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Introduction

Dojo provides a holistic approach to engineering modern web applications while remaining progressively modular in which aspects a project may utilize. The Dojo framework scales with the complexity of an application and allows building anything from simple pre-rendered websites all the way up to enterprise-scale single-page web applications, including options for progressive web apps that approach native app experiences across a variety of device types.

Dojo offers a variety of framework components, tooling and a build pipeline that together help address many end-to-end web application development concerns.

Manage complex applications

  • Develop simple, modular components known as widgets that can be assembled in a variety of ways to implement increasingly complex requirements.
  • Connect widgets using reactive state management and data flows, allowing the Dojo framework to efficiently handle rendering updates when application state changes.
  • Make use of centralized, command-oriented data stores for advanced application state management.
  • Allow user navigation within Single-Page Applications (SPA) via declarative routing, with history support.
  • Disable functionality that is still being developed through feature toggle detection - even elide unused modules at build time to help minimize application delivery size. Write applications that adapt to running within a browser or on a server.

Create efficient applications

  • Avoid costly DOM operations and layout thrashing by declaring widget structure through a Virtualized Document Object Model (VDOM).
  • Simplify resource layering and bundling to minimize Time-to-Interactive (TTI) for the subset of an application a user actually needs. The Dojo framework can automatically convert imports to be lazily loaded when modules and their dependencies cross bundle boundaries.

Create global applications

Create adaptable applications

  • Develop progressive web applications (PWA) that support features similar to native device apps such as offline usage, background data syncing and push notifications.
  • Use build-time rendering (BTR) to provide certain pre-rendering benefits of Server-Side Rendered (SSR) apps without the need for hosting on a dynamic web application server. Create truly static websites that work without JavaScript, or use BTR with progressive hydration for an even better application first-load experience. Make use of cutting-edge web technologies such as Web Animations, Intersection Observers and Resize Observers. The Dojo framework provides a consistent application experience for modern features across a variety of user runtime environments.
  • If required, projects with bespoke needs can opt-out of Dojo’s build pipeline in favor of their own solution, and instead only use pieces of the framework that are needed.

Speed up development

  • Bootstrap new projects and perform ongoing builds and validation using a simple command-line interface (CLI), getting developers immediately productive within a type-safe, opinionated build pipeline that favors industry best practices.
  • Quickly scaffold custom widgets that support the same range of features as the core widget suite, including custom themes.