The following new features were added at version 2.5
The Identity Manager widget streamlines access to secured services. The pre-2.5 recommended workflows were to do one of the following:
dojo.require("esri.IdentityManager");
The KMLLayer class now supports more features of network links, extended data, time aware KML files and the outSR option now supports well-known text spatial references.
A new widget for managing map extents. Bookmarks can be created on the fly by an application or they can be created from a array of JavaScript objects when an app loads. Two new samples show each use case:
The look and feel of the popup has been improved so that popups have a smaller footprint on the map:
Popus also have two new events: onMaximize and onResize that fire when a popup's maximize or restore button is clicked. The idea being
an application could insert or remove content depending on the current size of the popup. Finally, popups are automatically attached
to the map making this line of code no longer necessary:
dojo.place(popup.domNode, map.root);
Cross Origin Resource Sharing is a specification that outlines how browsers can do cross domain requests which are normally not allowed due to the same origin policy. Version 2.5 of the ArcGIS API for JavaScript supports CORS via an array of server URLs specified in esri.config.defaults.io.corsEnabledServers. To successfully use CORS, web servers must also be configured to support it. enable-cors.org is a fantastic resource for enabling CORS.
Version 2.5 brings some general API changes:
dojo.connect(map, 'onLoad', function() { dojo.connect(dijit.byId('map'), 'resize', map, map.resize); });
Bug fixes for 2.5 include:
Version 2.5 of the ArcGIS API for JavaScript uses Dojo 1.6.1.