The open source Dojo Toolkit is receiving a new grid widget thanks to the support and collaboration of the Dojo Community. The Dojo Grid is a key component for AJAX and Web application developers as it can handle large amounts of information efficiently and intuitively. The companies in this relationship are making a financial and/or engineering contribution to improve and update the grid in time for the Dojo 1.0 release in October.

“We determined that Dojo needed a new grid widget and rather than starting from scratch, we approached the TurboAjax Group about making its feature-rich grid open source and part of the Dojo Toolkit,” said Dylan Schiemann, CEO of SitePen, Inc. “This grid benefits SitePen’s clients and is a great way to advance the Open Web.”

TurboGrid is a high-performance grid widget that was originally created to work with the 0.4 version of the Dojo Toolkit. The grid is being updated to work with the latest Dojo features and will now be an official part of the Dojo Toolkit.

The Dojo Grid Widget features integration with Dojo’s flexible dojo.data infrastructure, which allows multiple widgets and visualization components to efficiently access large volumes of data. The donated grid supports advanced features such as virtual scrolling, row and column locking, complex cell and row formatting and custom cell editors. The Dojo Grid will also include full accessibility and internationalization support.

“We’re both users of the Dojo Toolkit and supporters of the Dojo Foundation. TurboGrid is a great opportunity for the community to work together in moving Dojo to the next level,” said Coach Wei, CTO and founder of Nexaweb. “Being a strong supporter as well as adopter of open source and open standards, Nexaweb is pleased to contribute to this effort in making AJAX development more efficient, structured, and maintainable for the Web 2.0 community."

“This is excellent code and an amazing show of generosity from the organizations who made it happen,” said Alex Russell, president of the Dojo Foundation. “This is the most capable open source Web-based grid component available anywhere, and it will form the backbone of applications for years to come. We couldn’t be happier that this donation is happening in time to include the Grid in Dojo’s upcoming 1.0 release.”