The latest release of Dojo, among the most popular JavaScript libraries, is now available via direct download, and also on the Google and AOL content-distribution networks.
The Dojo 1.3 release notes highlight compliance with the latest IE and WebKit-based browsers:
The focus of 1.3 was Internet Explorer 8 and WebKit (Chrome, Safari) compatibility and general performance, though the overall scope of Dojo invariably states a slew of new widgets, functions and API cleanups have landed, and are available now on two quality content distribution networks out of the box.
In addition, Dojo 1.3 includes many API enhancements, ostensibly with the goal of providing calls into faster internal implementation. Examples are API calls into simple document manipulation:
New base DOM API's we've put in place to make simple tasks even easier: dojo.create, dojo.destroy, dojo.empty, as well as added magic to dojo.place...
These new functions are super fast convenience API's and should allow you to write incredibly concise code. We were able to eliminate lines upon lines of code internally by switching to the new APIs, and we're not even 100% complete auditing DojoX.
In the same vein, Dojo's new selector engine also offers performance improvements:
Dojo now has a new selector engine, Acme, which offers considerable speed improvements to an already-fast dojo.query...
To summarize: AST-like inspection of queries to always find the fast-path, before even starting. The Sizzle engine from John Resig is also available as a build-time option and works transparently as the underlying selector engine for dojo.query...
Not only is dojo.query faster than ever, that which you get back from a query (a dojo.NodeList) has been similarly quickened. [The new API calls] provided a series of developer API's to map base "single-node" functions directly into NodeList. The _adapatAs* series of functions are hot, and should make advanced plugin-making even easier and eliminate a lot of code duplication.
In addition, Dojo 1.3 has much improved developer documentation:
The Uxebu folks have generated a client-side API parser and viewer covering Dojo, Dijit, and Dojox (and even your own code, provided you follow our syntax). The output from the internal doc parser (powered by the inline documentation) is available from the 1.3.0 download section as well, though is just pure XML.
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