It's been a few weeks now that I have started learning
Dojo and building a prototype for a web app and I have to say that I am impressed with the toolkit and how well it is
architected.
To get me started, I started reading the book "
Dojo: The Definitive Guide" from
O'Reilly on my
Safari bookshelf, and also ordered the print copy of the brand new "
Mastering Dojo" from the Pragmatic Programmers.
The
O'Reilly book is good, and it explains the basics of the
Dojo Core components and the
Dijit library of widgets. It does not go into any of the
Dojox components that are still being worked on and are in various stages of maturity. But in general is a very comprehensive guide to everything you need to get started with
Dojo.
On the other hand, "Mastering
Dojo" goes deeper into the architecture of
Dojo and how things work together. It even has a good section at the end where you build a simple
RIA using all the components, widgets, layouts and connectors that you would use for building a complete application.
In general there is a steep learning curve to understand how to use all the things that
Dojo provides, but once you start learning all of them, you get the full power of
Dojo, which mainly hides all the complexities inherent to dealing with multiple browsers, asynchronous communications, component manipulation and object oriented programming in Javascript.
Another big thing that
Dojo contributes, I think, is the open and extensible architecture that takes in consideration advances and changes to browsers and standards in the future, so that applications built now, can make use of the new features of the next generation of browsers with minimal impact.
I am still working my way learning it and exploring it, but so far, I am fairly confident that choosing
Dojo was the right decision for building the next generation of web applications in my current job. There has been an explosion of Ajax-related libraries and frameworks in the last few years and I think
Dojo is leading the pack with a very strong foundation.
