Pluginweb.Net

Tom Trenka of SitePen has created a new top-level Dojo package called Deft which "focuses on ActionScript components created in support of the various projects within the Dojo Toolkit (mostly for DojoX). Deft source files are well organized based in part on the organization of other Dojo Toolkit projects, as well as the package structure required by the Flex compiler. Most Flex applications are based on the Flex AS3 Application class, which forces you to write at least one “controlling” MXML file in order compile your code. Instead of this, Deft components inherit primarily from the Sprite class — which allows you to write pure ActionScript code."

It contains a few goodies in it including the multi-image uploader, and pre-alpha quality support for dojox.gfx. Future plans include support for audio and video. "Hopefully Adobe will continue its current path towards being open source friendly, helping Deft flourish."

The article goes into detail on downloading the Flex SDK so you can build applications with it.

This is an interesting experiment in the melding of Flash and Ajax techniques. I would love to see the Flash player giving us more access via simple JavaScript, so we don't even need to create SWF bridges.