ExtJS update and others ... amenities

Having accidentally looked at the ExtJS website, I was surprised to see that the version of this wonderful library was updated, moreover, the much-anticipated announcement of the next, 3 version appeared. But first things first. The current release of ExtJS has been updated to version 2.2.1. This, on the one hand, is a rather minor change, not even a sub-version, but if you take a closer look, you will find quite interesting things. Full list of changes here .



Added a new class of components for working with data - Ext.sql, which is provided by two components. SQLiteStore provides an extension to the standard Ext.data.Store for working with data stored in the database on the client side (and the Google Gears plugin can do this too, and the Google Chrome browser itself, and the latest versions of the WebKit engine, as well as the Adobe AIR platform ). The second component is Proxy, which extends Ext.DataProxy and provides interaction with the SQLite database. Together, these components allow you to fully work with local storage using a standard data access interface. Previously, this was only the prerogative of AIR, but now the inclusion of these packages in the standard library means, I am not afraid to say, the beginning of a new stage in client-side web development. But you can recall that not so long ago, another flagship of AJAX / RIA projects, Apatana Inc, announced a component for AJAX applications that implements the ActiveRecord.js database operation pattern (and it immediately has competitors, so we will wait for a full-fledged ORM, which, however, is already there , so as not to say Hibernate on the client side, but I already foreseen such a development in one of the previous notes of last year).

A lot of changes and additions to the package work with the platform Adobe AIR. In my opinion, this perfectly shows the unrealized potential and the fact that an active rethinking of its role and analysis of what can / should be created for it are taking place now. Definitely, this is a big plus, but for ExtJS it’s just a huge plus - I repeat all the time that this library can reach its full potential only in conjunction with AIR, and the most interesting things are still ahead. And so, components for creating applications (App), working with the clipboard (Clipboard), debugging, the ability to download data for a tree component from the file system (FileTreeLoader), a music player and a video panel, which were discussed earlier, are added to the standard distribution package, as well as my favorite and useful component is the Notify. By the way, I found just such a component for ExtJS itself - Ext.us.MessageWindow . The thing is very useful, especially for large applications, now I regret that I did not find it before, a long time ago, on the first project I fell in love with Dojo Widget for it (there was no Dijit at that time), since there was such a component.

Otherwise, there are no special changes - multiple documentation updates that affected almost all components, as well as a large number of optimizations and bug fixes, fixed many memory leaks, which should positively affect complex and large projects. From the little things - support for the new Google Chrome and IE8 browsers (this is mainly expressed in the correct detection of the environment where the script is running). Judging by the list of changes, a lot of bugs were really fixed and optimization was added, the code is gradually improving, so I can only advise updating your project, especially if you plan to migrate it to the AIR platform in the future, but even if not, your users should notice improvements now.

This is for updates. The second interesting news was the announcement of April 14 - 16Ext Conference 2009, where they promise to tell us about the new version of ExtJS 3.0, the Ext-GWT 2.0 library and announce the new development, Ext Core 1.0. Here is the last most interesting - if before there were a lot of exclamations that ExtJS is very heavy and not suitable for sites (although in reality, if done correctly, it works great). Now the main core will be allocated to a lightweight library (under a good license, a MIT license, which is also very important), and can be used where the visual, interface component of ExtJS is not so important, but I want to use the other features. In essence, this is the development of Ext.Core, and the provision of basic AJAX functionality, work with events, DOM functions, and if the ability to automatically load additional classes is implemented,

The announcement of version 3.0 (in all likelihood of a release, or at least RC) was mentioned very briefly - new components like Ext.Direct, a built-in library for drawing graphs and charts using Flash, as well as the extension of layouts and, what is most interesting to me personally, the development of features communication with the server side (talk, and Comet will add). Previously a preview version was shown , which leaves a very positive impression, I think the release will not disappoint.

The event promises to be very interesting if someone goes with readers - please tell us about your impressions, bring photos, I promise to interview you and prepare the material!