Friday, December 05, 2008
Posted on Friday, December 05, 2008 9:38:20 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)  Comments [0] | 
Categories: Books | Dojo

I've gotten a few people asking for some good resources for learning Dojo - so here goes. Both of these are good books that our team uses on a daily basis. Although they roughly cover the same ground, the do so in a different manner, which can be helpful when sleuthing around for solutions to some odd problem or another.

Dojo: The Definitive Guide (OReilly)

This was the first book we got on Dojo, and it's a good one. It covers all the basics (ajax requests, dom navigation etc), and more advanced stuff like creating your own widgets, which is where we really found this book useful. They get into the whole widget lifecycle, the default file/folder layout for widgets & templates etc etc. This is stuff that you'd really have to dig for on the Dojo site, so it's much easier if you have the book.

 


Mastering Dojo (Pragmatic Programmer)

I really like all the Pragmatic Programmer books that I've read, and this one is no exception. Like all the books on Dojo, it has the basics, including a clear explanation of dojo.hitch. What sets it apart is that it has some application examples. This is nice because it lets you see how someone actually hooks a whole app together.

 

 


While I'm talking about books, if you are going to be doing any work communicating to your own services, I would also recommend RESTful Web Services - this is a great book that gives you the low down on all that HTTPGoodness you'll need to work through the weirdness you are sure to encounter.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Posted on Wednesday, December 03, 2008 10:25:52 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)  Comments [0] | 
Categories: Books | Dojo

Earlier this year I was asked to do the technical review for a new Wrox Press book on Dojo by Leslie Michael Orchard. This was an interesting foray into the world of publishing and will make me think long and hard before I consider writing a technical book - just the technical review took a lot more time than I'd expected! Anyhow, I got my copies of the book yesterday. 

IMG_3342

It lives up to it's name - it's a concise, and very readable intro to Dojo, and does get into building composite widgets, animations, and some dojox stuff.  You can get a copy over at Amazon.(and no, I don't get a cut on this!)