A new top-level package was recently added to the Dojo Toolkit called Deft — an acronym for Dojo Experimental Flex Technology. The Deft package was created and is maintained by SitePen’s Tom Trenka, taking advantage of Adobe’s new MPL licensing, and the corresponding APIs of the Flash Player. Most articles focus on Adobe’s Flex Builder, which isn’t open source or free. The majority of articles about Flex and the Flex Builder also put an emphasis on components developed using a combination of ActionScript and XML-based description files, known as MXML.

Instead of taking this approach, Deft focuses on ActionScript components created in support of the various projects within the Dojo Toolkit (mostly for DojoX). Deft source files are well organized based in part on the organization of other Dojo Toolkit projects, as well as the package structure required by the Flex compiler. Most Flex applications are based on the Flex AS3 Application class, which forces you to write at least one “controlling” MXML file in order compile your code. Instead of this, Deft components inherit primarily from the Sprite class — which allows you to write pure ActionScript code.

Continue reading