Dojo: The Definitive Guide

Dialog Widgets

Dijit offers two related widgets that provide dialog functionality: Dialog, which is similar to the kind of interaction you normally have with something like an ordinary alert box (only a whole lot more aesthetically pleasing and flexible), and TooltipDialog, which is much like an ordinary tooltip except that it can render other widgets and provide for more interaction that an ordinary Tooltip.

Dialog

The Dialog dijit is conceptually like a pop up that sets up a translucent underlay below it. While it is visible, you cannot respond to anything below it, making it ideal for situations in which you need to temporarily prevent access to controls on a page or force the user to acknowledge or respond to an alert.

But in addition to the obvious uses, you might also use a Dialog for almost any situation in which the alternative would be to pop up a new window. From an implementation standpoint, using a Dialog is often easier than interacting with a separate window because everything that is contained in the Dialog is part of the current page's DOM.^[25] You can query it and otherwise manipulate it like anything else on the page—even if it's currently not visible.

A Dialog may contain any DOM content you'd like to place in it, whether it is a simple HTML snippet, a complex layout dijit, or a custom widget of your own. Example 15-2 illustrates the most basic usage of a Dialog ; in this case, it is automatically displayed on page load.

Warning

As noted in the previous chapter, you ...