Dojo offers web developers and designers a fine JavaScript tool for developing Ajax applications, and here's a developer's technical guide to Dojo and its growing applications. Chapters come from an expert Web designer and focus on tweaking existing applications and pages using Dojo, adding Ajax features and Dojo's user interface, and showing how to use its components effectively. The result is a powerful tool packed with shortcuts and special methods for handling JavaScript problems, making for a powerful reference recommended for any applications library.

This is a nice intro. It is in three parts and runs a little contrary to the normal flow in a book like this. The first section is a hands on tutorial, the middle section is reference and the last section contains definitions, more of an introduction and information on using capabilities that are not tied to widgets.

There's a sentence in chapter 15 that mentions using widgets later. This makes me think that editors moved around the order of the book - because in most computer books the stuff in the third section would be first.

I personally liked this change. It got me in and running immediately on using some code. I didn't need to work through a bunch of explanation first. The widget documentation is o.k. I guess, though not really necessary. I would have enjoyed more in depth examples and explanations.

I think this book would best serve someone new to javascript and libraries of this type. It gives enough to help a beginner get going and be immediately successful, so that they don't give up. A more experienced developer might be frustrated with the repetition between the sections and the high-level overview on most material.

But for anyone who wants to learn a new technology and doesn't want to get bogged down in a massive volume that covers every single bit of minutiae - this is a good start.

This is a very good introduction to Dojo. If you have not used any other Ajax toolkit, and you want to learn Dojo, then this is the book for you. At the moment, this is the easiest to understand tutorial of Dojo. Unfortunately, it does not tackle DojoX very much, which contains some modules that are very useful, like the Grid. Anyway, the perfect companion to this book, like other Dojo books, is the Book of Dojo, found in Dojo's website.

This is a very good introduction to Dojo. If you have not used any other Ajax toolkit, and you want to learn Dojo, then this is the book for you. Unfortunately, it does not tackle DojoX very much, which contains some modules that are very useful, like the Grid. Anyway, the perfect companion to this book, like other Dojo books, is the Book of Dojo, found in Dojo's website.

The book is a good book on getting you stated in Dojo and the examples are good. The book though seems a bit rushed to market there is errors in the code everywhere I seen typos to just completly wrong code in the book. I would have rated this higher but the errors are a problem if you try and follow the code in the book. My suggestion is you need to download the code from the authors website. Follow that code instead. I have read the other dojo books and they have a simular problem. Dojo is very powerful and there just isn't very many people to review the books for mistakes. If you looking for documentaion on Dojo and you do a lot of server side programming then it is worth buying this book as it was meant for you..

"Dojo: Using the Dojo JavaScript Library to Build Ajax Application" is a book for developers. You should know JavaScript and HTML well before starting. There are three main sections of the book which were so different to the point where I thought I was reading three separate books.

The first part rips apart an HTML form then shows how to use Dojo to improve it. I liked the attention to accessibility along with error handling and validation. Dojo was introduced in pieces through example. Except for a couple overly long examples, such as a full page of the HTML source for the 50 states, this section was good. Things build up slowly and clearly so long as you are willing to suspect disbelief about how Dojo works.

The second part introduces Dojo widgets with a picture, API description and examples. Except for the picture, it seemed very similar to the API. This part of the book didn't add much value for me as I can look at the API and examples online.

The third part gets good again. It goes into the details of how Dojo works and some more advanced concepts. It also goes into history and the problems Dojo solves. It was nice having this later in the book so the beginning could be more substantial. I did like how the author went from high level to low level - both with the three parts and even within part three itself. Some pieces stayed a bit to high level such as the AOP and object discussion chapters.

Overall, I was mixed between the three books. The first and third were good and the second I wouldn't pay for.

This book provides a good introduction to Dojo. It answers these questions:
1. What is Dojo?
2. What can Dojo do for me?
3. How can I start using Dojo right now?

You've probably created at least a few (if not many) web forms to gather input from your users and thought "Shouldn't there be an easier way to (insert your complaint here)?" The author goes through a list of these common gripes and shows how you can tackle each one with Dojo. In the beginning, he highlights a few key areas - such as form widgets, validating fields, and form submission. Once you begin to grasp the power and usefulness of Dojo, he goes through a deeper look into all the widgets (form, layout, and specialized) and the base Dojo libraries (string utilities, AJAX utilities, event handling, etc.)

This book is not a complete reference to all things Dojo, but it does a great job of focusing on the common and most used features to get you started. This approach allows you to wade into the Dojo pool at your own pace rather than diving into the deep end and getting quickly overwhelmed by the total package that Dojo offers.

I was a little disappointed in this book, but before I go on to the reasons let me explain what I am looking for. I am not new to programming, web development, or writing fairly complicated applications with Javascript. I am already fairly familiar with toolkit such as Ext and Dojo before the version jump. I was hoping this book would be a good reference and guide to working with the features of Dojo. I am not as interested in "dojoifying" web pages as I am in creating Javascript applications that heavily integrate with Dojo. This book may be decent for a web developer that wants an introduction to adding Dojo to web pages, but for a software engineer that wants to really get in depth in Dojo this book seems fairly week to me.

The book has 316 pages and is broken down into 3 sections.

Section I is called "Dojo a Tutorial." This walks the reader through a standard web form implemented without Dojo and then the process of switching to Dojo Widgets and simple client/server communication. (63 pages)

Section II is "Dojo Widgets." This section is a decent reference to many widgets including the layout widgets which get their own chapter. It includes HTML Markup Examples and Javascript constructor examples. I really like these, but they usually seem to be very basic. It also has nice pictures of many of the widgets and layouts to help you understand what they are. I like this section, but unfortunately it is limited to the core features of each widget. The examples are pretty bare, and many of the non-essential features are left out. I do see this being one of the more useful parts of the book, but I really wish there was more depth to it. (121 pages)

Section III is "Dojo in Detail."
This contains a lot more of the meat of the book, but everything remains pretty lightweight. Some examples and references are given to the Dojo API and various helper function included in Dojo. There is some talk of JSON, event handling, XMLHttpRequests, and testing. This is all good stuff, but it really lacks depth. Everything just seems to brush against the surface. It still is essential and will help someone get started, but I don't think it will take you very far beyond that. (112 pages)


I have only had this book a few days now. I am really glad that books on Dojo are starting to come out. I haven't yet received any of the other new Dojo books, so I can't compare them. This book is alright for getting started and for a light reference to common features. My big complaint is the lack of depth.

I wish there were more examples and more details of the features and internals of Dojo. A chapters on making your own widgets instead of a 3/4 page mostly irrelevant section would have been nice. More details on customizing and overriding Dojo's CSS to make your application look the way you want it to would have been great. I think Dojo's grid feature deserves a chapter since it is something that so many applications can take advantage of. There are many things of this sort that the book either left out or just lightly touched.

Overall I'm giving this 2 stars. It's alright, but it's not what I need. I don't think this book contains nearly enough depth to help people far along into building Ajax Applications. It is a good intro and a reference to basic features. It can be helpful to a web developer looking to add some Dojo functionality to a site. For the serious user though this book really doesn't have enough content to take you very far into using Dojo.