IMO building apps on JS frameworks like DoJo can lead a to bulky user interface. The more object and widgets create the more you will realize interface performance problems. If you decide to use it just for the splitter then chances are it might just work out fine. The only problem is that you might also have to include a few other dependencies.
The beauty part of Dojo is that they have more than one distribution. You can basically pick the distro that has just the select modules and widgets you need in order to keep the filesize and memory load down. Again, the idea is to use Dojo for the functionality that is currently being implemented with Scriptaculous and then some. We can realistically replace the Scriptaculous implementation of the top menu with the Dojo "tabs" widget and utilize the Dojo tree menu to replace the current document tree. We’ll still have the Scriptaculous and Prototype libraries in there; they just won’t be used for manager functionality.
The best analogy someone gave regarding the comparison of Dojo and other libraries dealt with cars. While Scriptaculous might be like a Porsche...lean, clean and fast....Dojo is more like a Hummer, a semi-heavy weight library for implementing interface functionality that Scriptaculous and other libraries simply don’t have.
Once I get a proof-of-concept demo up, we’ll see how well Dojo loads up. If it loads pretty fast on a remote server then we’ll clearly have a winner for a library to use to drive all the functionality of the manager without the use of frames. We really need this...badly!
Jeff Whitfield
"I like my coffee hot and strong, like I like my women, hot and strong... with a spoon in them."
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MODX Staff
- 12,272 Posts
My gut says that a "Dojo lite" using just the components we need could easily perform multiple times faster than the current frames based manager, and work in almost all modern browsers equally well (not just FF or not just IE... including Safari even!).
Once the initial big download is done, you get the benefits of the library being cached, too.
Go, Jeff, Go!
Ryan Thrash, MODX Co-Founder
Follow me on Twitter at @rthrash or catch my occasional unofficial thoughts at thrash.me
