As web applications continue to grow more advanced and more heavily rely on JavaScript, there has been a growing movement towards using modules to organize code and dependencies. Modules give us a way to make clearly distinguished components and interfaces that can easily be loaded and connected to dependencies.

After many months of work, Dojo 1.8 Beta is almost here. We expect beta to be ready for use on June 22, 2012, with the final 1.8 release due 4-6 weeks later! We’re very excited about this release for many reasons.

The mobile device revolution has placed new demands on web applications. Mobile devices generally have lower bandwidth and lower CPU capacity, forcing us to avoid large complex code.

You’ve likely read that the new dgrid can be as small as 32KB gzipped when including just its minimal dependencies. However, if you use the standard settings for the Dojo Web Builder or a standard Dojo build profile, you end up with a build that’s closer to 100KB gzipped.

“Small businesses embody the spirit of innovation and they are the lifeblood of our economy,” says David Chavern, U.S. Chamber executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Dylan wrapped up his 2012 Dojo tour last week, presenting twice at IBM Impact 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada. If you attended IBM Impact 2012 and missed Dylan’s talks, or didn’t attend IBM Impact and want to see what was presented we’ve posted the slides of the talks: Star Search: Dojo 2 and HTML 5 Beyond Dojo: The Rise of Asynchronous Module Definition (AMD) – with James Thomas A big thank you to IBM for having us speak at Impact 2012 and to James Thomas for sharing the stage on the Beyond Dojo talk.

The new dgrid is a powerful, but lightweight grid component. It is specifically built to be easily styled with CSS, rather than relying on programmatic properties and changes.

Over the last few weeks, Dylan has given talks across the western United States and Europe and we’ve tracked his every move on our blog. Dylan will finish his trip with stops in Tempe, AZ and Las Vegas, Nevada.

Continuing on his road trip, Dylan presented AMD in Depth at the London Ajax User Group meeting on April 10th.   Over 80 optimistic and energetic developers attended the engaging presentation. Want to learn more about AMD?  Check out the presentation on our SlideShare page.