Ext JS Tutorial

Today’s JavaScript landscape consists of dozens if not hundreds of frameworks. Some of them serve as tiny additions to your Web page – they  implement just a certain design pattern. For example, if you need to implement declarative binding of your HTML elements and data models, use knockout.js. If you just want to check if certain HTML5 features are supported by the user’s Web browser add a small modernizr.js to your Web page.

But there are feature-complete frameworks that you can use a foundation of your entire Web application. Such framework include rich library of UI components, support MVC paradigm, offer their own layout managers, styling, effects, and may even have server side components. One of such large and multi-featured frameworks is Ext JS from Sencha.

It’s being used by many IT shops developing enterprise Web applications. In our company we also use Ext JS in some Web applications. We’ve also  added Ext JS code generation to our open source tool Clear Data Builder – it’s a useful tool for creating CRUD applications having Ext JS on the client side talk to Java on the server. We’ve also developed our own Ext JS training curriculum and teach it as two or three day workshop by request.

My colleague Victor has recorded a one hour screencast that can serve as a brief introduction to Ext JS. This presentation has been a part of our fifth annual symposium on enterprise software development. Enjoy the presentation!

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Who Moved my Web to Mobile?

In our company it became a tradition to run an annual symposium on software development in New York City. This is a technical event with zero marketing, where our engineers are given an opportunity to share their experience gained while develping real-world applications. This year we’ll focus on the Web applications developed with HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and Java. I’ll be making two presentations there.

1. Advanced Introduction to JavaScript

“Advanced Introduction” means that we’ll start from scratch, but the complexity of the materials will rapidly increase, and by the end of the talk you’ll start respecting JavaScript a lot. The thing is that some software developers have an impression that JavaScript is a second-league interpreted language with the main purpose of making Web pages a little prettier. The reality is different though. JavaScript is a powerful, flexible, dynamically typed language that supports object-oriented programming. JavaScript functions are the first class citizen that can live their own lives as opposed to Java’s methods. HTML5 becomes a new buzzword, but 80% of development time on such projects is spent writing JavaScript code.

2. Who Moved My Web to Mobile

IMHO, this topic becomes important and practical for many software developers, team leads, and managers. Sooner or later the budget will be approved, and you won’t be able to postpone the migration of your Web site or application to mobile devices any further. How to start moving your tried and true JSP/Struts Web site to this wild new world of mobile devices? Is it possible to develop one Web site that looks good on desktops, tablets, on smartfones? Should you go with HTML5 or native mobile applications? What about Adobe AIR? In this presentation we’ll discuss pros and cons of various approaches. You’ll also see the comparison of two JavaScript mobile frameworks: JQuery Mobile and Sencha Touch.
Although it may sound immodest of me to say so (what’s new?), this presentation is the most efficient way of getting a hang of all these topicsin a short period of time.

Hope to see you there.

Yakov

Starting blogging on JavaScript and Ext JS

Our company, Farata Systems, started publishing a series of technical blogs on JavaScript and Ext JS framework at http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/. Since Farata Systems is not affiliated with Sencha, these materials will highlight both good and bad things (if any). Trust me on that.

I’ve started writing my blog on comparing JavaScript with more traditional (read O-O, strongly-typed, compiled, Java, ActionScript3) languages.

If you’re interested to jump start your Ext JS project, consider attending our hands-on 2-day workshop in New York City on April 19-20.

To get $100 off the enrollment fees, enter yakov as your promo code.