The three-year-old Dojo Foundation has put out version 1.0 of Dojo, an open source JavaScript toolkit for AJAX development meant for building rich Web 2.0 applications without proprietary plug-ins or single-vendor solutions.

The widgetry makes use of Google Gears, Google's solution for making applications work both on- and offline. What Dojo calls Dojo Offline is based on it.

The toolkit is all of 25K in size and supports progressive enhancement and animations and is supposed to open the door to a wealth of high-quality widgets and extension modules. Dojo also supports the Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera browsers and the OpenAjax Alliance Hub 1.0 to guarantee interoperability with other toolkits

IBM, Sun, BEA and AOL are Dojo backers.

IBM uses Dojo in WebSphere Commerce and its mashup maker, QEDWiki, and says it enabled it to create user interfaces that are internationalized and accessible out of the box, which helps it to deliver projects faster. IBM delivers the Dojo Toolkit in a WebSphere Application Server Feature Pack for Web 2.0 so its customers can build rich Web 2.0-style applications using J2EE.

AOL's Webmail and myAOL personal home pages use it as well as the more constrained environment of the TinyBuddy IM, an AIM- enabled instant messaging web application for the iPhone.

BEA uses the Dojo toolkit in AquaLogic Pages, its business user mashup platform.

Little SitePen offers Dojo development, training and support.

The Dojo Toolkit has three pieces: Dojo Core to fill in functionality missing from today's web browsers and overcome browser quirks; Dijit, a collection of rich user interface controls that are skinnable and have a global reach through accessible technologies and internationalization; and DojoX for native vector graphics, charting, offline mode and Comet support.

Dojo 1.0 includes high-performance grid widgets supporting 100,000+ rows of data; native browser 2-D and 3-D charting; a library of UI controls; universal data access for fast data-driven widget development; internationalization with localizations provided for 13 major languages; and CSS-driven themes to make customization and extension simple.

See http://dojotoolkit.org. The toolkit is available under the commercially friendly BSD and AFL licenses.