The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.4.9. It continues to improve the security and the stability of the 4.4 branch and all users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to it as soon as possible. This release wraps up all the outstanding patches for the PHP 4.4 series, and is therefore the last PHP 4.4 release.

Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 4.4.9:

• Updated PCRE to version 7.7.
• Fixed overflow in memnstr().
• Fixed crash in imageloadfont when an invalid font is given.
• Fixed open_basedir handling issue in the curl extension.
• Fixed...

The PHP development team is proud to announce the first alpha release of the upcoming minor version update of PHP. Windows binaries will be available starting with alpha2 (intermediate snapshots available at snaps.php.net). The new version PHP 5.3 is expected to improve stability and performance as well as add new language syntax and extensions. Several new features have already been documented in the official documentation, others are listed on the wiki in preparation of getting documented. Please also review the NEWS...

Overall 158 tests have been submitted as part of TestFest 2008 since the launch of the TestFest submission site by 30 different people from people all over the world. Actually this is not counting the various submissions by existing core developers, who also took this opportunity to add some more tests. This has actually increased total test coverage for ext/reflection, ext/dom and ext/exif by about 10% each. While the organization of the TestFest was a bit adhoc, there were numerous TestFest events in local user groups. So the number of people exposed to the PHP test framework is much greater. Hopefully this will lead to more people submitting bug reports...

A few weeks ago the manual was restructured to improve navigation and make room for per-extension chapters and usage examples along with improved documentation for object oriented extensions.

The most noticable changes are the function reference, predefined variables, context options and parameters and predefined exceptions manual pages, for which we would really appreciate feedback...

Join us for the largest PHP only gathering, September 15th - 18th. Discuss topics such as:

• PHP in the Enterprise
• Advanced PHP Programming Techniques
• Scalability
• PHP and RIAs

Our guest keynote speaker this year is Zak Greant who will be speaking on The Age of Literate Machines

For more information and to register for the biggest PHP even of the year, visit http://zendcon.com/

php|works 2008 will be held November 12-14, 2008 in Atlanta, GA. Our Call for Papers is now open, but the deadline for submissions is July 25, 2008.

This year's php|works takes place concurrently with PyWorks 2008, MTA's new fall Python conference, organized by the publishers of Python Magazine, and attendees to both conferences will be able to attend talks from either.

This gives us a great opportunity to create cross-over talks to cover topics that bridge both worlds, enriching members of either communities and facilitating the cross-pollination of ideas. If you have a topic that fits the bill, or that could be equally interesting to both PHPers and Pythonistas, don't hesitate to propose it.

For more information about our Call for...