Hey all,
I am new to this list, but I was encouraged to share my thoughts in
case they might end up being helpful. I'd like to preface that what I
am about to say is somewhat of a rant because I can't come up with a
clear way to organize my thoughts on this situation, yet I still
believe I have a valid point.
Anyhow, after spending a little time looking at other frameworks and
their documentation I realized that the current docs aren't very
newbie friendly. Even though there is a quickstart guide and it helps
in setting up a bootstrap, explaining a bit about MVC, and using the
Zend_Form component, I don't really think the documentation is very
intuitive as a whole. Looking at the documentation for the
Zend_Controller, for instance. Zend_Controller encompasses many key
components of an application, yet anyone new to MVC and even ZF might
not know to look at the Zend_Controller documentation to figure out
how to rewrite URLs. Nor might they realize that the Zend_Controller
is the real entry point for an application.
I am not sure what the best way to remedy this is, but I think it
would be highly beneficial and useful, for the documentation to have a
step by step guide into creating a basic, yet somewhat complex
application. Sure it isn't a full stack framework, but a classic,
"how to create a blog in x minutes" might be a useful tutorial or even
screencast.
Anyhow, those are my 2 cents,
Andrew
P.S. - I decided to express my thoughts after referring ZF to several
friends/colleagues of mine who came back a bit confused and perplexed
about how to go about using the framework. I am sure they could all
figure it out after some reading, but I think many people want a
quick, easy way to get up and running with the least amount of reading
possible.
