New to Dojo 1.2+ is dojox.html.style. This is a collection of methods which give you the ability to query the stylesheets collection in a document, add and remove rules, and dynamically create new sheets. In this article I’ll explain why and where this is of use, and walk through a split-panel demo that uses dynamic stylesheets to size a 2 column layout.

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There are many reasons you might end up needing to patch your Dojo source tree. Maintaining patches can be a pain, and sometimes outside of your control entirely. It could be a bug you’ve found, or something you really wish a Dojo component did/didn’t do, or you are having to work against an older release of Dojo, or there’s a patch in trac that fixes an issue you have, but it has not yet been committed. In this post, we’ll present a neat way to make the change, keep what you did explicit so other developers aren’t confused, and maintain it outside the Dojo source.

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Dojo includes several new modules which open up new querying and caching capabilities for Dojo data stores. dojox.data.ClientFilter is available in Dojo 1.2, and provides the ability to cache queries, update the query results and cached queries based on local modifications, and performs sub-queries and sorting on the client-side. The JsonQuery is a new mixin class for Dojo 1.3 that converts Dojo query objects and sort objects to JSONQuery expressions; JSONQuery can be used for delivering complex queries to the server. JsonQueryRestStore is a new module (for Dojo 1.3) that extends the JsonRestStore and combines the ClientFilter and JSONQuery such that any query can be executed on the client or the server automatically based on what data has been locally cached on the client-side, utilizing dojox.json.query to execute queries on the client-side when appropriate.

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The build system that is part of the Dojo Toolkit is an incredibly powerful tool. Making sure that your custom build is always up-to-date in your web application can be time consuming and error prone if done manually. This post will demonstrate how to quickly add custom Dojo builds into any web application that uses Apache Ant.

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The Dojo Toolkit has been around for over four years, and has undergone significant changes, both big and small, in becoming a great JavaScript toolkit. This article debunks myth and outdated assumptions (both fair and false) applied to Dojo over its four plus years of development.

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So your cool new app is perfect, but you want it to lock the user out when the browser hasn’t had focus after 15 minutes? Well that’s easy you think, I’ll just connect to the document’s blur and focus events and be good to go. You quickly add a little bit of code to your Dojo widget:

     dojo.connect(dojo.doc, "onblur", this, "onWindowBlur");
     dojo.connect(dojo.doc, "onfocus", this, "onWindowFocus");

That should do it you’d think. Launch your app with Firefox and everything is great, easy enough. The same is true with Safari. After reluctantly firing up your Virtual Machine to test Internet Explorer 6, much to your dismay, onfocus events are immediately followed by onfocusout events. You feel the harsh reality that IE6 is going to suck away a bit more of your life.

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A typical server-side web framework today includes three main components: a URL dispatching to some controller object scheme, a template engine, and a data mapping facility. Currently in Dojo, you’ll find that the latter two items already exist. dojox.dtl provides the first one, and dojo.data provides the second.

We provide SitePen Support customers with a custom-built user interface for managing their support account. When we started working on this customer interface, we opted to make the entire user interface driven by JavaScript. The server-side provides data and data manipulation functionality via JSON-RPC, but does not dynamically serve up pages as a typical web app would.

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An HTTP Proxy server relays requests between the HTTP client (e.g. your browser) and the server—whether it be out on the web, intranet or localhost. When it’s under your control, the proxy is a great place to inspect and debug client-server interactions over HTTP, log and report, tune and tamper with the requests the client makes, and the responses the server(s) produce. In this article I’ll show how to use Charles (one such proxy tool) to help solve a range of common web, and especially RIA, development problems.

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A common issue encountered when developing web applications with the Dojo Toolkit is a startup lag caused by the dynamic loading of modules and resources, further aggravated by a flash of unstyled content before the template system kicks in and sets up your widgets. This is especially true when using numerous Dijit components, and even more apparent when not using a custom build (such as loading your files from the Google or the AOL CDN). While it is typically recommended to use a custom build, it isn’t always practical, or even necessary. Perceived speed is speed, and we should do something about it.

Dojo is a very flexible toolkit, and can bend and otherwise be manipulated to handle any use case. Personally, I am a fan of the progressive use case: where JavaScript is used to enhance an otherwise perfectly working collection of clean markup and good styles. Sometimes though, especially in the case of intranet applications or “admin panel” type web interfaces, you will find yourself using many layout widgets and form components. Delivering content quickly in this case is essential, and hiding any ugliness resulting from template substitution is a vital aspect to delivering the best possible user experience. Today, I’m going to go over a common technique to provide at least the perception of perfectly designed full-page layout applications.

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In the middle of May, we were given a mission: create a speedy, offline API documentation viewer and a graphical Dojo build tool. Here we are at the beginning of July, and the result is the Dojo Toolbox 1.0. This article is a first look at this new application.

Adobe® AIR™ has received a good deal of press attention over the past few months, and with good reason. It provides a way for web application developers to use the skills they already have to create cross-platform desktop applications. Starting with Dojo 1.1, Dojo has included support for AIR out-of-the-box. This made AIR an ideal target environment for the Dojo Toolbox.

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