Yesterday, I exchanged a series of emails with Pierre-Alain Joye, one of the lead developers for PEAR_Frontend_Web, and got permission to commit the work I've been doing to make it compatible with PEAR 1.4.0a1. By sometime next week, I should have a ready and complete release available for PEAR_Frontend_Web 0.5.0 with full channel support.
The installer still needs some work on the unix front, Demian Turner reported some difficulty getting PEAR 1.4.0a1 upgraded from PEAR 1.3.x. I also ran into some issues many weeks ago, but was under the impression that they had been fixed. I'll have to run a few more tests on my gentoo box and see where that takes things.