Dojo JavaScript Toolkit 1.8 Released

http://dojotoolkit.org/blog/dojo-1-8-released

by Leftium • 14 years ago

54 30 14 years ago

sahat• 14 years ago

What is the fundamental difference between this and jQuery? And why some random pre-beta MVC javascript frameworks are more popular than Dojo?

moondowner• 14 years ago

The second question is something I also can't find an answer to.

dylanks25• 14 years ago

Popularity is fickle... things that are new and sexy get more buzz, things that are solid and reliable and powerful get used a lot, but don't receive as much hype.

larrymyers• 14 years ago

I'd say Dojo is much closer to YUI in scope and purpose.

As to why it's not more popular? Likely marketing. Dojo isn't sexy. It's been around for a very long time.

You'll notice that a lot of discussions around things like module loading reference Dojo as an inspiration.

Leftium3• 14 years ago

"jQuery is primarily a JavaScript library for doing DOM manipulation, Ajax, events, and effects. Dojo is a more comprehensive toolkit that offers those same features, but also includes many other pieces that facilitate building rich web applications, such as patterns for code organization, tools for abstracting data syncing between server and browser, internationalization, accessibility, templated widgets, graphing and charting, rich UI widgets, and much more. Dojo also provides dependency management and build/optimization tools for creating a production-ready JavaScript application." Rebecca Murphey [1]

Rebecca also gives a detailed description of her first foray into Dojo coming from jQuery. [2]

Personally, I think Dojo's lack of good documentation/reference code, lack of 'marketing', and relative complexity keep it from becoming popular. It's much easier to get started with another library like jQuery because of all these factors. However, once you get over that initial steep learning curve, Dojo is great!

[1] http://www.quora.com/Rebecca-Murphey/answers/Dojo-JavaScript...

[2] http://rmurphey.com/blog/2009/11/12/dojo-confessions-or-how-...

edit: corrected name to Rebecca

dylanks25• 14 years ago

Check out the new docs. I think it's no longer reasonable to say Dojo lacks good docs or reference code.

Marketing is challenging for engineers. We tend to not go crazy over every small feature, but focus on the big stuff. That said, we're improving our approach.

gana• 14 years ago

By the way her name is Rebecca Murphey. Not Rachel. That would be someone else.

elchief3• 14 years ago

Dojo is integrated. JQuery has 1000 different plugins and therefore 1000 different APIs to learn

amitu5• 14 years ago

One of the best javascript library out there, checkout my work in progress attempt to port ikog to web while I am learning dojo: https://github.com/amitu/ikog.

I find dojo project way more neater than an equivalent jquery project by default.

Module systems rock. Real object oriented programming rocks, see how I extended Pager to make PausePager, this is how object oriented programming was meant to be. The fact that I can extend any dojo class, and the fact that dojo comes with a large collection of class, its just too sweet.

I have not yet created a "build", so there are a bit too many http requests (check work in progress live version here: http://amitu.com/ikog/), but I am hoping after build this issue would be solved.

Lets see how it goes.

Leftium3• 14 years ago

Cool! I'm doing a similar port of todo.sh [1] Except when I started I didn't know about Dojo...

So my next task is to refactor my todo.html into a framework based on Dojo Boilerplate [2]

I suggest starting with a bare Dojo Boilerplate that builds nicely, then adding your ikog code to the boilerplate project.

It's more difficult to build later, although you can go a long way with the online Dojo Web Builder [3]

[1] https://github.com/Leftium/todo.html

[2] https://github.com/Leftium/dojo-boilerplate

[3] http://dojotoolkit.org/blog/introducing-the-new-dojo-web-bui...

amitu5• 14 years ago

Thanks for the suggestion, I am looking into boilerplate now.

I like that build.sh in dojo boilerplate "minifies" the html file too!

I checked your todo.sh project, I see the html page, and java loads, but nothing happens when I type something and press enter in text field. May be you just started and its not implemented yet, or may be I am doing something wrong.

My suggestion to you would be to do a hosted version, that syncs to dropbox. That is my plan for iKog. Parse is good if you do not want to have a dependency on dropbox, as a storage. Both of these allow me to access todo list from anywhere, the applet solution does not allow that.

It all depends on what you want to do, for me it is a playing ground to work with different libraries/services.

elchief3• 14 years ago

I'll just leave this here: http://maqetta.org/

thisisblurry• 14 years ago

Aside from the fact that it's hosted by the Dojo Foundation, why?

amitu5• 14 years ago

It is written using dojo. It showcases a rather rich, albiet rather slow, web app done using dojo.

elchief3• 14 years ago

It makes Dojo more compelling.

If you don't think that WYSIWYG IDEs are useful, then that's fine, but some do, and I thought I'd share.

dotborg• 14 years ago

Dojo is rather past its prime, because of increasing browser support for CSS3 and HTML5 features. Better support for native language capabilities like map/reduce/filter/indexOf in arrays also have siginifact impact.

Dojo is my primary js framework, I prefer it over jQuery, because it's more strict.

rhengles• 14 years ago

I didn't think much of Dojo previously, but then I had the need to create a web app with dynamic SVG for the interface, that would be a pain to do with DOM+CSS. I searched for libraries that could help me, I tried RaphaelJS but rejected it for the lack of support for the <g> element. In the end the best library I found is Dojox/GFX, which also can render to SVG, VML, Silverlight and even Canvas!

I have yet to start producing the app, but Dojo really deserves more attention.

nobleach• 14 years ago

I am forced to use Dojo whenever I am doing any sort of ESRI Arcgis web map development. While I agree that there are some nice points in Dojo, I think it's a travesty the way they were okay with PUKING all over the DOM with their Dojo specific markup. We have data attributes now, so hopefully they are beginning to leverage that. The app I'm working on now still uses Dojo 1.7 and it still has quite a bit of "dojo-this='foo'".

dylanks25• 14 years ago

Since 1.6, everything uses data-dojo-*, which is the HTML5 recommended approach for toolkits.

Leftium3• 14 years ago

Since version 1.6, "data-dojo-attr='foo'" is preferred; "dojoAttr='foo'" will not be supported in 2.0 [1][2].

More details: Dojo 1.x to 2.0 migration guide [3]

[1] http://dojotoolkit.org/features/1.6/html5data-attributes

[2] http://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/1.8/releasenotes/1.6....

[3] http://dojotoolkit.org/reference-guide/1.8/releasenotes/migr...

eranation• 14 years ago

Nice comeback, I almost forgot Dojo exists but I have to admit, if you put aside style / coolness, Dojo get's you going out of the box with most UI needs without searching for plugins, and has a great mobile library

hoschi• 14 years ago

I tested Sencha, jQuery Mobile and Dojo 1.7 and 1.8 a week ago with my Nexus phone -> Dojo 1.8 wins clearly when it comes to performace of touch events and transitions :)

kyriakos• 14 years ago

I read your comment and tested it myself. I was actually very disappointed with Sencha and especially JQuery Mobile's performance but seems like dojo actually got it right.

Dojo JavaScript Toolkit 1.8 Released

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