Sitepen has announced the release of Dojo 1.0 (not RC).  It’s a major new platform for us to work with and features some incredible new capabilities.

• ccessibility including keyboard navigation, low vision support, and ARIA markup for assistive technologies
• High performance grid widget supporting 100,000+ rows of data
• Browser-native 2-D and 3-D charting
• A full library of easy-to-use, attractive UI controls
• Universal data access for simple and fast data-driven widget development
• Internationalization with localizations provided for 13 major languages
• CSS-driven themes to make customization and extension simple
• Dojo Offline, based on Google Gears, which makes offline applications easy to build
• Support for the OpenAjax Alliance Hub 1.0 to guarantee interoperability with other toolkits
• Native 2-D and 3-D vector graphics drawing
• Access to many more widgets and extensions through the Dojo package system

 http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2007/11/05/announcing-dojo-10/

I may be looking in the wrong place.  But I haven’t been able to find any dimension & spatial capabilities in either Dojo 1.0 or the Spry framework.  If anyone knows how to determine xy positions of page elements using either of these toolkits, please leave your comments below.

I try not to get too excited about Beta & RC releases around here, but Dojo 1.0 RC 1 is a big deal.

Many, groundbreaking changes have gone into the Dojo .9 & 1.0 release cycle ranging from complete reorganization of the toolkit & major performance increases to innovative new ways to approach AJAX programming itself.

It’s still an RC and not fully ready for prime time, but I plan on taking it out for a spin.

http://dojotoolkit.org/2007/11/02/dojo-1-0-release-candidate-1 

Dojo Grid has landed in the DojoX trunk for Dojo’s 1.0 release scheduled for the 31st of this month.

I’m eagerly anticipating Dojo 1.0.  It’s been a long time coming, but this is shaping up to be an excellent and capable release.

Read More on the SitePen Release

Dojo has a acquired a Grid Widget for the 0.9 release and it was definitely worth the wait. The existing TurboAjax Grid widget has been added to the dijits lineup.

• General Features
  • Browser support matching Dojo 1.0: IE6/7, Firefox 2/3, and Safari 3 on Windows, Safari 3 and Firefox 2/3 on Mac, and Firefox 2/3 on Linux. Opera support will follow.
  • Subgrids, nested grids, and tree grids
  • In-place editing
  • Context menus and tooltips specific to a particular row or column
  • Data sorting through sort functions or custom sort filter functions
  • Cell formatters for separation of data from layout
  • Documentation and unit tests
• Dijit Features
  • Standard Dijit with markup and declarative instantiation
  • Data binding between data columns and grid columns, and dojo.data provider support
  • il8n and a11y
  • Grid events for easy manipulation and event handling for event-driven application development
  • Keyboard support, including cell selection
  • Theme infrastructure with structured CSS in dijit.css and tundra.css
• Rows, Columns, formatting, and more
  • Virtual scrolling: 100,000+ rows without performance lags
  • User sizable columns
  • Complex rows of various widths and heights, just like HTML tables
  • Cells, rows, and columns may be patterned based on pattern or state
  • Fixed position columns
  • Column dimensions specified in a variety of CSS units, not just pixels
  • dojo.connect calls to selectively show/hide portions of rows
  • Optional auto-sizing to fill content or a container node
  • Auto-adjust dimensions in response to user-controlled font-size adjustments
  • Variable row height
  • Selection by row and multirows
  • Column layout may be changed on the fly by users and code
  • Resizing of the grid on the fly by users and code

Dijit has long been lacking a powerful and robust table widget. This release fills one of the largest remaining gaps in the dojo feature set.

For More information you can read the SitePen release here:
http://www.sitepen.com/blog/2007/09/16/the-dojo-grid/

Here are 5 open source WYSIWYG editors you might consider for your upcoming development projects. Rich Text Editors are one of the workhorses of modern web applications. Providing simplified wysiwyg formating of content for forms, RTEs have become a favorite among users.

Tiny MCE

Tiny MCE stands out as the most popular of the modern editors. The high flexibility, simplified theming and extreme ease of use the editor provides are highly regarded and well praised. Some key features:

• Microsoft Word Cleanup Filter
• Ability to fine tune available buttons
• Ability to restrict html to certain css styles
• Excellent Media import tools
• Simple API for custom features
• Skinable

Xinha

A venerable successor to HTMLArea, Xinha combines flexibility with a slick interface. Although once relegated primarily to the Zope / Plone universe. Xinha has lately emerged as a powerful stand alone editor. Many developers prefer its media & css tools to those of Tiny MCE

• Microsoft Word Cleanup Filter
• Highly Configurable
• Ability to restrict html to certain css styles
• Powerful Media import tools
• Skinable

FCK Editor

Although still popular, FCK editor doesn’t compete as well against the top tier wysiwyg editors as it once did. The interface seems clunky, especially compared to Xinha or Tiny MCE. And there’s always the issue of the name, I’ve had it shot down from a project spec because of it. The software is included here out of completeness and the fact that it is still widely used and adopted.

• Extensive capabilities
• Established & heavily deployed

Dojo Editor Widget

The Dojo Editor Widget is an integral part of the Dojo Ajax Toolkit. It is included here because of the compelling features that make it unique. Chief among these features is the ability to share one toolbar across multiple editor instances. It is this ability to provide a traditional application toolbar feel when multiple editors are in use that sets the Dojo Editor apart and inspired me to include it here today.

• Skinable
• Shared Toolbar Support
• Powerful API

YUI Rich Text Editor

Finally, an editor that works in Safari. Built on the YUI toolkit, the beta form of the Yahoo Rich Text Editor was designed from the ground up to work in Safari. By coding for Safari first and then modifying the code to create something that worked in Opera, Firefox & Internet Explorer. Dav Glass created a cross platform editor that surpasses every other editor in this list for browser support. The other unique feature of the YUI editor is web 2.0 / Mashup support and integration. By integrating a unique Flickr photo picker & useful insert link tools the YUI RTE has emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the WYSIWYG world.

• Flickr Photo Picker
• Link Picker Tools
• Powerful API
• Skinable
• Safari Support