Dojo 2 beta 5 blog post

site/source/_posts/2018/01/23-Announcing-Dojo-2-beta-5/Announcing-Dojo-2-beta-5.md

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+---
+title: Announcing Dojo 2 beta 5!
+date: 2018-01-23 09:00:00
+authorId: dylan
+featured_image: featured.png
+---
+
+Dojo is a modern, reactive framework authored with ES2017 and TypeScript, and optimized with the needs of enterprise application development in mind.
+
+If you're learning about Dojo 2 for the first time, please read our overview about the [Dojo 2 beta 4 release](https://dojo.io/blog/2017/12/04/Announcing-Dojo-2-beta-4/).
+
+{% asset_img featured.png feature-full %}
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+## Getting beta 5
+
+Beta 5 is currently tagged as `latest` in npm, so simply updating to the latest version will provide you with the Beta 5 release.  We also have a release tag of `beta5` in npm if you want to focus just on using Beta 5.
+
+This will be the final beta release for Dojo 2! As we make releases of packages in anticipation of Release Candidate 1, we will not publish those packages to `latest` until Release Candidate 1 is available.
+
+## Just getting started
+
+If you want to get started with Dojo 2, the best way is to take a look at our [tutorials](/tutorials/) or even take a look at Dojo 2 in action with our [example applications](https://dojo.github.io/examples/) (source on [GitHub](https://github.com/dojo/examples)).  Good starting tutorials are:
+
+* [Dojo 2 local installation](/tutorials/000_local_installation/)
+* [Your first Dojo 2 application](/tutorials/001_static_content/)
+* [Creating widgets](/tutorials/003_creating_widgets/)
+
+## New in beta 5
+
+Since the beta 4 release, we have made a number of improvements. The biggest changes and additions are mentioned here, with a complete list of changes
+
+### Initial re-architecture of the build system
+
+Prior to beta5, the structure of the build commands was focused around the tooling and not around the actual creation of applications. So we completed a re-architecture and restructuring of the commands to align more to their use. Specifically, `@dojo/cli-build-webpack` is deprecated and replaced with:
+
+* [`@dojo/cli-build-app`](https://github.com/dojo/cli-build-app/) A command that builds an application
+* [`@dojo/cli-build-widget`](https://github.com/dojo/cli-build-widget/) A command that build a widget, including support for web components
+* Other commands may be planned for the future
+
+This refactoring is mostly complete for Beta 5, with a few remaining items to complete for release candidate 1.
+
+Usage of the build system is reflected in updates to the [Dojo 2 tutorials](https://dojo.io/tutorials/).
+
+### Improvements to using Custom Elements/Web Components
+
+[Added a decorator for the custom element descriptor](https://github.com/dojo/widget-core/pull/792). There is no longer a requirement for a separate module any more!
+
+### `widget-core` changes
+
+* [Focus meta](https://github.com/dojo/widget-core/pull/808)
+* [Always render decorator](https://github.com/dojo/widget-core/pull/824)
+* [Registry decorator](https://github.com/dojo/widget-core/pull/801)
+
+The primary breaking change in `widget-core` is that [`HNode` was renamed to `VNode`](https://github.com/dojo/widget-core/pull/806)
+
+### New widgets
+
+Two new widgets were added in Beta 5:
+
+* [Progress](https://github.com/dojo/widgets/issues/385) (`@dojo/widgets/progress/Progress`)
+* [Toolbar](https://github.com/dojo/widgets/issues/386) (`@dojo/widgets/toolbar/Toolbar`)
+
+These widgets may be viewed in the [widget showcase](https://dojo.github.io/examples/widget-showcase/).
+
+### Stores
+
+A number of refinements were made since the initial `@dojo/stores` release in Beta 4:
+
+* [Add a basic `onChange` mechanism](https://github.com/dojo/stores/commit/b6165e6fd670874726e67ab166cb888967785d19)
+* Improvements to providing type definitions for [state](https://github.com/dojo/stores/pull/143) and [payload](https://github.com/dojo/stores/pull/152)
+
+See the [@dojo/stores readme](https://github.com/dojo/stores) for more information about this package.
+
+### Updated examples
+
+Our collection of [Dojo 2 examples](http://github.com/dojo/examples/) were updated for beta 5.
+
+In particular, the [kitchen sink version of ToDoMVC](https://github.com/dojo/examples/blob/master/todo-mvc-kitchensink) now uses `@dojo/stores`.
+
+Also the [Dojo 2 HNPWA](https://dojo-2-hnpwa-d668d.firebaseapp.com/) example was accepted and is now available.
+
+### ESM packages
+
+Dojo packages now ship ES modules alongside UMD! In the future we will be leveraging ESM for evergreen browser builds with webpack.
+
+### Theme creation
+
+A new [`cli-create-theme`](https://github.com/dojo/cli-create-theme) package has been added to make it easier to create a custom theme.
+
+### Migrate to TypeScript 2.6
+
+[TypeScript 2.6](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/typescript/2017/10/31/announcing-typescript-2-6/) was released and introduced a number of significant improvements to the language, in particular the strictness of certain types of typings. These changes helped us further refine the type definitions and find a few bugs along the way. Dojo 2 beta 5 ships all of its packages leveraging TypeScript 2.6, and all packages conform to `strict` type mode.
+
+## What's next?
+
+We are nearly there for the initial 2.0 release. For RC1 in just a few weeks, you can look forward to:
+
+*  More end developer tooling improvements
+	* `dojo/cli-build-app` Finish re-architecture of the build system
+	* `dojo/cli-build-widget` Focused build process for Dojo 2 widgets as web components
+* `dojo/themes` A new package for Dojo 2 themes
+* `dojo/widget-core` Finish DOM abstraction
+* `dojo/widgets` Standardize widget events
+* Additional theme to provide Dojo 1 flat theme style interoperability
+
+At the moment, we are planning for RC1 in early February.
+
+We are also working on additional features post Dojo 2.0:
+
+* Development and diagnostic tools
+* `dojo/dgrid` Powerful data grid widget
+
+
+## Getting involved
+
+If you want to get involved, you can see an overview of the parts of Dojo 2 at [dojo/meta](https://github.com/dojo/meta).  In all of our repositories we use the labels [`good first issue`](https://github.com/dojo/meta/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22) and [`help wanted`](https://github.com/dojo/meta/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22help+wanted%22) to help guide you on a good place to get started.