> PHP version 5.5 (not yet released) will support Bcrypt natively via its password_hash() function. Use it.
This makes it sound like PHP didn't support bcrypt before 5.5. It did. PHP always has bcrypt support in 5.3 and 5.4. In older versions it also has bcrypt support if the operating system supports it.
PHP 5.5 only added a wrapper around the low-level crypt() API, which makes password hashes more convenient to use and less prone to error.
The php 5.5 functions are really nice. Fortunately they can be shimmed into versions 5.3.7+. See: