OStatic

Dojo, one of the leading open-source libraries and widget sets for JavaScript programming, released its latest version (1.2) yesterday. Dojo, which is developed by the Dojo Foundation and released under both the BSD License and Academic Free License, is officially integrated with a number of Web development frameworks, such as Django and the Zend Framework, and by vendors such as IBM and Sun Microsystems.

Yahoo announced yesterday that it was releasing version 2.6 of its popular Yahoo User Interface (YUI) library, a collection of JavaScript objects and functions for client-side Web programming. YUI, distributed under the BSD license, is similar to such open-source JavaScript libraries as jQuery (see related story), Dojo, and Prototype/Scriptaculous. Note that this release is not the same as YUI 3.0, a preview of which was released earlier this year, and which will not be backward compatible with version 2.x.

jQuery, one of the best-known open-source libraries for JavaScript access and manipulation, was tapped earlier this week as Microsoft's choice for JavaScript library. This means that jQuery will be integrated into Microsoft's Visual Studio developer tools, with additional integration into the ASP.NET Ajax framework. This announcement came on the same day as a similar one from Nokia, which announced that jQuery would be integrated into its Web run-time platform. Announcements were made in a variety of locations, including Rey Blango's blog, and posts by Microsoft programmers Scott Guthrie and Scott Hanelsman. The original author of jQuery, John Resig, wrote a blog post that not only announced the news, but described some of the improvements that will come to jQuery as a result, including additional software testing.

The latest means to create desktop-style Web applications using JavaScript was announced last week, and has created quite a flurry of excitement. Cappuccino, an open-source application framework, was released by the programmers at 280 North, a Web startup that has been using Cappuccino in its own development. Cappuccino, as the FAQ states, is released under the Lesser GNU Public License. This license ensures that while the Cappuccino framework itself will remain open source, applications written using it may be released under any license, without restrictions.

Development of YUI 3.0, the latest version of Yahoo's User Interface toolset and widgets for Web development, is now available as a preview release. YUI has long been a popular choice for client-side Web development, both because of its liberal BSD license, and because of the number of features that the library includes. YUI 3.0, when it is released, will offer a variety of new JavaScript classes and widgets. However, this will come at a price, namely compatibility with YUI 2.x APIs.

John Resig, a member of Mozilla's Firebug development team, announced yesterday that the final version of Firebug 1.2 had been released. Firebug is a debugger for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript that sits within the Firefox Web browser. It has become an essential tool for Web developers, particularly those who use the modern technique known as Ajax ( asynchronous JavaScript and XML ).

JavaScript has become an increasingly important part of the Web application ecosystem. JavaScript is the key to many of the Web's most interesting applications, using the Ajax paradigm ( Asynchronous JavaScript and XML ). This has led to a renaissance in the use of JavaScript, as well as a flurry of libraries aimed at making it easier to use and cross-browser compatible. It was thus with a great deal of excitement that several JavaScript developers announced late last week that a new JavaScript engine, known as Tracemonkey, will be a part of Firefox 3.1 when it is released. The Tracemonkey engine is dramatically faster than the existing JavaScript engine, with some actions running 20 times faster.

Want to learn a new programming language or development framework? Books, magazines, and blogs are excellent -- but a growing number of people are also learning from screencasts, tutorials that combine someone's voice with a video of their computer screen. You can watch the teacher develop in real time, describing the actions that he or she is taking while they take place. There are many screencasts for open-source languages and frameworks, many for free and some for a nominal fee. Screencasts are playing a growing role in my attempt to keep up with new technologies, and you might well find them useful, too.

Prototype makes it easy for developers to work with HTML forms, asynchronous Ajax requests, and create and manipulate HTML elements. However, Prototype is a bare-bones library, providing none of the widgets or special effects that are included in many competing open-source JavaScript libraries, such as Dojo and YUI. It should not come as a surprise, then, to find that developers have stepped in to fill this void, creating a number of libraries that sit on top of Prototype and/or Script.aculo.us. There are several libraries that make it possible to draw graphs and charts within the browser window using JavaScript; this week, Deensoft announced the pending availability of their graphing library for Prototype, known as ProtoChart.

If you're a Web developer, it's a pretty good bet that one of your most important tools is Firebug, an open-source debugger for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Ajax that works inside of the open-source Firefox Web browser. Since it was first unveiled several years ago, Firebug has taken the Web-development world by storm, revolutionizing developers' ability to modify, test, and debug Web applications. In the last month, Firebug has received hosting and development assistance from Mozilla, a change that will almost certainly benefit both the software and the community.