Here are the most important news items we have published in 2002 on PHP.net.
[31-Dec-2002] We are at the end of 2002, and it seemed appropriate to look back on the development issues of the past year. So starts the first PHP Look Back! You can find it in on the non-official personal website of one of the PHP Developers here.
Happy New Year!
[27-Dec-2002] The PHP developers are pleased to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.3.0, the latest and greatest version of this extremely popular and widely used scripting language.
This release contains a multitude of changes, bug fixes and improvements over the previous one, PHP 4.2.3. It further elevates PHP's standing as a serious contender in the general purpose scripting language arena. Please see the full release announcement.
[27-Dec-2002] The 11th sample of the CHM edition is available for download from today. The sample hopefully fixed the missing page bugs forever, introduces a new integration method (see documentation inside) and contains actual manual text, mirrors list and user notes. See the edition's page for download.
We also would like to ask you to help out in testing our new on-the-fly syntax highlighter, which would make the CHM significantly smaller, and would give you more options in displaying the pages. See the edition's page for more information.
[16-Dec-2002] MySQL AB is proud to host the world's First Annual MySQL User Conference, to be held in the heart of Silicon Valley, April 10-12, 2003. This event promises to be the biggest gathering of MySQL database users ever in one location. Designed for both the MySQL developer and the corporate decision maker, this is the place to learn about the latest in MySQL technology, discover new business opportunities, take a pulse on industry direction and commune with like minds. More information on the event's website.
[01-Dec-2002] The news of PHP.net is available now in RSS 1.0 format via our new news.rss file. You can add this file to any news reader or portal site to get the latest official PHP news. We strongly recommend you to cache the contents locally on your side, as the newsfeed is updated daily. The RSS file is available on every mirror site.
[21-Nov-2002] The French PHP User Group AFUP invites you to the "Forum PHP 2002" in Paris, on December 9th and 10th. Designed to meet the needs of PHP aware companies and all the French PHP developper's community alike, this event will provided you with valuable and up-to-date information. For more information (in French) see the PHP Forum website.
[17-Nov-2002] Software & Support Verlag GmbH is going to publish an International version of the PHP Magazin. This magazine was initiated after growing interest for an English magazine after the German version has been around for a few months.
PHP Magazine not only informs about the scripting language itself, but also about related technologies such as the Apache Web Server, database technologies, XML and other innovative internet technologies. Different sections within the magazine are oriented towards the specific question areas with which a web developer is confronted in daily practice.
The first issue will be published in December and the frequency of issues is two months. You will be able to subscribe on the website which will open shortly.
[15-Nov-2002] php|architect, a new monthly magazine dedicated exclusively to PHP, has launched its website. php|a is published in PDF format and is available worldwide. It covers a variety of advanced topics ranging from day-to-day programming to the internals of PHP. A sample article on the creation of a web-based PDF converter is also available on the magazine website
[29-Oct-2002] We added a new option to access our site's content quickly. In addition to URL shortcuts, keyboard shortcuts and browser specific magic you can now use our Search Bar from the major browsers. Please help us to test this new service, and provide feedback via the bug system (categorize your bug as a PHP.net website bug please).
[28-Oct-2002] For the first time the Open Source projects comprising the popular LAMP platform (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) will be present at the LinuxWorld Expo with its own booth.
At the booth, which is organized by the German PHP Association and the PHP Usergroup Frankfurt, fair visitors can experience and learn about Apache, MySQL, PHP and related projects.
Visitors can take LAMP home, too, since there will be a CD with the necessary software available at the booth.
[17-Oct-2002] We introduced new keyboard shortcuts on the site today to make our pages even more comfortable to use. You can hit Alt+S on Microsoft Windows or Ctrl+S on Macintosh now to go right to the search box and type your search keyword. A similar shortcut with the letter "L" is also introduced on the manual pages to access the lookup input field. Thanks to Tommy Ipsen for the suggestion. You can read more about keyboard shortcuts on web pages in the HTML standard.
[06-Sept-2002] PHP 4.2.3 has been released with a large number of bug fixes. It is a maintenance release, and is a recommended update for all users of PHP, and Windows users in particular. A complete list of changes can be found in the ChangeLog.
[05-Sept-2002] After the big success of last year's first International PHP Conference this year's show will be even bigger and better.
Come to Frankfurt and meet the most excellent speakers of the PHP community on four following days packed with whole day tutorials on November 3 and 4 and a great variety of sessions on November 5 and 6.
The topics are PHP Applications, PHP & Business, Database Topics, PHP & GTK, PHP Internals / Extensions, PHP & XML, and others.
Early bird registration will end on 7th of October. Students and private persons get special discounts.
[05-Sept-2002] PHPCon 2002, a 2-day technical conference devoted entirely to PHP, announced today the launch of the PHPCon 2002 website, online registration, and a call for participation.
Early Bird registration is now open for PHPCon 2002. Strong technical tracks on Enterprise PHP, Application Development, and XML combined with speakers from Rackspace, Yahoo!, Macromedia, and MySQL make this the conference a must attend for anyone interested in expanding their PHP knowledge.
Join PHPCon in delivering the PHP message with Birds of a Feather (BoFs) and Works in Process (WiPs) sessions. Submit your BoF and WiP topics online.
An idea who's time has come, don't miss this opportunity to attend the only conference in the US is placing PHP front and center as the language for solving web problems. PHPCon 2002, October 24 & 25, 2002, Millbrae, California.
[03-Aug-2002] Starting from today, the manual pages are not only available in their printer friendly versions, but also in printer friendly versions with user notes included. Check the links at the top of the manual pages to go to printer friendly manual pages, and change languages.
[31-Jul-2002] ActiveState is pleased to announce the winners of the 2002 Active Awards, presented at the O'Reilly Open Source Conference in San Diego, CA. The Active Awards are held annually to honor members of the PHP, Python, Perl, Tcl, and XSLT communities, who actively contribute to open languages and display excellence in their programming efforts. Activators' Choice Award winners were chosen by ActiveState's development team. Programmers' Choice Award winners were nominated and chosen by the open source community, the nominees were: Greg Allan; Stig Bakken; Bogomil Shopov; Philippe Thomassigny; and Andrei Zmievski.
The Activators' Choice winners are Derick Rethans and Jani Taskinen. Derick is heavily involved in developing processes for QA and Release Management, and Jani has been one of the largest contributors to QA and support of the Bug database. The Programmers' Choice winner is Greg Allen, who was the lead developer and founding member of the PostNuke project. More details are available at http://www.ActiveState.com/ActiveAwards2002
[22-Jul-2002] The PHP Group today announced the details of a serious vulnerability in PHP versions 4.2.0 and 4.2.1. A security update, PHP 4.2.2, fixes the issue. Everyone running affected versions of PHP is encouraged to upgrade immediately. The new 4.2.2 release doesn't include other changes, so upgrading from 4.2.1 is safe and painless.
[09-Jul-2002] comp.lang.php was created yesterday, after a two and a half month long process started in April by Ian Fette resulted in a 177-11 vote in favor of the group. The new group is already carried on most news servers, and should be carried on almost all news servers in the world within the next few days.
The new group is important for a few reasons: Firstly, the old alt.* php groups suffered from poor propagation - i.e. not all servers carried them, and the community was split between multiple groups. This new group offers a chance to unite the PHP-Usenet community. Secondly, most servers have longer post-retention times for comp.* than alt.*. Finally, the creation of comp.lang.php represents PHP's coming to acceptance and maturity. Virtually all languages have a spot under the comp.lang.* hierarchy. Stop on by and become a part of the community - comp.lang.php is a great place to get help and to help others.
[30-Jun-2002] The second alpha release of PHP w/ Zend Engine 2 is now available. It is based on the current PHP 4 CVS (4.3.0-dev) and includes the new scripting engine which greatly improves the object model, adds exception handling and provides a much better infrastructure for the integration of external technologies like Java or .NET. For more details and examples you can check out the file describing the changes.
Note: This is an alpha version. It should not be used in production or even semi-production web sites. There are known bugs in it, and in addition, some of the features may change (based on feedback). We encourage you to download and play with it (and report bugs if you find any!), but please don't expect it to replace your copy of PHP 4 at this stage.
Windows binary version is also available.
[27-May-2002] A Beta version of PHP for NetWare is available on the Novell Developer Kit site. This version is based on the 4.0.8 (development) version of the PHP source code.
[23-May-2002] PHP will be attending LinuxTag again this year. The combined efforts of the PHP Verein, the Apache Software Foundation and MySQL AB, will create a "(L)AMP" day, focusing on web development with the 3 core technologies. During the day there will be many interesting workshops, which are free to enter. Make time to visit the (L)AMP booth also, which will be hosting several PHP related projects (text in German).
[16-May-2002] CodeWalkers have started a new fortnightly PHP contest. Every two weeks, there is a new problem to solve, a new script to write. The winner will receive prizes provided by the sponsors, Zend Technologies and Sams Publishing. You can enter the challenge by visiting their site.
[13-May-2002] The PHP Group is happy to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.2.1, the latest version of the widely-used, general-purpose scripting language that is especially well-suited for Web development.
This latest release contains several bug fixes as found in PHP 4.2.0. These include fixes for the session, com and mbstring extensions, as well as a major upgrade of the DomXML extension. Also a few extra checks for safe_mode were added. For more information, see the PHP 4.2.1 release announcement.
[27-Apr-2002] The Association Fran?aise des Utilisateurs de PHP (AFUP) and the German PHP Association (PHP Verein) are organizing a PHP contest to give out the first PHP Award. The PHP Award will be given in three categories: Open Source, Freeware and Commercial Software, the submission deadline is July, 15th 2002. If you are interested go to http://www.php-award.net/.
[26-Apr-2002] Damien Seguy has written a tourist's guide to the various sites that make up the PHP.net family of sites. Did you know you can browse a hyperlinked version of the PHP source code at lxr.php.net? View the archives of all of the mailing lists at news-web.php.net? See what else you've been missing.
[22-Apr-2002] The PHP Group is happy to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.2.0, the latest version of the widely-used, general-purpose scripting language that is especially well-suited for Web development.
This latest release contains over one hundred changes, bug fixes and improvements over the previous release, PHP 4.1.2. Among the highlights are experimental support for Apache 2, cleanups in variable handling and overhauls of various PHP components, including the domxml, posix, sockets and iconv extensions. For more information, see the PHP 4.2.0 release announcement.
[20-Apr-2002] We released the fifth sample of the new CHM Edition. New in this sample: user preferences application, a new optional design, custom context menu support, linked functions in examples, and of course updated content.
Try out the new CHM Edition, and send us your feedback to our dedicated mailing list.
[26-Mar-2002] The Software & Support Verlag, based in Frankfurt, Germany, has now published a magazine on PHP as a tribute to the steadily growing German PHP community. More information can be found at www.phpmag.de.
[23-Mar-2002] Ever wondered what you can type in your browsers location field to access a php.net page? Many of you already know http://php.net/echo. We gathered some information about how the URLs are parsed, and what are your possibilities. Read it in our new URL Howto.
[13-Mar-2002] The notes from the PHP Documentation Team Meeting (Stuttgart, March 8th-10th) are now available.
[12-Mar-2002] Following up from the previous annoucement, PHP 4.1.2 has been released for windows. The delayed release is due to the fix of a further security issue only relating to the PHP for Windows version. More information on this change can be found here. All PHP - Windows users are encouraged to upgrade to the latest version.
[27-Feb-2002] Due to a security issue found in all versions of PHP (including 3.x and 4.x), a new version of PHP has been released. Details about the security issue are available here. All users of PHP are strongly encouraged to either upgrade to PHP 4.1.2, or install the patch (available for PHP 3.0.18, 4.0.6 and 4.1.0/4.1.1).
[24-Jan-2002] PHP-GTK has reached version 0.5.0, also known as "monday starts on saturday". The version number was bumped from 0.1.1 to this one to indicate that PHP-GTK is now a fairly mature and stable extension and can be used for a variety of applications (just look on Freshmeat).
Also taking this opportunity, we would like to ask if some of you would consider helping out with PHP-GTK documentation. It would be a great way to learn this exciting extension and also contribute to the project.
[10-Jan-2002] You can find an overview of all slides of the sessions from the International PHP Conference 2001 on the conference slides page. It is still not too late to check out some photos from the conference:
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