can ever be apart.

That’s where you—our bloggers and readers—come in. We’ve come up with a few easy ways to inspire you to help the planet because we truly believe that every act of green makes a difference.

Here’s how you can do your part:

1. Adopt a Green Badge for Your Blog & Six Apart Will Donate $1000 to The Climate Project

We created four Green Badges for you to choose from. Each badge links to the One Million Acts of Green, brought to you by Cisco website. By putting a badge on your blog, you’ll not only be spreading the message of the importance of going green, you’ll be participating in an environmental campaign that will impact the world forever.

Plus, when the badges receive 100,000 impressions across the blogosphere, Six Apart will donate $1000 to The Climate Project.

Visit Everything TypePad
to learn how to add a Green Badge to your blog.

2. Add the Million Acts of Green Widget to Your Blog

Learn and share tips and advice to help make the world a greener place with the One Million Acts of Green widget. In addition, you can track the total acts of green being performed as well as the greenhouse gases saved as a result of those acts.

Get the Million Acts of Green Widget Now.

3. Answer today’s QotD on Blogs.com

How could you better “green” your life? What’s holding you back?

Read what other people are saying, get new ideas, and share your thoughts at Blogs.com.

4. Visit the One Million Acts of Green Website

Change can start with one person. One action. One million acts of green. Visit the One Million Acts of Green
website and register your acts of green.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post and for doing your part. Because when we all do one act, we act as one, and help the planet. And that is what today, and every day, should be about.