Practical Dojo Projects (Expert's Voice in Web Development) [Paperback]

Frank Zammetti (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1430210664 | ISBN-13: 978-1430210665 | Publication Date: September 24, 2008 | Edition: 1

Practical Dojo Projects by Frank Zammetti examines one of today’s most popular open source lightweight Ajax Web Frameworks, Dojo.

Written by a JavaScript/Ajax industry expert who has delivered many Web applications for his clients, Frank takes a no-nonsense, down to earth and hands-on approach to using Dojo, illustrating the types of practical applications/projects Dojo can create from the ground up.

The reader can take the sample applications created in this book and use these as templates for their own real world applications in practice.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Frank W. Zammetti is a web architect specialist for a leading worldwide financial company by day, and a PocketPC and open-source developer by night. He is the founder and chief software architect of Omnytex Technologies, a PocketPC development house.

He has over 12 years of "professional" experience in the IT field, and over 12 more of "amateur" experience. He began his nearly life-long love of computers at age 7 when he became one of four students chosen to take part in the school district’s pilot computer program. A year later, he was the only participant left! The first computer Frank owned was a Timex Sinclair 1000 in 1982, on which he wrote a program to look up movie times for all of Long Island (and without the 16k expansion module!). After that, he moved on to a Commodore 64 and spent about 4 years doing nothing but assembly programming (games mostly). He finally got his first IBM-compatible PC in 1987, and began learning the finer points of programming (as they existed at that time!).

Frank has primarily developed web-based applications for about 8 years. Before that, he developed Windows-based client/server applications in a variety of languages. Frank holds numerous certifications including SCJP, MCSD, CNA, i-Net+, A+, CIW, MCP, and numerous BrainBench certifications. He is a contributor to a number of open source projects, including DataVision, Struts, PocketFrog, and Jakarta Commons. In addition, Frank has started two projects: Java Web Parts and The Struts Web Services Enablement Project. He also was one of the founding members of a project that created the first fully functioning Commodore 64 emulator for PocketPC devices (PocketHobbit).

Frank has authored various articles on topics that range from integrating DataVision into web apps, to using Ajax in Struts-based applications. He is currently working on a new application framework specifically geared to creating next-generation web applications.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (September 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430210664
• ISBN-13: 978-1430210665
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #380,195 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good coverage of Dojo, but suffers a little bit from writing., October 16, 2008

By 

J. Moore "hierophant" (Garden of Earthly Delights) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Practical Dojo Projects (Expert's Voice in Web Development) (Paperback)

As a developer who works with Dojo, I am happy that there are finally some books out there that cover the toolkit. This one does a good job of covering the toolkit in depth. Chapters 2 and 3 are remarkable for their coverage of core and dijit. These chapters alone are worth the price of the book.

Where the book goes wrong for me is the authors insistance on peppering the book with, oft irrelevant, pop-culture references. I get the sense that he is a 30-something fan-boy, but that has nothing to do with Dojo.

This is particularly problematic when the pop-culture references extend away from mere examples and are used as clarification for APIs. I'm sure most Dojo developers understand what a Bizarro-world version of something is, but just saying that a function is a reverse of another would suffice.

Apart from me havinig to roll my eyes at the authors failed attempt to inject wit via these references on every single page, the book is solid. I believe it's a good resource to get up to speed with the toolkit. You can go ahead and skip chapter 1.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dojo Proj, May 3, 2009

By 

Timothy P. Tocci "weyou.us" (Prattsville, NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Practical Dojo Projects (Expert's Voice in Web Development) (Paperback)

Book is a little outdated with the new Dojo version. Still, it is still good as a primer in core and base of Dojo. Not as detailed as Dojo The Definitive Guide - but covers everything well enough.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars solid reference with a twist, November 18, 2008

By 

Marten K "Marten K" (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Practical Dojo Projects (Expert's Voice in Web Development) (Paperback)

First, LOL with J.Moore's review, the only other review at the time that I am writing this, because I too was pseudo psycho-profiling the author of this book.

I profile Frank Zammetti as single forty something, too much time on his hands, with such a clear and thorough understanding of Dojo that it almost bores him. Hence the peppering with cultural references which I found quite entertaining. The small tangents in the text are definetly not placed there to cover up a lack of knowledge or to add verbosity (as with many other computer texts that I have read)

But beneath the occasional cultural reference (which are generally well thought-out bits of esoterica) there is a solid book and a solid understanding.

As with the J.Moore review, I too found the content of this book very detailed and clear with comprehensive online examples. You only really need to read the first couple of chapters thoroughly and you are ready to go, with the rest of the book a organized reference and a small source of inspiration.

Highly recommended.

[Note: I received this book free as part of a promotion]

[addendum 13 April 2009]
I have used Dojo for a couple of applications, but have decided against using it further. It does a lot, but seems to have a lot of overhead. I have used the color picker and inline editor, and with the color picker in particular there are many HTTP requests to initialize, so I decided to create a color picker myself from JS which worked a lot better than the DOJO one. Dojo is too heavy for me.