Category Archives: ExtJs
Book Review: ExtJS 4 First Look
Are you an experienced ExtJS developer currently using version 3.x but looking to migrate your application to version 4.x? ExtJS 4 First Look will be an excellent place for you to start.
ExtJS4 First Look is an excellent book for the right audience, and I hope those people choose to read this book. I will probably recommend this book to a lot of Sencha developers! Continue reading
Sencha SDK Tools – JSBuilder
I’ve been working onsite with a client for the past few weeks, and I was recently asked to implement a minification tool for our JavaScript files. Naturally, I turned to Sencha for the answer… although I hadn’t actually used the SDK tools before.
I’m detailing my experience using the Sencha SDK tools on Mac OSX for posterity – because inevitably I’m going to need to re-reference this. Hopefully it helps someone else, as the documentation for the SDK tools is (currently) a bit sparse. Continue reading
Code Reviews: Why Your Code Sucks
Over the past few years I’ve been asked to perform Code Reviews on many web applications, often projects utilizing ExtJS or Sencha Touch.
I always enjoy peeking into the thought process behind an application because you never know when you’re going to learn something useful. As someone who takes an immense amount of pride in my profession, I strongly believe that education should never stop because someone will always do something better than you. At the very least, reading someone else’s code will trigger ideas of your own.
That being said, code reviews are sometimes fun… but more often frustrating. Continue reading
Event-Driven Architecture
Events are the glue that binds web applications together. Users click on one thing, expecting that something else will happen. This cause/effect relationship is the key to understanding how to structure an advanced web application built on ExtJS or Sencha … Continue reading
Sencha Chicago User Group
A long, long time ago I tried to get an ExtJS group started in the Chicago area. We had one meeting, but due to a lack of support the group never really got moving. I have recently decided to get … Continue reading
Sencha Touch Demo: Forum Browser
I’ve had some extra time over the last week, so I decided it was time to learn a bit more about Sencha Touch. All I needed to do was find a small project…
One of my favorite examples from the ExtJS demo collection is the forum browser, and it occurred to me that I haven’t seen this implemented using Sencha Touch. How hard could it be?
As it turns out… not that hard. Continue reading
Building CSS Sprites with Compass/SASS
I’ll be honest and admit that I never really thought much about CSS tools like SASS and LESS until the recent 2010 Sencha Conference. At the conference, we learned that Sencha Touch (and the upcoming 4.x release of ExtJS) use … Continue reading
SenchaCon 2010 – Day 1
Wow. I’ve been here at the Sencha Conference 2010 for less than a day now, and there’s little more to say other than that. As one of the few (200-ish) developers who went to the conference last year, I have … Continue reading
JavaScript Singletons: Object Literals vs. Closures
I have been a big fan of JavaScript singletons for some time now, and I frequently use them in large web applications. Their benefit is fairly straightforward: since only one instance of the object is needed, singletons provide a quick and clean way to define and organize data.
Object literals are one of the most convenient constructs in JavaScript. They allow us to immediately format an anonymous object and assign its attributes and methods.
Closures are a bit more mysterious – or at least many JavaScript developers aren’t acutely aware of them. In essence, closures are a closed environment containing methods and properties that are inaccessible to namespaces outside the scope of the object. Continue reading
My First Sencha Touch App
So I’m a few months late to this party, but I finally started playing with Sencha Touch!
My first project is a simple mobile version of my website – it’s not finished and the contact form doesn’t work, but I managed to get something that actually “works”. I suppose it’s nothing to be proud of, but it has been a good excuse to use Sencha Touch. Continue reading
