As promised, Asido has ditched the PHP4 compatibility and is now purely PHP5. The old hybrid PHP4/PHP5 version is branched in SVN under /branches/asido-php4-php5 for all of you that still want to play with it. The new version works OK with E_ALL|E_STRICT. However, this first PHP5 version of Asido does not take advantage of all the wonderful features that PHP5 offers. I hope that in the next release (which will be PHP5-only), Asido will use PHP5 at its full potential.

Finally we have a worthy “record” in Asido Project downloads, the one we have been waiting for the last two months - our 1000^th download! Probably there will be new records when we update our tutorials/howto section, move entirely to PHP5, as well as putting out a new release of Asido.

To take advantage of the many and amazing new features of PHP5 it is decided that effective February 5th, 2008, newly released versions of Asido will only be developed and supported for PHP versions 5.2 and greater.

To sum it up: you might have heard of it, or not, but it is going to be a hot topic now since the news today about ceasing support for PHP4 since the end of this year. GoPHP5 is a strong initiative which is trying to push for vital change in the PHP community (even before the news about the “death” of PHP4). PHP is (still) major now. Neverthelss, PHP5 has been ignored by the majority of hosting companies and large projects for far too long now. Given that PHP6 is coming our way it is about time companies let go of the past and embrace a change for the better. With a lot of companies refusing to upgrade, developers are forced to provide support for PHP4 (including Asido and Krumo). On the other hand with developers still doing so much of PHP4, hosting companies are reluctant to upgrade. It’s a vicious circle… or it was - until the news today about PHP4 kicking the bucket.

Two weeks after the previous “record” in Asido Project downloads, we have a new one - our 400^th download! Probably there will be new records when we update our tutorials/howto section, as well as putting out a new release of Asido.

I just checked the stats on the SourceForge download page: Asido has passed its 300th download. I know that it is a small figure, but hey - let’s celebrate

This is old news, but I forgot to put it on the site - Asido now has a Google Code repository too. I am pretty much satisfied with what SourceForge.net is providing, but for all of you Google freaks here’s the Asido Google Code Page:

• http://code.google.com/p/asido/

Help nominate Asido for the SourceForge.net 2007 Community Choice Awards
(category “Best Tool or Utility for Developers”):

The Asido project has an Ohloh.net page now. The ohloh.net site is a great new endeavour with focus on the open-source projects, so having Asido listed there is a great asset.

Ohloh.net is really a cool site - check the Asido page there:

• http://www.ohloh.net/projects/5051

Finally, the website for the Asido Project is completed! An efford was put to try to deliver this site at top speed and not compromise the site content or the layout. There were several glitches choosing the platform and applying the modifications, but after one week customizing the final look and functionalities, and about two weeks writing the content, the site is finally up and running

After switching several CMS platforms, this website is built by using WordPress 2.1. The modifications and the customizations were tough, but now since everything is completed I must admit that the WordPress administration is very easy. So, enjoy the Asido site, and expect a lot of new examples added to the Howtos section.

While working on the site for Asido, I recalled an old idea of mine, which I always wanted to implement but never got the time (or the correct motivation) to do it. Well, finally, the Krumo is out. It took like a weekend to write its code, document it, and set up a site. I have to wait one extra day for SourceForge.net to approve the project, but it is finally out and its first release is out. So, check it out:

• Krumo website: http://krumo.sourceforge.net/
• Krumo SourceForge page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/krumo
• Download Krumo (Krumo 0.1a): http://sourceforge.net/project/sho…id=194198

Ah, I forgot to tell what Krumo is all about: it is a graceful replacement for var_dump(); and print_r();