Russell's just-released title, Dojo: The Definitive Guide (O'Reilly, US $39.99) shows readers how to tame Dojo's extensive library of utilities so that they can build rich and responsive web applications that users now demand. The book includes a foreword by Dojo cofounder Alex Russell that explains the "why" of Dojo and of this book.
"Matthew's illuminations make Dojo approachable, friendly, and productive," says Alex Russell, adding, "Matthew's book is a credit to the amazing team I've had the honor of working with."
With Dojo, Matthew Russell explains, developers are able to write a web application with significantly less code in significantly less time than they would otherwise take. "Applying well engineered, battle-tested solutions (that you don't have to maintain!) to problems in a browser landscape as messy as the one we're currently faced with can literally save a small team hundreds of hours over the course of a project," he says.
"As a case in point, ask someone like Dylan Schiemann (CEO of SitePen and cofounder of the Dojo Toolkit) why he's comfortable repeatedly allocating a non-trivial amount of company resources into an open source project like Dojo," Russell continues. "He'll tell you something to the effect of it being an investment that pays for itself over and over again. Developing software can get really expensive really quickly, and like anything else, the right tools for the job can make a job a lot easier, cheaper, and more enjoyable."
Dojo: The Definitive Guide offers the most thorough overview of this toolkit available, covering everything from how to create complex layouts and form controls closely resembling those found in the most advanced desktop applications with stock widgets, to advanced JavaScript idioms to AJAX and advanced communication transports. The book includes:
- A concise introduction to Dojo that's good for all 1.x versions
- Well explained examples, with scores of tested code samples, that reveal Dojo in action
- A comprehensive reference to Dojo's standard JavaScript library (including fundamental utilities in Base, Dojo's tiny but powerful kernel)
- An extensive look at additional Core features, such as animations, drag-and-drop, back-button handling, animations like wipe and slide, and more
- Exhaustive coverage of out-of-the-box Dijits (Dojo widgets) as well as definitive coverage on how to create them, either from scratch or building on existing ones
- An itemized inventory of DojoX subprojects, the build tools, and the DOH, Dojo's unit-testing framework that you can use with Dojo—or anywhere else
For a review copy or more information please email kathrynb@oreilly.com. Please include your delivery address and contact information.
Matthew Russell is a computer scientist from middle Tennessee. Hacking and writing are two activities essential to his renaissance man regimen.
Additional Resources:
For more information about this book, including table of contents, index, author bios, and cover graphic, see the catalog page for
Dojo: The Definitive Guide
Matthew Russell
ISBN: 9780596516482, 486 pages, $39.99 USD, £24.99 GBP
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