Thoughts, ideas, random notes, ramblings...

After much thought and debate, we have officially decided to drop PHP 5.2 support and require PHP 5.3.  Most likely it will be PHP 5.3.2, however we are unsure at this time.  We do know it will not be 5.3.3.

A lot of people may think that is a bad move, and that it reduces our target audience.  Well, it does, but only initially.  PHP 5.3 is quickly becoming the standard version used on most servers.  So, even if it is not the most popular version now, it soon will be.  Combine that with the great features that come along with PHP 5.3 and we can't help but go for it.

It will take a little bit for us to add all the awesomeness that this allows us, but be sure, it will be there.

UPDATE

Some people have wanted to know the reasoning/benefits of choosing to require PHP 5.3.  Basically, it allows us to do things easier and faster, and give you more flexibility in your apps.  It does this by providing us with the following:

• Speed - PHP 5.3 is much faster than its predecessors. 
• Namespaces - This allows us to namespace the framework, which means less reserved class names for you apps.  It also makes for a bit easier class overriding.
• Closures - 5.3 adds anonymous functions (a.k.a. Closures).  These will allow us (and you) to do things like in-line callbacks by sending a closure to a method.
• Late static binding - Using late static binding we can make the core classes work much better (with less or no issue) should you choose to override some of our methods.
• The small things - There are the little things too, like being able to use the ternary shortcut.

All in all, we think this will make the framework, and your apps, faster, better and easier to write.

- Dan