Welcome back to another installment of ICYMI! This week we saw:

We've seen the release candidates before, but now it's official. PEAR 1.4 stable has been released. According to the site:

New features in a nutshell:
* full support for channels
* pre-download dependency validation
* new package.xml 2.0 format allows tremendous flexibility while maintaining BC
* support for optional dependency groups and limited support for sub-packaging
* robust dependency support
* full dependency validation on uninstall
* remote install for hosts with only ftp access - no more problems with restricted host installation [through PEAR_RemoteInstaller package]
* full support for mirroring
* support for bundling several packages into a single tarball
* support for static dependencies on a uri-based package
* support for custom file roles and installation tasks

To download and read the rest of the installation notes, go to http://pear.php.net/package/PEAR/download/.

You've probably heard all about this already, but just in case, you can download a beta version of Zend Studio for free, read more about the features that are now included, and learn about their Feedback Program (where you can win a free t-shirt!) by going to http://www.zend.com/store/products/zend-studio/beta.php?bz=712.

Secunia reported a security alert with PHP-Nuke's WYSIWYG editor; all users of this package are encouraged to upgrade to 7.9. You can download the update here: http://www.phpnuke.org/modules.php?name=Release. Oh, and you better have your credit card information handy because it will cost you $10.00. You can read more about that little tidbit in the link above.

Marcus Whitney's latest conversation on Pro-PHP is with Greg Beaver, who gives us an up close and personal look at PEAR 1.4. Although the download is a bit large at 80 Mb, it's still worth your time. You can listen in at http://www.pro-php.com/index.php?post_id=18.

Andi Gutmans put together a bit of code that will help anyone trying to populate Excel worksheets with data, and create graphs using PHP. He blogged about his experience with this, and posted a link to the code. To read his post, you can go to http://andigutmans.blogspot.com/ and to take a peek at the code, go to http://gutmans.org/COM_excel.php.

Another successful PHP conference wrapped up last week; the php|works - web|works in Toronto, hosted by php|architect. A few speakers have posted their slides for use by the masses; if I missed any let me know:

• Chris Shiflett's "PHP By Example": http://brainbulb.com/talks/php-security-by-example.pdf
• Ilia Alshanetsky's "Advanced PHP Security": http://ilia.ws/files/phpworks_security.pdf
• Ilia Alshanetsky's "Managing PHP Performance" : http://www.ilia.ws/files/phpworks_performance.pdf
• Ilia Alshanetsky's "Web Services in PHP": http://ilia.ws/files/phpworks_webservices.pdf
• Oz Solomon's "End-to-End Testing with PHP and Internet Explorer" - http://www.wndtabs.com/php/slides/view.php
• Lukas Smith's "Taking the LiveUser Tour" - http://pooteeweet.org/files/phpworks05/LiveUser_tour.pdf
• Lukas Smith's "Fast, Portable SQL" - http://pooteeweet.org/files/phpworks05/fast_portable_SQL.pdf
• Lukas Smith's "How About Some PEAR?" - http://pooteeweet.org/files/phpworks05/how_about_some_PEAR.pdf
• Wez Furlong's "PHP Data Objects" - http://netevil.org/talks/PHP-Data-Objects.pdf
• Wez Furlong's "PHP and COM" - http://netevil.org/talks/PHP-and-COM-2005.pdf
• Wez Furlong's "PHP Streams- a Lucky Dip" - http://netevil.org/talks/PHP-Streams-Lucky-Dip.pdf

A somewhat controversial post on Sitepoint Blog, by Jules Szemere draws attention to the backwards-compatibility issues between PHP4 and PHP5. Just FUD or does he bring up some legitimate points? You be the judge - and be sure to give him a piece of your mind while you're at it. Read the full post at http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/category/php/, and better bring your fire retardant.

This handy plug in enables unit testing with PHPEclipse; for Eclipse 3.1 and PHP <5.1. For the documentation on this plug-in go to http://simpletest.sourceforge.net/, and to download go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/simpletest .

If you were really on top of things and upgraded your phpMyAdmin to 2.6.4, you'd best be getting 2.6.4-pl1 , now available at http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php According to the source, "it fixes an export problem (under Internet Explorer) when using https, and a missing Save button in Relation view." So there you have it.

An announcement on phpBB's site issues a farewell to one of the co-managers of the project, Paul S. Owens, who has left the team for an "indefinite" amount of time-- if you know Paul you can join the phpBB community in wishing him "all the best for the future and that sunnier days come soon."

Enygma's started a blog just for phpdeveloper.org, which you can read at http://blog.phpdeveloper.org/. In his initial post, he talks about his thoughts on RSS and the role PHP will take in the future, and also a bit about Ajax. So add that to your blogroll, if you're keeping track.

I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't include what's new at PEAR and PECL. Recent PEAR releases include:

See you next week with more news and tidbits from the PHP world!