Ext

When creating a cross browser RIA, choosing a framework with a plethora of components is where most of us look first. Selecting a framework that enables you the flexibility to enhance and expand its offering becomes very important. Fortunately, Ext JS has all the rich UI functionality that most applications require coupled with a vibrant community creating impressive extensions. Ext’s elegant design allows us to explore our creativity by adding new features to existing widgets.

I’ve had my eyes on Ruby-based ExtJS code-generation tools for a few years now. Back in Ext-1.0 days, I even took a shot at creating a large Rails wrapper framework, mapping Ext UI widgets to plain-old Ruby-objects which could be stored in YAML files and rendered into views. However, with Ext-2.0+ came new ideas which brought many changes to the framework (great new component-model, plugins, xtype, normalized component configuration-objects) and the Rails wrapper framework was rendered immediately obsolete. Until recently, I gave up on auto-generating ExtJS code and concentrated upon writing good Ext plugins and base-classes.

One of the most powerful interaction design patterns available to developers is “Drag and Drop.” We utilize Drag and Drop without really giving it much thought – especially when its done right. Jay Garcia, author of Ext JS in Action, walks you through 5 easy steps to ensure an elegant implementation.

Eaton Corporation is a diversified power management company, with 75,000 employees, that sells products to customers in more than 150 countries. Eaton’s electrical business is a global leader in power distribution, power quality, control and industrial automation products and services. Read how Eaton’s superstars Jonathan Bonzy, Sebastien Volle, and their team implemented an amazing RIA for managing power with Ext JS.

On behalf of the Ext Team, I am pleased to announce the final release of Ext JS 3.0. This release is the culmination of tens of thousands of hours of architecture, development and community feedback. A change log and online documentation can be found on the download page. Together we’ve accomplished a level of excellence to be proud of, but we want to enable you to be even better. We want you to be Outstanding.

The Ext Team is happy to announce the availability of Ext GWT 2.0 available for immediate download. Ext GWT 2.0 is packed full of new components and features, expanding on the Ext GWT 1.0 feature set.

The Ext team is pleased to announce the availability of Ext GWT 2.0 M3. M3 will be the last milestone release. We will be releasing a release candidate before the final release of Ext GWT 2.0. Many thanks to the early adopters in the community that have been using 2.0 and reporting bugs.

We are pleased to announce that the latest release candidate of Ext 3.0 is now publicly available. We are very proud of the stability of this release. We’d like to thank our support team and elite community members who have tested the release candidates. You have assisted in squashing a number of bugs affecting both Ext Core and Ext JS. The time taken to report issues and create test cases is much appreciated.

The Ext Team is happy to announce the availability of Ext GWT 2.0 Milestone 2 available for immediate download. Ext GWT 2.0 M2 is packed full of new components and features, expanding on the Ext GWT 1.0 feature set. Included in this release, are several performance improvements which noticeably improve initial render and layout execution times.

As developers, we spend countless hours researching best practices to build engaging software. Often we find ourselves implementing the same repetitive functionality to wire our frontend to our backend. We’ve become accustomed to partaking in complicated design patterns to help separate logic from presentation, forcing the browser to play the role of a dumb terminal. While the Web 2.0 movement has unshackled the web browser from that awful fate, accessing our server side logic remains mostly unchanged. Ext.Direct aims to solve this issue in Ext JS applications by providing a single communication point with the server-side.

The Ext Team is proud to announce the release of Ext JS 3.0 RC1.1 available for immediate download. This new version of the Ext framework is the culmination of many long hours of dedication by the Ext Team. We appreciate our community of testers and supporters whom have made the stability of this release possible. Ext 3.0 is another leap forward providing increased performance, consistency, flexibility and UI enhancements to make you more productive.

Learning an exciting software framework can be like climbing a mountain – it requires proper equipment, technical skill and determination. To help new and seasoned community members reach the Ext apex, three new books have come to our attention to help guide your path. One publisher (Manning) is offering a 40% discount for all Ext Users until April 1st.

Pixel Bender is an exciting new technology by Adobe which brings video and image processing capabilities to flash. It allows you to create and apply filters to ‘bend’ pixels and create compelling animations which have never been possible in an HTML environment. Because Adobe AIR uses flash to load any HTML content, we can leverage these powerful filters on a standard Ext Application in the AIR environment. Ext is releasing a Pixel Bender Explorer demo which allows you to explore many of the new filters and demonstrates how to integrate them into an Ext AIR Application.

Ext is pleased to announce the 1st Annual Ext Conference and Ext 3.0 Release Party on April 14th through 16th, 2009 in Orlando, Florida! Join Jack and the Core Development Team for an intense 3-day conference exploring all of the new features packed into Ext 3.0, discovering best practices for building applications and connecting with other members of the Ext Community. The conference provides sessions which will be of interest to all parties involved in application development including managers, designers, developers and application architects.

This past week members of the Ext team were sitting in my living room watching TV when we saw CNN report Toys for Tots is in desperate need of toys this year. Toys for Tots is a non-profit organization that works with the United States Marine Corps to gather and distribute toys to needy and underprivileged children during the holidays. Toys for Tots needs double the amount of toys this year.

We are pleased to announce the release of Ext GWT 1.2. This release is packed full of new features and components. Ext GWT 1.2 is a recommended upgrade for all Ext GWT 1.1 users.

In collaboration with Adobe, Ext is releasing several new enhancements to the Ext.air package today. These include improvements to existing classes responsible for Sounds, Windowing and Database as well as new classes responsible for Notification, Clipboard and File System Interaction. We have also added new samples demonstrating how to use these new features. One of these examples is ExtPlayer, a simple MP3 player, that leverages the new Ext.air.MusicPlayer and Ext.air.Notify classes. You can install ExtPlayer or download the source.

We are please to announce that Ext has partnered with CacheFly, a global content network, to provide free CDN hosting for the Ext JS framework. Cachefly’s globally distributed network and aggressive caching accelerate the delivery of web content like JavaScript and CSS, making for an even faster Ext experience.

Selenium provides a powerful mechanism to test your Ext applications. Selenium works by executing tests against your running application within the browser of your choice. Selenium tests emulate the way a user would interact with your application by executing JavaScript to simulate user actions. Selenium tests run as a form of “integration” tests as they execute against your running application.

JackBe, the leading provider of enterprise mashup software, partnered with Ext JS to support the creation of sophisticated mashup widgets. By JackBe leveraging Ext JS, our community now has the added benefit of being “mashup-ready” developers. Much of JackBe’s mashup UI technology is based on Ext JS. As an Ext JS developer, you’ll be right at home developing custom Mashlets using all your Ext JS knowledge.

Retrieve data from Yahoo’s Flickr service to create an engaging an Ext Image Gallery powered by Flickr’s latest images. Flickr is a popular image sharing management tool that allows users to create online photo albums and tag photos. By extending Ext’s native data package we can pull this data directly into Ext’s data Store to drive an Ext Image Gallery component capable of searching and paging through the results.

Creating cross-browser consistent visualizations of data without Adobe’s Flash plugin has always been a difficult issue to address. Google introduced a Visualization API earlier this year which enables you to present tabular data in the form of charts, maps, and other graphical representations without the need for Flash. (Some visualizations actually do use flash, but most are implemented with SVG and/or VML.) Working with different API’s can present hurdles as we attempt to massage the same data in two different data structures – one for a grid and another for a pie chart. To address this specific challenge, I developed …

The Ext GWT Grid component, which was introduced in 1.1, plays an important role in most applications. Because of this, it is important for Grid to perform as fast as possible, especially when rendering large amounts of data. For the upcoming 1.1.1 release we took a fine grained look at the code and were able to lower rendering times significantly.

As Enterprise applications begin moving to the web instead of the desktop many developers may forget about providing key bindings for their applications. Most web applications use the keyboard only for text entry and do not associate particular key combinations with user actions. By providing this type of key handling, particularly for applications which require a lot of data entry, we can improve the end-user experience.

We are pleased to announce the release of Ext GWT 1.1. This release is packed full of new features and components. Ext GWT 1.1 is a recommended upgrade for all Ext GWT 1.0 users.

Come join Jack Slocum and I for two developer focused sessions, “Hands On Ext” and “Advanced CSS and Theming of Ext JS” at The Ajax Experience at the end of this month. Feel free to follow along with your laptop or watch as we build an application and demonstrate how to create a custom theme in each hour long session. The Ajax Experience is a three day conference with many interesting sessions on Ajax, Web 2.0 technologies and JavaScript frameworks targeted at developers. This year’s conference will be held in Boston, MA from September 29th to October 1st.

When Google Chrome was released last week, I was interested in seeing how the Application mode feature worked. I revived an old project to interface with the Google Contacts Data API and built a small application to manage your google contacts which you can ‘install’. The example extends the Ext.data.DataProxy to allow you to populate a store with your contact information to bind to any store driven components such as Grid, EditorGrid, ComboBox and DataView.

Ext GWT 1.1 is right around the corner and incorporates the popular Portal and Web Desktop interface. Both components offer new ways to layout your prospective application in different ways. Web deskop resembles a user operating stystem, while portals offer a means to aggregate seperate modules and content.

Marketo was an early adopter of Ext, and has steadily been expanding and improving their marketing automation application over time. With a new version rolling out that has been converted from the ground up to use Ext 2.0, Marketo is looking better than ever. We spoke with the team to learn more about their app and how they are using Ext.

We are pleased to announce the release of Ext 2.2, a fully backwards-compatible maintenance release of Ext. This is a recommended upgrade for all Ext 2.x users as it not only adds many new components and examples, but also provides a host of important bug fixes and performance improvements.

We love to see all the different types of applications developed using Ext. SingleHop has developed LEAP, a server management application that gives the end user significant power over administering their remote servers via the web. I recently spoke with Dan Ushman, a co-founder of SingleHop, to get the scoop on LEAP and find out more about how they used Ext.

Ext GWT 1.1 development is moving along nicely and includes a new Grid component. Grid is based on the Ext JS Grid and will support the same features including grid plugins, grouping, totaling, and inline editing.

Early last week Yahoo announced they had released a new search API dubbed “BOSS” for “Build your Own Search Service” – wow, snazzy name. So being the explorer that I am, I started to play with it and poke around in the API – hold on! this is just the same search API service they offered up a while ago – what gives?

The Ext GWT Store and Binder API work with ModelData instances. The primary goal of ModelData is to provide a type of “introspection” as GWT does not allow runtime inspection of Java objects. With the new Java Bean support in 1.1, any Java Bean can be sent over the wire, and “converted” to model data instances to be used with stores and binders.

A commonly requested piece of functionality is to load additional data when scrolling to the bottom of a dataset. DZone is a popular technology news site that uses this type of functionality on their home page. As you scroll to the bottom of a page, a loading indicator displays and then loads new content. This is not a feature which Ext provides out of the box, however by leveraging existing Ext components the task becomes simple.

The Ext team is proud to announce that the official release of Ext GWT v1.0 is available for download. This is the first release of Ext GWT which is the culmination of many weeks of development from the Ext development team as well as our community of testers and supporters.

Theres no doubt that Google has some interesting and very useful JavaScript APIs – most of which I end up using over and over again. So why not package them up into an Ext component? Well thats exactly what I decided to do, adding a simple component centered around the Google Maps API.

Shortly after Aptana released Jaxer, a new server-side JavaScript platform, I was able to spend some time running Ext JS code on the server-side. Jaxer facilitates a tightly knit integration between the client and server by allowing you to include JS code that will be run on the server, client, both, or as a server-proxy. The server-proxy allows Jaxer to wrap client and server-side communications up allowing either synchronous or asynchronous calls between the client and server. Jaxer provides a means for file, database or even socket access as one would expect from any server-side platform.

The Wii’s browser is running on a custom built version of Opera 9. ExtJS supports Opera, so everything works the same as it would in a normal PC based web browser. With a complete JavaScript engine, its just as good as the full fledged Opera browser.

Ext JS is pleased to announce the Ext GWT 1.0 beta4 release. This release includes numerous enhancements and bug fixes since the beta3 release and is a recommended upgrade for those using beta 3. For first time users of Ext GWT, the new Help Center includes new articles to get you setup up and running your first Ext GWT application in GWT.

Last week I had the pleasure to sit down with the team at Red Sun Systems to have a demo of VersoChat, their website chat management application. VersoChat is an existing application, but they have recently retooled the user interface from the ground up using Ext 2.0 and are launching the new version this week.

In today’s modern web applications it is typical to include many libraries, widgets and snippets of code from many different sources. You must be mindful that other developers may be interacting with your code simply by both sets of code being included on the same page. It is not a safe assumption that you have the entire global namespace at your disposal.

Yesterday while working on our internal support system I had a desire to organize the fields on a form a little better. I didn’t want to use a FieldSet and add full wrapping or another layer of indention in my form code so I decided to give the standard Panel title config attribute a try.

Ext is pleased to announce the Ext GWT 1.0 beta2 release. This release includes numerous enhancements and bug fixes since the beta1 release and is a recommended upgrade for those using beta 1.

With our recent change to the GPL v3 some concerns have been brought up by the Ext Community. We are hoping to address some of those concerns via community discussion of two new FLOSS exceptions. The first step for us is the Open Source License Exception for Extensions. It is currently in draft status and we are seeking input from the community before we have it finalized.

Ext JS is pleased to announce the latest release of the Ext JS toolkit and the introduction of a new product, Ext GWT 1.0. The Ext JS version has been updated to 2.1 and includes new components, performance improvements, bug fixes and documentation enhancements. Ext GWT 1.0, is a Java library for building rich internet applications with the Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

The team at Spket Studio continues to enhance their Eclipse-based Spket IDE announcing today the release of Spket IDE 1.6.11. Of special interest to Ext developers is the new Ext Theme Builder included in this new Spket release.

One thing we plan to do more often is focus on how Ext is being implemented by real companies doing real business. Jama Software’s flagship product Contour is easily one of the most sophisticated and visually polished Ext applications we’ve seen yet. We decided to find out more about Contour, so we interviewed the team to learn more about their experience using Ext.

ColdExt project lead Justin Carter announced today that he has enabled a new ColdExt Wiki to begin organizing the project’s documentation and tutorials.

Allowing users to manage files remotely is a very common use case providing tremendous flexibility for applications that need to handle various files such as images, word processing documents, or spreadsheets. Ext.ux.FileTreePanel is a widget which can be used within Ext to provide easy file management of a directory structures stored on a server.

We’re frequently asked about online resources that can help developers become more proficient with Ext. There’s a wealth of information provided on the Ext Learning Center section of our website that can be extremely effective in helping Ext developers become more proficient in the framework.

A common question we get asked relates to themes and if the look-and-feel of Ext applications can be enhanced further than the stock themes included in the framework. The answer is a resounding “Yes!”.

One of the key additions in Ext 2.0.2 was Adobe AIR 1.0 support for running in the application sandbox. Also, the Simple Tasks AIR application sample was rewritten to take advantage of more of the native functionality in AIR and gained some cool custom Ext components that can be used outside of AIR.

Coolite Studio is an Ext official suite of ASP.NET Web Controls based on the Ext JavaScript Framework.

I regularly hit technorati, DZone and Google looking for recent Ext JS related blog posts. There’s always quite a bit going on in the blogsphere and we are going to start sharing the interesting ones we find here on the Ext JS Blog. Here are some of the ones I have recently read.

The Ext 2.0 API is very extensive and remembering all of the functions, properties or configs available is virtually impossible. The API documentation is very thorough, but it would be nice if IDEs would provide code assist options in JavaScript as they do in other languages such as Java and C#. Luckily, there are some IDEs and plugins available that do just that — and also have direct support for Ext 2.0.

Ext has been quietly offering services for some time now, basically working towards getting certain pieces in place before formalizing the Ext Professional Services division. Many have probably seen the new link at the top of the site explaining the new services being offered by Ext and now it’s time to officially announce it.

The Ext team is happy to announce the release of version 2.0.1 of Ext JS. This is a maintenance release that fixes several issues with the 2.0 release.

An excellent barometer of a project’s growth and acceptance is the creation of community extensions that compliment the project. It’s demonstrative of how users are embracing Ext and in some cases, need to go past what the core framework provides. It seems that almost on a daily basis, new extensions are contributed by volunteer Ext developers, most of which are of excellent quality and functionality.

Ajaxian.com recently conducted their third annual survey to determine the usage of Ajax/JavaScript libraries. The survey is a great indicator of the market penetration of several well-known (and some not-so-well-known) libraries and frameworks. The exciting news is that the Ext framework, for the first time, was added to the list and in it’s first year demonstrated it’s popularity. Of the 2,619 respondents, 22.5% were using the Ext framework ranking it 3rd overall.

ColdFusion developers are an inquisitive and talented bunch always looking for new ways to extend the language and make it more dynamic and fun. Web developer Brian Love is a great example of this. Brian, who loves the Ext framework, wanted to see how he could ease the usage of the framework within the ColdFusion space while still having all of the great functionality provided by the library.

The Ext team is proud to announce that the official release of Ext v2.0 is available for download. This new version of the Ext framework is the culmination of many long hours of work and dedication by the Ext Core team as well as our community of testers and supporters. Ext 2.0 is a dramatic step forward from all previous versions of Ext, providing increased performance, ease of configurations, flexibility and UI capabilities.

The ability to filter Ext grids is a common use-case and also one of the most frequently discussed topics in the forums. While the Ext.data.Store class includes the capability to filter data, users invariably want to extend past the base functionality and filter data in more advanced ways. One such user is Steve Skrla (AKA: ambience). He’s created the Grid Filter plugin which has quickly become one of the most popular user extensions in the Ext community. I had a chance to interview Steve about his plugin and get a better understanding about it.

The Ext community has done an amazing job at creating some fantastic plugins to the framework which in some cases dramatically enhance existing controls and in many cases, add whole new UI capabilities altogether! We’ll be reviewing several extensions which standout both in functionality and quality.

One of the things that’s great about the Ext community is the innovative ways they make use of the framework. Many of our users are developing applications for the corporate space and that in itself requires a certain level of flexibility in order to integrate with the complex set of technologies associated with running an enterprise-level business.

The Ext Team has been hard at work creating documentation for the 2.0 release. We now have several documents for new and existing Ext users that should come in very handy during the transition to 2.0, including an updated introduction to Ext, an overview of the new Ext 2.0 architecture and a comprehensive migration guide for existing 1.x users.

The Ext team is proud to announce that Ext v2.0 Beta 1 is available for download. This release of the Ext framework features updated portal and desktop examples, documentation updates, and bug fixes.

Adobe recently held a contest called the Adobe AIR Derby, an international competition open to software and web application developers to showcase their skill in using Adobe AIR Beta software. Contestants were able to submit their entries to different application categories and were judged on originality, visual design and appeal, usability, and application of Adobe AIR functionality in the following categories: best business application, best community application, and wild card.

InfoQ.com, an independent online community focused on change and innovation in enterprise software development, recently interviewed Ext founder Jack Slocum about the latest release of Ext, version 2.0 alpha.

Ext developer Yuki Naotori of Tokyo was the first place winner in Sun Microsystems’ Japan Mashup Award 3rd contest. His winning application, ONGMAP.com, is a geo mashup that collects a vast range of information about what is at a given location and makes it easily locatable on a map of the world.
“If you look at ONGMAP.COM, you can easily notice it owes a lot to Ext (and if you look into its source code, you can easily notice that I’m not a professional programmer…, but, I did win the award thanks to Ext’s powerful and easy to use framework)”

The Ext team is proud to announce that the first public release of Ext v2.0 is available for download. This new version of the Ext framework introduces a host of new features, a new document center, expanded & better organized samples and bug fixes. Another important aspect to note is that there has not been a significant library size increase in this new version.

The development of Ext 2.0 continues to move forward with some exceptional new features being rolled into the framework. The team has really focused on enhancing the desktop-like experience that Ext already provides by introducing new functionality, improving performance and keeping the overall file size down.

The Ext team is proud to announce the immediate availability of Ext v1.1 for download. The 1.1 version includes the new stand-alone version of Ext, a lightweight HTML editor, a new Ext.Ajax utility class, enhancements to DateField and DatePicker, expanded documentation and bug fixes.

On of the things updated in Ext 1.1 RC1 was DomQuery, the CSS selector implementation in Ext. There seems to be a trend sweeping through all of the popular JavaScript libraries of implementing or improving existing DOM querying using CSS selectors. In fact, since my original post with querying benchmarks for the various selector implementations, overall selector processing power has gone from Pinto power to a Mustang GT 500.

Ext JS is an excellent framework for building web applications that have desktop like functionality in a web browser. But what if you could take your JavaScript powered application and run on the desktop like any other native application? The launch of Adobe AIR (formerly Apollo) has made this not only a reality, but extremely easy. Armed with early access Ext 2.0, Aptana IDE and a 4 pack of Red Bull  I set out to build my first AIR application.