Yahoo Answers (p.472) is not working in FF posted by David Chang @ Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:18:55 -0000

David Chang — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:18:55 -0000

I got it working in IE7 but not in FF (2.0.0.16). FF reports an error: rootNode.getElementsByTagName is not a function.

Anybody out there got the same result? Any explanation of this?

Thanks!

Chapter 1: example form elements not aligned correctly posted by Craig Riecke @ Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:09:55 -0000

Craig Riecke — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:09:55 -0000

Actually, that’s my bad. I should’ve made all the INPUT boxes as dijit.form.TextBox elements. That’ll fix the alignment and make the boxes the same color/style as the dijit.form.ValidatingTextBoxes. Plus, you can change the Tundra theme to something else without having to hack another CSS.

wish list grid sample on page 54 has problems with IE7 posted by Cole Wen @ Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:29:09 -0000

Cole Wen — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:29:09 -0000

This sample works fine on FF3, but when switch to IE7, every cell of the first row is filled with a question mark.
When I set isDebug true, IE7 get a “[Error: Object expected ]” information in the firebuglite console.

Page 267, FilteringSElect example is wrong posted by David Chang @ Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:38:46 -0000

David Chang — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:38:46 -0000

I did experiments. The searchAttr should be “substance”; otherwise, dojo would keep comparing user input with “docno” field.

In my experiments, I notice that Dojo auto use “docno” field as the value for form submission.

Can anybody out there confirm?

Thanks.

Chapter 1: Toaser example displays differently for IE and FF posted by David Chang @ Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:53:55 -0000

David Chang — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 15:53:55 -0000

Hello,

I tested the Toaster example on page 61: xhr_techniques/ratings_xml_with_toaster.html

The message in the Toaster display is different in IE and FF, which puzzles me.

My understanding is that Dojo does the cross-browser handling and the display should be the same.

Is this correct?

Regards,
David

Chapter 1: example form elements not aligned correctly posted by David Chang @ Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:23:20 -0000

David Chang — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 16:23:20 -0000

Roman,

That is very helpful!!! I did what you suggested and it works.

However, this brings me another concern. This tundra theme, coming out-of-box, is supposed
to be used and tested by a large audience and should be well-engineered. Shouldn’t they
already see this issue? tundra.css is kind of a system file. The change you and I made will have no
bad effect for other situations? What do you think?

Thanks a million!!!

David

Browser Application Framework posted by Roman Heinrich @ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:42:55 -0000

Roman Heinrich — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:42:55 -0000

Hello Rawld,

maybe you could take a look at Appcelerator , they have tight backend coupling to most popular languages: java, php, ruby, python. The concepts seem to be very similar:
- declarative GUI (they have an html-parser) ,
- lightweight messaging without complications (aka dojo pub/subscribe)

Just for inspiration, if you don’t like, never mind!
Cheers,
Roman

Browser Application Framework posted by Rawld Gill @ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:01:11 -0000

Rawld Gill — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 18:01:11 -0000

Hi Roman,

Cool suggestion. I agree your code is better!

One of the bigger problems we had writing the book was keeping the server completely out of the discussion. This was hard because often the client doesn’t really make any sense without the context of a server (particularly when you’re talking about RIAs). Still, we wanted to be server agnostic, not assume any prior knowledge of some server/backside framework, and, above all, not digress into teaching about servers.

These are the main reasons the server code is absolutely minimal, not optimized, even…naive.

Look for a more complete RIA stack to be published (open source) from Vista Information Technologies (www.vista-info-tech.com)—later this summer. We’re prototyping Ruby and Lisp frameworks for the back end…and think we just might have something pretty cool.

Best,
Rawld
rgill@vista-info-tech.com

Browser Application Framework posted by Roman Heinrich @ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:04:19 -0000

Roman Heinrich — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:04:19 -0000

Hi Gill, very nice book, it feels so thought through and advanced, really pragmatic and useful stuff ;)
May I suggest a small improvement for bar & server-mapping-webrick-script:


require 'webrick'
require 'uri'

include WEBrick

# 
dojo_root = "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/dojoroot" 
book_code = "/Applications/MAMP/htdocs/dojobook" 
step = 5 # step of application

server= HTTPServer.new(:Port=>8002, :DocumentRoot=>"#{book_code}/baf/step#{step}")
server.mount("/dojoroot", HTTPServlet::FileHandler, dojo_root, {:FancyIndexing=>true})
server.mount("/dojoroot/baf", HTTPServlet::FileHandler, "#{book_code}/baf/step#{step}/baf", {:FancyIndexing=>true})
server.mount("/dojoroot/obe", HTTPServlet::FileHandler, "#{book_code}/baf/step#{step}/obe", {:FancyIndexing=>true})
puts "mounting 'dojoroot' to #{dojo_root}" 

['TERM', 'INT'].each do |signal|
  trap(signal){server.shutdown}
end

server.start

Seems a bit DRYer to me ;)

Chapter 1: example form elements not aligned correctly posted by Roman Heinrich @ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:09:56 -0000

Roman Heinrich — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:09:56 -0000

Hi David, that was the first thing, that bothered me! The solution is simple: adjust the css style!

tundra.css, lines 234:
.tundra .dijitInputField INPUT, .tundra .dijitTextBox, .tundra .dijitComboBox, .tundra .dijitSpinner { /*0.1 intendation is awkward, removed!*/ margin: 0em 0.0em; }
Hope, this helps! ;)

Chapter 1: example form elements not aligned correctly posted by David Chang @ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:16:31 -0000

David Chang — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:16:31 -0000

More info:

The interesting thing is: If I removed dojo css and js in <header>, the form elements are aligned just right.

Chapter 1: example form elements not aligned correctly posted by David Chang @ Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:59:00 -0000

David Chang — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 12:59:00 -0000

I am not sure everyone saw it.

The Chapater 1 example, advanced_forms_made_easy/finished_form.html, have a few form elements.

However, “Middle Initial” is moved one pixel left and “Date of Move to this Address” is moved one pixel right compared to other elements in the same tab. It looks ugly. It happens in both IE and FF. Can somebody explain why?

I am using a local Dojo (1.1.1) set up as the book suggests. I am using IE7.0 and FF2.0. My web server is IIS. I am using WinXp.

Thanks!

Getting Started - Setting dojoroot posted by Rawld Gill @ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:22:45 -0000

Rawld Gill — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 04:22:45 -0000

Hi Bob,

I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to when you say “The Dojo Getting Started page” (though I’m pretty sure you’re not referring to anything in the book). Give me an address and maybe I can give you some more help with whatever it says.

In any event, we wrote all the examples assuming that dojo and the example code (html, css, js) exist on the same server (no cross-domain issues). dojoroot points to the directory that holds the dojo, dijit, dojox, and util directories contained in a release package distributed at http://download.dojotoolkit.org/.

Note that this implies: you cannot run the demos without a web server because you need to alias dojoroot to its actual location (in your case “C:\IntecDev\tomcat\webapps\dojo-1.1.1”). Since XHR isn’t really designed to work with the file:/// protocol and demonstrating/experimenting with several concepts is fairly artificial with file:///, we chose to write the book assuming a web server is being used. I’d have to debug your “dojo not defined” error, but I suspect it is a file:/// protocol issue.

I super-simple way to get this up is to use a Ruby WEBrick server. Here is the code for the configuration you outlined above:


require 'webrick'
require 'uri'

include WEBrick

server= HTTPServer.new(:Port=>8002, :DocumentRoot=>"C:/IntecDev/tomcat/webapps/dojo-1.1.1/RGdojo")
server.mount("/dojoroot", HTTPServlet::FileHandler, "C:/IntecDev/tomcat/webapps/dojo-1.1.1")

['TERM', 'INT'].each do |signal|
  trap(signal){server.shutdown}
end

server.start

Save this in a file, say dojoserver.rb, and then execute “ruby dojoserver.rb” from the command prompt. Notice that this is set up to hit port 8002. So the url would be (e.g.) http://localhost:8002/advanced_forms_made_easy/hello_dojo_world.html

WEBrick is included in Ruby. It looks like you’re on Windows—you can get ruby quite easily at http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/29263/ruby186-26.exe.

Finally, note that the RIA example at the end of the book uses a different server for each step. The WEBrick servers are included in the code. See my post at http://forums.pragprog.com/forums/58/topics/453

Feel free to ping me at “rgill@vista-info-tech.com” for more help.

Getting Started - Setting dojoroot posted by Bob Furber @ Thu, 17 Jul 2008 05:14:06 -0000

Bob Furber — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 05:14:06 -0000

I am stuck at chapter 2 of Mastering Dojo because I am missing something that must be so obvious to everyone but me: How to set dojoroot.

The Dojo Getting Started page suggests accessing the dojo resources directly from AOL’s Content Distribution Network (CDN). This means that one must somehow assign the CDN’s URL to dojoroot, or do massive editing of all paths containing dojoroot to replace each occurrence by CDN’s URL.

Can this be done? How? Where?

In the meantime, I have placed the dojo files in C:\IntecDev\tomcat\webapps\dojo-1.1.1 on my PC. For instance, the path to the digit folder is C:\IntecDev\tomcat\webapps\dojo-1.1.1\dijit

Demo applications are in the C:\IntecDev\tomcat\webapps\dojo-1.1.1\RGdojo\ folder. For instance the path to hello_dojo_world.html is C:\IntecDev\tomcat\webapps\dojo-1.1.1\RGdojo\advanced_forms_made_easy\hello_dojo_world.html.

In order to run the demos directly from the files, either I have to massively edit the paths to the dojo resources (did not work) or, I have to somehow assign a value to dojoroot of (\..\..\..\dojo-1.1.1). But, how do I do this? Where?

Out of desperation, I attempted a different file structure, as suggested in http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/index.php/Courses/CS_491ab/Winter_2008/Dong_Liu. I placed a dojoroot directory in the advanced_forms_made_easy/ directory and placed the dojo files in it, such that the path to the digit folder was advanced_forms_made_easy/dojoroot/digit/.

Alas, the demos in advanced_forms_made_easy would not load correctly because of a (dojo is not defined) error in dojo.require(dojo.parser) ..quotes omitted.

Attempts to serve the demos with Tomcat resulted in:
HTTP Status 500 – No Context configured to process this request.

Moreover, there is still the issue of setting dojoroot.

I am totally lost. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Browser Application Framework posted by Rawld Gill @ Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:53:28 -0000

Rawld Gill — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:53:28 -0000

Hi Joakim,

The code download for the baf demo includes a little toy WEBrick server to get all the urls resolving correctly. Each step includes a different server. So, for example, the server for Step 1 is at code/baf/step1/server/baf.rb. Here is the interesting stuff in the file…

server= HTTPServer.new(:Port=>8002, :DocumentRoot=>‘C:/dev/dojo-book/code/baf/step1’)
server.mount(”/dojoroot”, HTTPServlet::FileHandler, “C:/dev/dojo/dojo-release-1.1.0-src”)
server.mount(”/dojoroot/baf”, HTTPServlet::FileHandler, “C:/dev/dojo-book/code/baf/step1/baf”)
server.mount(”/dojoroot/obe”, HTTPServlet::FileHandler, “C:/dev/dojo-book/code/baf/step1/obe”)

This server necessarily assumes that required directories exist at prescribed locations. These are as follows:

1.The “code” directory in the download should be a child of “C:/dev/dojo-book/”

2. Dojo should be installed at “C:/dev/dojo/dojo-release-1.1.0-src” (so, this directory will contain the dojo, dijit, dojox, and util directories and dojo.js will exist at “C:\dev\dojo\dojo-release-1.1.1-src\dojo\dojo.js”).

Of course you can change these around by editing the baf.rb servers.

With this in place you can start the server for Step 1 by typing “ruby C:\dev\dojo-book\code\baf\step1\server\baf.rb”. This assumes ruby has been installed (I noticed you were using IE7, so assuming you’re on windows, you can get ruby quite easily at http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/29263/ruby186-26.exe).

Here are the urls for each step:
1. http://localhost:8002/obe/main.htm
2. http://localhost:8002/obe/main.htm?test=run001
3. http://localhost:8002/obe/main.htm?test=run001
4. http://localhost:8002/obe/main.htm?test=run001
5. http://localhost:8002/obe/main.htm?test=run002

Notice that the first step has no testing ability; Steps 2-4 use test “run001”; Step 5 uses test “run002”.

Don’t forget the servers are different for each step (and you must stop one server before starting another):

1. C:\dev\dojo-book\code\baf\step1\server\baf.rb
2. C:\dev\dojo-book\code\baf\step2\server\baf.rb
3. C:\dev\dojo-book\code\baf\step3\server\baf.rb
4. C:\dev\dojo-book\code\baf\step4\server\baf.rb
5. C:\dev\dojo-book\code\baf\step5\server\baf.rb

I hope this helps. I’ll get this into a readme as you suggested.

It is important to me that you’re successful with this. Feel free to ping me at “rgill@vista-info-tech.com”.

Finally, thanks so much for the nice compliment. It’s appreciated.

Browser Application Framework posted by Joakim Marner @ Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:30:10 -0000

Joakim Marner — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:30:10 -0000

5) should read: 5) Added line to main.htm: script type=”text/javascript” src=”main.js” (replace “[” with ”<” and “]” with ”>”).

Browser Application Framework posted by Joakim Marner @ Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:26:30 -0000

Joakim Marner — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:26:30 -0000

Let me first say that this is the most inspiring software book I have bought in while!

That out of the way, I have little trouble getting some of the demos to run. Call me old-fashioned, but perhaps a readme could be included?

I was able to run the following files after some tinkering: *masteringDojo\baf\step1\obe\ main.htm to run:
1) Downloaded the sample code from http://www.pragprog.com/titles/rgdojo/source_code
2) Got version 1.1.1 of Dojo and saved on my server. (I first tried with my version 1.02, but got errors).
3) Made an ISS mapping dojoroot to the directory where I saved version 1.1.1 of Dojo.
4) Updated main.htm:
@import ”/obe/obe.css”; -> @import “obe.css”;
5) Added line to main.htm:

This made the page load with the different colored areas.

I have not been able to get the next step pages to run. For example, for *masteringDojo\baf\step2\obe\ main.htm

I get the following error:

Line 21 commandItems is null or not an object (IE7)

Firebug on FF2.0 stops on line 22 “data: args.commandItems” in main.js
This object
appcontainer undefined
args undefined

Browser Application Framework posted by Rawld Gill @ Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:38:51 -0000

Rawld Gill — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:38:51 -0000

The RIA code in the download should be correct and complete. I rechecked it last week in IE7, FF2, and Safari3 and it worked fine. There was a mixup in the code download for a while (it wasn’t being updated from the book repository), but that should be fixed now. Let me know if anybody’s having problems with the current download.

www.vistainfotech.com should be www.vista-info-tech.com. However, Vista’s been operating in stealth mode a bit longer than expected (mostly because of the time required to write this book!) The web site should be up in about a week with more of the RIA framework to follow. It will be open source with access to the SVN repository. Also, there will be some cool server-side stuff to go with it.

Thanks for your interest. Rest assured, I’ll keep on this!

Browser Application Framework posted by Antony Gravett @ Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:45:54 -0000

Antony Gravett — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 23:45:54 -0000

Also, the framework is licensed from “Vista Information Technologies, Inc.” for which the URL is given as

http://www.vistainfotech.com

on page 480. This site doesn’t seem to bear any resemblance to a site that might have built a BAF.

Grid Model posted by Pep Baquero Carretero @ Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:48:30 -0000

Pep Baquero Carretero — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:48:30 -0000

has Somebody tested http://media.pragprog.com/titles/rgdojo/code/xhr_techniques/wish_list_grid.html?

Mastering Dojo Book Review posted by Pete Otaqui @ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:09:30 -0000

Pete Otaqui — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:09:30 -0000

I’ve posted a brief review of Mastering Dojo (and a couple of alternatives!) if anyone’s interested.

I might add that I thought the book was excellent.

downloadable code version# posted by Dylan Tynan @ Sun, 22 Jun 2008 16:24:19 -0000

Dylan Tynan — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 16:24:19 -0000

Quick suggestion for the future – it would be nice if the download code page had some reference to which version (or some date marker) of code the downloadable file contained. Either the filename itself or on the download page, so it’s obvious if it’s been updated.

Thanks!
Dylan Tynan

DojoX Wire posted by Dylan Tynan @ Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:51:23 -0000

Dylan Tynan — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:51:23 -0000

There’s very very little documentation on dojox.wires (literally, it’s still mainly the Powerpoint and a couple of IBM posts, and the source). I’d like to see a few pages about it —in an electronic addendum, a next book revision, a downloadable PDF, whatever. In particular, a couple of more complex examples so one could get a better idea of the benefits vs. just the usual connect stuff. Also, I’d like to know if there’s any significant performance hit .. and, any limitations - for example, it’s got a couple of widget adapters … perhaps a couple of examples showing how to use it with “some other widget” (like something in dojox that’s not grid/tree/table). Anyway, random thoughts there….

It would also be nice to see a discussion about more of the Stores ~~- particularly the JSONPath stuff. Not to mention a couple of pages showing how one might connect up a “Refresh” button to a store (for a grid or a dropdown, etc.) -~~- that’s a common request I’ve noticed.

Well I could go on, but then that’d be another book I guess :)

Thanks,
Dylan Tynan

Dojo css posted by Michael Jaekel @ Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:15:36 -0000

Michael Jaekel — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:15:36 -0000

Hi Craig …
just before I wil buy this book: is it based on version 1.0 or 1.1?

Thanks
Michael

Colgroups with programmatic Grid posted by Pete Otaqui @ Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:18:47 -0000

Pete Otaqui — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:18:47 -0000

I guess it’s a bit late, but it took me a little bit of work to find out how to get the equivalent colgroup / noscroll functionality with a programmatically created Dojox.Grid.

The structure needs to look something like this:
structure = [ { cells:[ [ {name:'Flavor',field:'flavor',width:'10em'} ] ], noscroll:true }, { cells:[ [ {name:'Base Flavor',field:'baseFlavor'}, {name:'Calories',field:'calories'}, {name:'Fat',field:'fat'}, ] ] }, ]

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