Solars form system is pretty powerful and you realize the full beauty when auto generating forms directly from models but by default it uses a DL/DD/DT list for formatting your labels/inputs.

If your not a fan of that formatting you can do something about it, in my case I prefer the following

But you can use any combination you choose.. Enjoy

A lot of cool features are being hatched in branches that should hit trunk in the near future!

Jeff Moore is working on a revamped Auth stack that allows multiple adapters to be run in parallel, This means for example you can run your Facebook login right along side your standard Auth out of the box.

Speaking of Facebook, an Auth module for Facebook will be included in the new Auth stack that uses the official Facebook PHP library so setting up a Facebook login is a breeze.

The 2 biggest complaints about Solar have been it being in "beta" and lack of good docs.. Well its been out of beta and in release for a few months now so that should no longer be a concern.

As for docs you can find the new and improved manual Here

Granted its not 100% complete yet but it goes a long way to helping you get started with the Solar Framework.

Solar has a pretty easy to use Auth bootstrapping system that allows easy setup but by default its restricted to a single Auth method.

What if you want to use multiple methods? OpenID? Facebook Connect? Saml? or one of the other dozen+ solutions that you might use.. What to do? One thing to keep in mind, Auth happens really early in the bootstrapping process so things like SQL may not be available yet unless you specifically loaded it in the config.. Then you need to load the proper auth module and call it as needed..

The below code is a short example so you can see how this might work.

Paul Jones responded to recent Symfony 2 benchmarks to show that the Solar Framework is not as slow as the original tests show and in fact if it used preloading like Symfony 2 does it would be faster..

This is something I have always thought was needed and its something I brought up in Zend Framework discussions back when I was seni-involved.

If you haven't taken a look at the Solar Framework in the past now is the time to do so as the three biggest complaints about Solar are on the road to be resolved.

Sending email using the Solar Framework is not only extremely simple but very flexible as well. Solar splits the process of sending email into 2 logical parts, creating the message "package" and sending the "package"

Solar_Config is a great configuration system but at times you find yourself wanting more, by itself Solar_Config has a few weaknesses.

1. All the config is file based, changes to the config require a push.

2. If you store client config in Solar_Config files this makes #1 even worse

3. On a large site only small portions of the config may be used at once, why load it all into memory.

You have a couple options, each have highs and lows related to how they work

To understand how and were you can inject new config you have to understand how its loaded.

In your Solar.config.php

Your using Solar and decide you need OpenID support but Solar doesn't have an Adapter for that! What are you to do!

Solar makes heavy use of Adapter based classes, Solar_Auth is one of these. This makes adding additional methods pretty easy and allows you to borrow from other Frameworks without having to Hack in a third party auth setup, You can use the basics provided by Solar.

While the subject might sound dark and scary the reality is the Solar Frameworks config system is one of the things that I truly enjoy about Solar 99% of the time.

Its that other 1% you need to be aware of to keep yourself out of the rabbit hole.