Coding Passion

The Developers of the Dojo Toolkit have realeased their newest version 0.4. This might not yet be exciting enough, but they added a lot of new features, fixed many (really many) bugs. And there is another candy for Dojo Developers: the first release of the documentation tool.

Core

• GFX library - graphics library (see demos and tests)
• New charting engine, details To Be Announced.
• JS Linker - essentially done as alpha release, won’t be integrated into dojo build process for 0.4 release
• I18N Infrastructure
• event normalization of keyboard events (new “onKey” event)
• html-refactor
• onDomLoad - dojo is initialized as soon as DOM finishes loading w/out waiting for images etc. to finish downloading
• jum - Various enhancements being made in combination with new unit test runtime tool using rhino api directly. Unit tests can now be written and used on projects outside dojo. Semantics for grouping/setup/teardown/etc still being designed/thought about.
• major dojo.lfx improvements. Wipe and fade animations are now chain()-able among other improvements.
• dojo.html.metrics - scrollbar width measurement, current font size measurements, the ability to get how much of an HTML fragment will fit on a single line in a container, and to populate a container node with as much of an HTML fragment as will fit into it. Also included is a way of measuring the dimensions of a node if one was to populate it with a specific HTML fragment.
• dojo.debug.console - improved debugging with Firebug on FF/Safari, with fallback to Opera error console, if available.
• HtmlDragCopy? - copy an element instead of moving it from source to target, with ability to specify if a copy can be copied again.
• dojo.debug.console - console logger for Firefox (using Firebug), Safari and Opera. Deprecated dojo.debug.Firebug.
• API documentation -inline code docmentation) added to many files.

Widget Infrastructure

• Namespace support and refactoring of how to declare widgets, and automatic widget/manifest loading feature
• high-contrast mode infrastructure, and support for a few widgets (checkbox and tab container complete)
• subwidgets in templates
• widget-refactor - changing everything to widget/ directory, etc.

Widgets

• Improvements to Chart, including VML support and Area plotting
• FilteringTable widget
• Slider widget
• Spinner widget
• Toaster widget
• DropDownTimePicker? widget
• RadioGroup? widget
• Clock widget
• ProgressBar widget
• treeV3 (still experimental because DnD? not working)
• Datepicker enhancements
• Editor2 enhancements
• AccordionContainer? fixed so sliding of panes works, and so it works like other layout widgets
• I18N updates: DatePicker, TimePicker?, DropdownDatePicker?, Validation widgets?
• Soria - a few more widgets converted
• keyboard handling for a few widgets (checkbox, tab container, tree - complete. Button, dropdownbutton, combobutton, some menu - nearly complete)

The roadmap has also been updated, showing 0.4.1, 0.5 and beyond.