WHich is faster? Using smarty or the regular .phtml view files in the zend framework? Which do you recommend? I don't really like using libraries that don't follow zend coding standards.
Smarty is really powerfull. If you already know smarty or the webdesigner your working with is used to smarty then use smarty.
If you don't know smarty and need more speed, then use zend frameworks view.
If you want to read an article about how to use smarty in zf, read ralf eggerts article: http://devzone.zend.com/article/120
Fabien Potencier from symphony framework, made some benchmarks and compared the speed of plain php to some templating engines: http://fabien.potencier.org/article/35/templating-engines-in-php-follow-up