Last month we launched the Dojo Web Builder, an online solution to generate customised versions of The Dojo Toolkit using just your web browser. We are pleased to announce that the technology behind the Dojo Web Builder is now available on Github as an official Dojo Foundation project.

Users can now run the tool locally, which provides access to two really important features….

• Generate custom Dojo builds for older versions of the Dojo Toolkit. The Web Builder can be easily configured to work with older versions of the toolkit, whereas the hosted version only provides access to the latest version of Dojo. This allows users who aren’t using the latest version of Dojo within their application to generate customised builds with the tool.
• Expose custom application modules through the Web Builder. Plug your local Dojo modules into the Web Builder and the tool will automatically allow users to build optimised application layers from all modules it has discovered.

Follow the simple instructions in the project’s README file for full details on both of these modes.

Visit the Dojo Web Builder GitHub project and start using it today!

Dojo 1.6.1rc1 is now available.

1.6.1rc1 contains many fixes, with a special focus on IE9 and FF4 support, browsers released just after Dojo 1.6.0 was completed.

Please test 1.6.1rc1, especially against IE9 and FF4 browsers, and send us your feedback and/or file any bugs you find. April 20, 2011 is the target release date for 1.6.1.

Background

Dojo’s build system has long been considered as one of the toolkit’s most important features. Using the build system will dramatically improve the performance of your Dojo application by optimising the JavaScript modules and CSS files. This reduces the download size and number of HTTP connections needed to load your application.

Today, The Dojo Toolkit’s build tools are about to improve even further with the launching of a brand new solution, The Dojo Web Builder!

The Web Builder is an online solution providing an intuitive web interface to the existing build tools, allowing you to create customised Dojo builds using just your web browser and much more. This new tool will dramatically lower the barrier to entry for the build system, easing new users into the process of using a build tool and improving the performance of unoptimised Dojo applications everywhere!

To start, use the Dojo Web Builder tool, or continue reading for more details. We have produced a number of screencasts showing off the tool’s features and walking you through the steps required for some common example builds:

Dojo Web Builder – Custom Builds from Dojo Toolkit on Vimeo.

Dojo Web Builder – Auto Analysis from Dojo Toolkit on Vimeo.

Dojo Web Builder – Advanced Mode from Dojo Toolkit on Vimeo.

Features

• Browse catalogue of every module in Dojo, Dijit and DojoX, using text searching to quickly filter the entire results. Simply select desired modules to include those in a custom build. Currently serving over eight hundred modules for the 1.6 release.
• Automatically generate custom Dojo builds using our remote service, no need to open terminals and run the intensive build system locally. When the build is complete, it will automatically start the download of the result. Progress indicator keeps you informed of status during a custom build.
• Auto-analyse existing Dojo applications to discover module dependencies. Provide the Web Builder with a remote URL, upload a HTML page, zip archive or an existing build profile to have the tool show you any Dojo Toolkit or custom module dependencies uncovered. Custom builds using the results will automatically include your custom modules.
• Customise builds even further in “Advanced Mode”. Want to include a Dijit theme with compressed CSS? Want to use Google’s Closure compiler for aggressive compression? Want to build multiple application layers? Want to generate builds for the WebKit platform? Need to generate a cross-domain build? Switch to using the Web Builder in “Advanced Mode” to unleash the ability to heavily customise build parameters.

Open source

The Dojo Web Builder project consists of two new components that were developed:

• Dojo-based web application providing the interface to the build system through a web browser.
• Backend service, allowing existing build system to be controlled through a RESTful interface.

The entire project will shortly be open-sourced, living on the Dojo Foundation’s Github repository, allowing anyone to contribute to its continuing development. More importantly, other users will be able to run local versions of the tool pointing at their own modules. For example, an organisation might provide an internal version allowing teams to easily generate new custom builds of a project’s modules, without having to distribute the entire project source. In addition, the tool can be configured to generate custom builds for older versions of The Dojo Toolkit, such as 1.5 and 1.4.3. Future plans for the project include native support for the AMD module and CommonJS package formats. This will allow the Dojo Web Builder to be used with a broad variety of JavaScript modules and packages external to Dojo. A full announcement will follow when the project’s source code is available.

Conclusion

Start using the Dojo Web Builder today. The hosted version is configured to provide access to the custom builds using the latest version of The Dojo Toolkit, 1.6.

Now available, and ready for your web app!

The Dojo 1.6 release was a substantial undertaking and involves efforts from the largest Dojo team ever. We’re reinventing Dojo for the present and the future, and this release is the first major step towards our plans for Dojo 2.0. The tremendous efforts and work of the Dojo community has made this release possible, with significant improvements in a short amount of time.

Get Dojo

What’s New in 1.6?

Dojo 1.6 contains a number of great additions and refinements. Key highlights include:

• Object store: Rethinking data stores in a manner that’s generally easier to work with and more flexible than dojo.data.
• LESS Dijit themes: Use the popular LESS CSS framework for simplified theme creation.
• HTML5 data attributes: Use data-* attributes instead of custom attributes, so your markup will validate against the HTML5 validator.
• Widget watch(): Follow changes to widget attributes with watch().
• Dojo WebSocket: A simple API for working with WebSockets and other real-time Comet techniques.
• CommonJS AMD: Dojo now supports the CommonJS AMD format for defining modules.
• Charts: The project now contains new Spider and Gantt charts, and support for Canvas text.
• Scene Graph: Dojo Mobile’s scene graph implementation enables powerful replay capabilities.
• Fixes: Many, many improvements to support new browsers including IE9, compatibility with non-browser environments, widget improvements, and shiny polish all around.

We’ve also made substantial progress on Dojo Mobile, available now for your mobile web apps!

Visit the new Dojo Features section to watch interviews with key Dojo committers and users and learn more about this release, as well as the thousands of outstanding features that have been in Dojo for several years.

Learn More

Testing and Compatibility

In total, we’ve resolved more than 600 issues since Dojo 1.5. The DOH test suite of tens of thousands of tests passes in all officially supported browsers:

• Chrome: 8.x and newer
• Firefox: 3.5.x and 3.6.x
• Internet Explorer: 6, 7, and 8
• Opera: 11.x
• Safari: 4.1.x and 5.0.x

The code was completed before Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4 were released. That said, we’ve fixed all known issues with these browsers as well (testing was done with IE9 RC and Firefox 4 RC1).

Dojo is also tested with popular mobile browsers including iOS 4.x, Android 2.x and 3.x, and passes for all supported features in Dojo Mobile, and most features throughout Dojo. Work is also near completion for support with Blackberry 6 on mobile phones and the PlayBook.

Use Direct from the CDN, or Download

Get the Dojo release that’s right for you. Choose from CDN, optimized builds, or source versions with full demos and utilities.

Get Dojo

Documentation

Many improvements have been made to the Dojo documentation. Most notable is a collection of new tutorials on using Dojo 1.6, in addition to the reference guide and API documentation.

Documentation

Roadmap

Work on Dojo 1.7 is already underway. We’re anticipating releases every 3 months in 2011 as we make progress towards Dojo 2.0! A full roadmap will be available shortly so you’re aware of the latest changes, and to know how to get involved.

Release Notes

Read the complete Dojo 1.6 release notes for full details on everything that has changed with Dojo since 1.5.

Thanks!

And as always, we appreciate your interest and usage. If you find an issue with Dojo, have a suggestion, or see anything on the site or within the documentation that you think should be better, please register for a Dojo Foundation account and open a ticket.