Whilst acknowledging that at the time development was started PHP4 was the dominant version of PHP4 - particularly out in the shared hosting environment that it is anticipated the majority of our users will be utilising - PHP5 offers so many features that we as developers find appealing.

Frankly it would have been twice as difficult to convert this script to PHP had PHP4 been the target platform. Whilst most of the internals could have been coded in PHP4 certain fundamental elements - such as our xml handling and our Object Oriented focus (not utilised much as yet) would simply have been too time consuming to do in PHP4 or worse still - would have required external libraries which would not have been available on the servers of our friends on shared hosting.

For this reason we wholeheartedly back the 'Go PHP 5' movement who are pushing for the widespread adoption of PHP5 throughout the scripting/programming and web hosting communities.

The fact of the matter is that PHP5 has been out for THREE years - but because it wasn't supported widely programmers built PHP4 compatible scripts. Because most scripts were PHP4 compatible hosts didn't install PHP5 thus forcing future programmers to build for PHP4. Well, you can see where that leads right - stagnation.

Project Tina recommends PHP5, and as we are in the unusual position of being both an established project and a new project at the same time we have chosen PHP5 for our initial release. Now - if someone wants to start an earnest movement to 'Kill IE6' we will back that movement too.