The Dojo Widget system has shown tremendous success, to the point that to many users "Dojo" is synonymous with the dojo widget system.   In particular, it's been successful because of the widget template system and the parser, which allow developers to rapidly develop new widgets, and allow users to rapidly add widgets to their applications.    It's also successful because of the many widgets in our library, including simple widgets like ComboButton to more complex widgets that even approach applications, like the Show (aka Powerpoint) widget.

There have been a some downsides to this development though:

• majority of bugs in dojo are in the widgets
• slow performance, and code bloat
• a lack of conformity between the widgets, both in terms of Look&Feel, API, and implementation
• varying levels of quality between the widgets, and some abandoned code, etc.
• varying levels of support for features like accessibilty, programatic creation, cross-browser compatibilty, etc.

In order to tame the beast that is widgets,  the widgets have been split off into a project of their own.  The main emphasis on the release will be speed, code footprint, and quality.  In order to achieve this, only a subset of the existing widgets will be supported (more on this later).   And also, only a subset of the existing infrastructure will be supported.   Many seldom used features will be dropped.

Goals

• standard set of widgets just like in swing or Windows Forms.  Should have a standard API, and a standard look & feel.   Focus on performance, bug fixes.   Also, all widgets need I18N and A11Y.
  
  
• Should support sticking some ajax widgets into traditional web pages, like adding tooltips to links, but also a full-on web application such as yahoo mail
  

• Unlike swing (or MFC), need to support customization, because web pages all demand to change colors etc.
  

Non-goals

• support an app that looks like windows

• support a webOS / eyeOS type system
  
  
• support mobile phones, or SWT, or anything else besides the browser
  
  
• free-for-all, allowing any wigets.
  
‹ Dijit Functional SpecupDijit Basics ›