Hello, reader!

My name is Eugene Lazutkin.

I'm a software developer based in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Lazutkin.com is my professional blog, which contains short writeups and presentations regarding modern web applications. All articles here are written by myself, unless stated otherwise.

Dojo 1.1 is out

As you all know by now Dojo 1.1 was released in the wild. You can get a lot of useful links and info from James Burke’s post on Dojo 1.1, but let me tell you why you should be excited:

  1. Dojo 1.1 is the first official release, which contains dojox.lang.functional. It was available in the trunk for awhile, but now you can use it without deploying Dojo courtesy of AOL CDN. I am psyched about it!
  2. Improvements in animation, animation helpers for dojox.gfx. A good examples of animation in action is dojo.moj.oe by Pete Higgins (internals were detailed in the blog post, and in the great Dojo Campus article), an example for dojox.gfx animation is the career test. Finally we are getting to the point when we create attractive GUI cross-platform without plugins.
  3. The Dojo API tool. As you know Dojo is essentially a federation of JavaScript modules. Every module can be a library on its own. Now we have a simple way to navigate them, read developer’s documentation without diving into the source, and understand the API. When comments will be added to it shortly, you can add your own notes, and ask pointed questions. Developers are getting an essential tool to see how their modules are documented, what questions are raised most frequently, and so on. This tool will help us to document Dojo even better. All in all Neil Roberts and Tom Trenka did a great job!
  4. Numerous improvements and bug fixes — this is always good. The API is mainly unchanged, so the migration to Dojo 1.1 should be a no-brainer for most users.

I am pleased to see that social aspects of Dojo are getting attention: the redesigned Dojo web site, the Dojo API tool, Dojo Campus is always fun, Dojo forums are active, even the Dojo archive is now easy to navigate!

What’s next? The next target is Dojo 1.2, which will see a lot of enhancements. In my crystal ball I can see myself diligently working on Charting with other volunteers. New graphics improvements and new dojox.lang modules are planned too. While we are busy pushing for 1.2, the maintenance release (Dojo 1.1.1) is planned as well.