Hi Robert, I'm Alex Russell, Project Lead for Dojo.
Dojo does *not* require the use of unnamespaced attributes to normal elements. Dojo uses a parser system which normalizes between namespaced elements and attributes, non-namespaced elements and attributes, and any combination thereof, even in non-HTML markup environments (e.g., SVG). Therefore, the following are equivalent in the eyes of the Dojo parser: <div dojoType="Foo" propertyBar="baz" /> and <dojo:foo propertyBar="baz" /> Therefore, if you actually care about validation, you can namespace things to your heart's content. As for fallback, in either case, you're just sending markup. Given that the widget instantiation code (for most widgets) automatically replaces the markup that the widget is built from in the DOM after the page loads, you can add the "degraded" content below your instantiation markup for almost any widget. If you've got FF 1.5, you can see a pretty compelling example of this with our new Chart widget: http://archive.dojotoolkit.org/nightly/tests/widget/test_Chart.html The test page isn't from a build, so it's a bit slow to load. Try it with and without JS enabled to see what I mean. Dojo has been built with validation, degradeability, and ease of development from the ground up. Please feel free to contact me directly with any "does Dojo do X?" kinds of questions you might have. Regards
