I'm a bit late on my ZendCon'08 wrapup; the conference left me both exhausted and with a backlog of email and work that has consumed me since it ended. However, this, too, is good, as it has given me time to reflect… and to finally get my slides up on SlideShare.

ZendCon was alternately exhausting, rewarding, educational, fruitful, infurating, and ultimately wonderful. I've been to every single ZendCon so far — I started at Zend a scant month before the inaugural event — and have spoken at each. My first time speaking was a fluke; David Sklar had just started at Ning and had to back out of his "Configuring PHP" tutorial session. Mike Naberezny and I were drafted to take it over, and we had N+1 attendees, where N was the number of speakers. Since that inauspicious beginning, I've gradually taken on more sessions and stuck around to participate in the conference more. I can honestly say that this was the biggest, busiest, and most community focussed ZendCon I can remember.

Now that Zend_Test has shipped, developers are of course asking, "How do I setup my test suite?" Fortunately, after some discussion with my colleagues and a little experimenting on my one, I can answer that now.

I have a number of updates and followups, and decided to post them in a single entry.

First off, you may now view my Dojo Webinar online (requires login and registration at zend.com). Attendance was phenomenal, and I've had some really good feedback. If you want to see it live, I'm giving the talk (with revisions!) at the ZendCon UnConference, at Dojo Developer Day Boston later this month, and at php|works in November. I hope to be able to show new functionality at each presentation.

Second, I've completed what I'm calling version 1.0.0 of the pastebin application I demo'd in the webinar. The PHP code is fully unit tested (though I haven't yet delved into using DOH! to test the JS), and incorporates a number of best practices and tips that Pete Higgins from Dojo was kind enough to provide to me. When using a custom build (and I provide a profile for building one), it simply flies.

• Download the pastebin application

The pastebin application showcases a number of features besides Dojo: Zend_Test_PHPUnit was used to test the application, and Zend_Wildfire's FireBug logger and DB profiler are used to provide profiling and debug information.

Finally, ZendCon is next week! I'll be around, but already have a packed schedule (1 tutorial, 2 regular sessions, an UnCon session, a meet-the-developers session… and that's just what I know about!). I look forward to meeting ZF users and developers, though, so feel free to grab me and introduce yourself.

During my Dojo and ZF webinar on Wednesday, Pete Higgins of Dojo fame noted that I could do something different and better on one of my slides.

This particular item had to do with how I was consuming custom Dojo build layers within my code. I contacted him afterwards to find out what he suggested, and did a little playing of my own, and discovered some more Dojo and javascript beauty in the process.

I'm pleased to announce I've been selected to speak at php|works in Atlanta this November.

I'll be presenting my talk on Dojo and Zend Framework, demonstrating how to quickly and easily create rich and dynamic UIs using the various integration points with Dojo functionality provided by Zend Framework.

Looking forward to seeing you in Atlanta in November!

I'm giving a webinar on Zend Framework and Dojo Integration this coming Wednesday, 3 Sept 2008.

I'm particularly excited about this webinar, as I've been developing a sample pastebin application to show off a number of features; the webinar will feature some screencasts showing the new code in action, and promises to be much more dynamic than my typical "bullet point and code" presentations.

I'm also going to show some techniques to use when developing with ZF+Dojo, including how to create custom builds once you're ready to deploy your application (and why you want to do so).

Register today!

We're getting ready to release Zend Framework 1.6.0. However, one important Dijit had to be omitted from the release as I was not able to get it working in time: dijit.Editor.

This dijit is important as it provides an out-of-the-box WYSIWYG editor that you can use with your forms. Unfortunately, actually using it with forms is pretty tricky — Dojo actually ends up storing content outside the form, which means you need to create a handler that pulls the content into a hidden element when saving.

I have created an implementation, however, that you can start using now, and I'm posting it below. It includes both a view helper for displaying it, as well as a form element for use with Zend_Form.

I'll be speaking at ZendCon again this year, and have a four-course meal of sessions to deliver:

• Best Practices of PHP Development: Mike Naberezny and I are teaming up for the fourth year running to deliver a tutorial session. While the session topic stays the same, he and I have each been developing a number of new practices over the past year that we look forward to presenting, including new work with PHPUnit for functional testing of your applications.

• Getting Started with Zend Framework: This will build off our Quick Start, providing background on ZF as well as the basic tools and information needed to get your first ZF application up and running. I also hope to demonstrate how the current preview of Zend_Tool can simplify this dramatically.

• Zend_Layout and Zend_Form: This session will show off features of Zend_Layout and Zend_Form. (Note: the subject matter may change.)

• UnCon: Rich UIs and Easy XHR with Dojo and Zend Framework: For those unable to attend my webinar next week, or who simply want to see this in person, I'll be presenting my Dojo and Zend Framework talk during an UnCon session. I have developed a simple app to showcase various features of the Dojo/ZF integration, and to show how easy it is to quickly develop and then scale applications that have great, dynamic interfaces.

Looking forward to seeing you in California in September!

PHP 4 officially died Friday. I started programming PHP with release candidates of 4.0.0 — which simultaneously introduced me to the GNU C compiler and toolset. My first official job using PHP was at a shop that was using PHP 3, and considering the costs of upgrading to PHP 4 — which clearly offerred many benefits over its predecessor. I switched to PHP 5 as soon as the first official release was made four years ago — the pains of reference handling with objects, the introduction of a unified constructor, first-class support for overloading, and SimpleXML won me over immediately, and I've never looked back. Goodbye, PHP 4; long live PHP!

I'm celebrating with the second release candidate of Zend Framework 1.6.0, which should drop today. There are a ton of new features available that I'm really excited about. I'm not going to go into implementation details here, but instead catalogue some of the larger and more interesting changes that are part of the release.