Zend Technologies plans to announce availability of the open source Zend Framework 1.5 for building PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) applications next week.

With this release, Zend Framework is to be made available in a version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution in April. Featuring contributions and sponsorships from such vendors as Microsoft, IBM, and Google, Zend Framework 1.5 supports OpenID and Microsoft InfoCard identity management technologies. Also supported is LDAP authentication and the Nirvanix media content storage and delivery network. PHP programmers using the framework can access Nirvanix capabilities.

Other features include new services and enhancements to make it easier to build Web sites faster, including:

• Support for an upload capability for YouTube via new YouTube APIs. Users can upload, watch, and comment on YouTube videos on PHP Web sites.

• Forms, including AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) usage patterns for building Web-based forms.

• Layout and View to implement a consistent look and feel throughout applications and keep Web application views componentized.

• Lucene search engine to implement advanced queries.

• Extended AJAX support on the server to automate AJAX detection and responses to make JavaScript and PHP programming easier.

• UTF-8 character sets in Adobe PDF creation, featuring enablement of non-Latin characters like Kanji and Cyrillic when producing PDF documents.

• Google GData Web services for building applications that leverage the Google application network.

Zend is offering a Zend Framework subscription support service, featuring consulting and a guaranteed per-incident response time.

Zend Framework has been downloaded more than 4 million times, according to Zend.