SitePen, Mozilla Foundation, Nexaweb Technologies, Redfin, & SnapLogic Announce Open Source Contribution of TurboAjax Group's High-Performance Grid Widget to Dojo Foundation

Market Wire, September, 2007

The open source Dojo Toolkit is receiving a new grid widget thanks to the generous support and collaboration of the Dojo Community. The Dojo Grid is a key component for Ajax and web application developers because it is able to 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.

"We couldn't be more thrilled about moving TurboGrid to the Dojo Foundation. This is a unique opportunity where a collection of companies have come together to open source a quality component that is the key to building data-rich applications," said Scott Miles of the TurboAjax Group.

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."

"Mozilla and the Dojo Foundation share a commitment to advancing the Open Web," said Mike Shaver, chief evangelist at the Mozilla Corporation. "We're glad for the opportunity to join with other contributors to ensure that there are great tools for building accessible, robust applications for the web."

"Redfin had been looking for a grid widget that worked with Dojo for the new version of our real estate web application," said Sasha Aickin, engineering manager, Redfin. "The opportunity to contribute to an effort and share development risk across the community is a key benefit of building our application with open source technology including the Dojo Toolkit."

"This new Grid, coupled with the underlying dojo.data AJAX infrastructure enables an entirely new class of Rich Information Applications," said Chris Marino, CEO of SnapLogic. "Our users are looking for ways to build applications on top of their SnapLogic data services that can more easily access and present their data, and Dojo 1.0 is a giant step forward."

"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."

The Dojo Grid will be available in October.

About the Contributors

SitePen, Inc., based in Silicon Valley, focuses on building rich, internet applications that push the limits of the web. Its rockstar development team works obsessively to define the user experience while developing clean, functional applications for companies throughout the consumer, enterprise, and open source spaces. Online at sitepen.com.

Mozilla is a global community dedicated to building free, open source products and technologies that improve the online experience for people everywhere. We work in the open with a highly disciplined, transparent and cooperative development process, under the umbrella of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. As a wholly owned subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation organizes the development and marketing of Mozilla products. This unique structure has enabled Mozilla to financially support and cultivate competitive, viable community innovation. For more information, visit www.mozilla.com .

Nexaweb's Enterprise Web 2.0 Platform is an application development and deployment solution that increases developer productivity by eliminating painful coding, improves IT efficiency through the re-use of legacy and SOA assets, and creates a more agile business by delivering secure, mission-critical applications over the Web. And only Nexaweb's EW2.0 Platform is proven by more than 5,000 successful global deployments. Founded in February 2000 and rooted in the MIT community, Nexaweb is based in Burlington, Massachusetts. The company is privately held and funded by institutional investors. For more information, visit www.nexaweb.com or call (781) 345-5500.