For example, Dojo abstracts the differences among diverse browsers to provide APIs that will work on all of them (it can even run on the server under Node.js); it establishes a framework for defining modules of code and managing their interdependencies; it provides build tools for optimizing JavaScript and CSS, generating documentation, and unit testing; it supports internationalization, localization, and accessibility; and it provides a rich suite of commonly needed utility classes and user-interface widgets.

[citation needed] The Dojo Toolkit is organized in several parts: Dojo widgets are components — comprising JavaScript code, HTML markup, and CSS style declarations — that provide multi-browser (not to be confused with cross-browser), interactive features: One important feature of Ajax applications is asynchronous communication of the browser with the server: information is exchanged and the page's presentation is updated without a need for reloading the whole page.

Dojo provides an abstracted wrapper (dojo.xhr) around various web browsers' implementations of XMLHttpRequest, and dojo.io also supports other transports (such as hidden IFrames) and a variety of data formats.

After initialization of the root namespace, any Dojo package can be loaded (via XMLHttpRequest or other similar transport) by using utility functions supplied in the bootstrap.

Dojo Storage allows web applications to store data on the client-side, persistently and securely and with a user's permission.

When included in a web page, Dojo Storage determines the best method for persistently storing information.

Addressing these problems was the major goal of Dojo 1.7, which introduced asynchronous module definition (AMD) and a "nano" loader.

Recognizing this, the developers made huge improvements in the documentation for the 1.8 release, including new tutorials, an API browser, filling in the missing pieces, and updating most examples to AMD style.

Since these predate AMD support and its accompanying reorganization, examples in these books almost invariably rely on things that are now deprecated and no longer best practice.

[18][19] Dojo co-creator Dylan Schiemann acknowledges this as a consequence of their different scopes: "It's certainly easier to learn something that's smaller than something that does more, but our avid users are quick to point out that a bit more learning up front saves them countless hours for things that Dojo makes easy.