Persevere’s latest release includes new functionality for creating clean, organized application directory structures, complete with a testing framework. Persevere now has an improved set of command-line options including a server generator, which makes it easy to build an application server directory that can be version controlled separately from the Persevere core files.

With their announcement of the Pre last week, Palm has placed their bet that great mobile applications can be built using the same open web technologies that drive the desktop environment today. Web applications that run on modern desktop browsers are constantly pushing the envelope of the types of applications that no longer require a proprietary platform-specific SDK.

As 2008 wraps up, there are a number of announcements and noteworthy items surrounding Dojo, DWR, Persevere, and SitePen services. Dojo was recently updated to version 1.2.3.

I’ve just completed the upgrade of the DojoX FileUploader to make it compatible with Flash Player 10. The FileUploader widget allows for the uploading of more than one file at a time, which is surprisingly still not supported natively by any web browser on the market today.

The JsonRestStore is a Dojo Data store that provides a JSON-based RESTful interface to servers and implements the Dojo Data read, write, notification, and identity APIs. One of the core concepts of a REST architecture is hyperlinking, and this is available in the JsonRestStore through it’s referencing support.

Is it time to bring your team up to speed with Ajax, Open Source, and the real technologies of the web? Or perhaps you want to increase your marketability in a tough economy. Or maybe you’re looking to allocate a small portion of your company budget to continuing education.

I’m excited to announce a new BSD-licensed project created by SitePen and co-sponsored by Adobe: Dojo Extensions for Adobe AIR. This new effort creates a new namespace, dair, making it even easier to create rich desktop apps, such as the Dojo Toolbox, using the Dojo Toolkit and Adobe AIR.

Security in Ajax web applications is of growing importance. While the client-server model is very useful for architecting web applications, the web security is model is not client-server, but rather a client-deputy-server model.

I gave a talk on Dojo Wednesday at ZendCon, and when I walked into the room for the talk, there was some disorder as the conference center staff were taking out the tables to fit more chairs in. Even with the extra space, the room was totally packed, thanks in large part to the amazing Dojo integration work that the Zend team has done.