I spent the day implementing the Dojo Fisheye AJAX component for a demo website our team is working on. I’ve heard that Dojo is a heavyweight component, and it was no lie. I count 17 different .js files that are loaded just to get the Fisheye effect. Nevertheless, the effect is nice and is more feature-rich than some of the other fisheye toolsets I found out there.

One big problem (almost a deal-breaker) cropped up: The Dojo Fisheye components would not display in front of the Google Maps DIV on the page in Internet Explorer 7. I’ve seen that there are various z-index problems with IE, and Google Maps is a little arcane when it comes to what’s going on under the covers with the markers, overlays, etc., but no matter what I tried I couldn’t get it to work. In the end I attached the icons to the top edge of the DIV below the map, so they bubbled “below”, but it wasn’t optimal.