Product Description

The era of professional JavaScript development has arrived! Gone are the days when writing all the client–side code for your applications by hand yourself was the norm. Gone are the days when scrounging around the Internet to find a snippet of code to do something you need could lead to either decent code or utter garbage that you’d surely regret using later.

No, writing high–quality JavaScript these days is a whole lot easier with the advent of top–notch libraries that save you time and effort, and one that stands out from most others is Dojo.

Dojo is a library like few others: written by some of the best JavaScript coders around today, providing nearly everything you’ll need to write modern Rich Internet Applications, all in one place. From Ajax to widgets, to client–side persistence and language extensions, and many points in between, Dojo has it all.

In Practical Dojo Projects, you’ll learn all about what Dojo has to offer. You’ll see it in action in the form of five fully functional applications, which include

• A contact manager for storing info for all the important people in your life
• A code cabinet: a place to store, index, and get code snippets from
• A stock tracker to keep track of your stock portfolio
• A message forum for open discussions on topics you define
• Even a fun little game!

By the time you’ve finished reading, you’ll have a firm grasp on what Dojo is all about, and you’ll have the preparation you need to begin to use it yourself in your own projects. See you inside!

What you’ll learn

• Uncover the fundamentals of Dojo, its core, Dojo Widgets, and DojoX.
• Build sophisticated JavaScript/Ajax–based applications starting with a Dojo contact manager.
• Create a code cabinet, a place to store snippets of code for later reuse using Dojo and Dojo Offline (based on Google Gears).
• See how to build an interactive and fun came application using Dojo.
• Build a stock watcher application, which allows you to enter ticker symbols and will show you real–time updates using some available web service; show net gain/loss over various time periods (hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/yearly) with various charts and graphs.
• Take Dojo into social networking by building a messaging forums application.

Who is this book for

Web application developers, senior projects leads, and application architects

About the Apress Practical Series

The Practical series from Apress is your best choice for getting the job done, period. From professional to expert, this series lets you apply project–motivated templates (or frameworks) step by step in a very direct, practical, and efficient manner toward current real–world projects that may be sitting on your desk. So whatever your career goal, Apress can be your trusted guide to take you where you want to go on your IT career empowerment path.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #344353 in Books
• Published on: 2008-09-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 500 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781430210665
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Frank W. Zammetti is a web architect specialist for a leading worldwide financial company by day, and a PocketPC and open-source developer by night. He is the founder and chief software architect of Omnytex Technologies, a PocketPC development house.

He has over 12 years of "professional" experience in the IT field, and over 12 more of "amateur" experience. He began his nearly life-long love of computers at age 7 when he became one of four students chosen to take part in the school district's pilot computer program. A year later, he was the only participant left! The first computer Frank owned was a Timex Sinclair 1000 in 1982, on which he wrote a program to look up movie times for all of Long Island (and without the 16k expansion module!). After that, he moved on to a Commodore 64 and spent about 4 years doing nothing but assembly programming (games mostly). He finally got his first IBM-compatible PC in 1987, and began learning the finer points of programming (as they existed at that time!).

Frank has primarily developed web-based applications for about 8 years. Before that, he developed Windows-based client/server applications in a variety of languages. Frank holds numerous certifications including SCJP, MCSD, CNA, i-Net+, A+, CIW, MCP, and numerous BrainBench certifications. He is a contributor to a number of open source projects, including DataVision, Struts, PocketFrog, and Jakarta Commons. In addition, Frank has started two projects: Java Web Parts and The Struts Web Services Enablement Project. He also was one of the founding members of a project that created the first fully functioning Commodore 64 emulator for PocketPC devices (PocketHobbit).

Frank has authored various articles on topics that range from integrating DataVision into web apps, to using Ajax in Struts-based applications. He is currently working on a new application framework specifically geared to creating next-generation web applications.

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Customer Reviews

solid reference with a twist
First, LOL with J.Moore's review, the only other review at the time that I am writing this, because I too was pseudo psycho-profiling the author of this book.

I profile Frank Zammetti as single forty something, too much time on his hands, with such a clear and thorough understanding of Dojo that it almost bores him. Hence the peppering with cultural references which I found quite entertaining. The small tangents in the text are definetly not placed there to cover up a lack of knowledge or to add verbosity (as with many other computer texts that I have read)

But beneath the occasional cultural reference (which are generally well thought-out bits of esoterica) there is a solid book and a solid understanding.

As with the J.Moore review, I too found the content of this book very detailed and clear with comprehensive online examples. You only really need to read the first couple of chapters thoroughly and you are ready to go, with the rest of the book a organized reference and a small source of inspiration.

Highly recommended.

[Note: I received this book free as part of a promotion]

[addendum 13 April 2009]
I have used Dojo for a couple of applications, but have decided against using it further. It does a lot, but seems to have a lot of overhead. I have used the color picker and inline editor, and with the color picker in particular there are many HTTP requests to initialize, so I decided to create a color picker myself from JS which worked a lot better than the DOJO one. Dojo is too heavy for me.

Dojo Proj
Book is a little outdated with the new Dojo version. Still, it is still good as a primer in core and base of Dojo. Not as detailed as Dojo The Definitive Guide - but covers everything well enough.

Good coverage of Dojo, but suffers a little bit from writing.
As a developer who works with Dojo, I am happy that there are finally some books out there that cover the toolkit. This one does a good job of covering the toolkit in depth. Chapters 2 and 3 are remarkable for their coverage of core and dijit. These chapters alone are worth the price of the book.

Where the book goes wrong for me is the authors insistance on peppering the book with, oft irrelevant, pop-culture references. I get the sense that he is a 30-something fan-boy, but that has nothing to do with Dojo.

This is particularly problematic when the pop-culture references extend away from mere examples and are used as clarification for APIs. I'm sure most Dojo developers understand what a Bizarro-world version of something is, but just saying that a function is a reverse of another would suffice.

Apart from me havinig to roll my eyes at the authors failed attempt to inject wit via these references on every single page, the book is solid. I believe it's a good resource to get up to speed with the toolkit. You can go ahead and skip chapter 1.