Ext

There are so many framework choices available today and while many are of excellent quality, for many companies, the decision to go with a specific piece of software comes down to the quality of support and services that they are offered. Knowing that they can get help from someone in case of an issue or receive qualified training is of utmost importance since it helps in decreasing maintenance costs, minimizing developer downtime (due to learning a new framework), and supplementing their staff with expert professional services.

Introducing Ext Services

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 framework provides the tools for developers to create Rich Internet Applications using standards-based technologies and at Ext JS, we want to ensure that our clients can become immediately successful. Our Professional Services team caters to this need by providing consulting and training services to assist our clients in fully leveraging the benefits of the Ext framework.

Training - Get a Head Start

Being one of the most feature-rich frameworks is definitely an advantage for Ext. The team has given thought to so many use-cases and has incorporated functionality that is commonly used by developers on a daily basis. With such an expansive feature-set and API, it definitely takes some time to get familiar with the ins-and-outs of the framework and having a little help certainly goes a long way. That’s why we introduced the Ext Training Curriculum.

Ext provided a flexible training schedule and focused on our specific areas of interest. Coupled with their top-notch instructors, we were able to become effective immediately.

~ Kevin Hoyt
Adobe

We provide a high-impact on-site course which dives straight into the meat of Ext without all of the rudimentary fluff that’s common in other courses. The courses are typically catered towards the specific needs of our clients to ensure they get the most out of the class. Cookie-cutter curriculum certainly has it’s place but we want to offer a personalized training experience and focus on the things important to our clients.

An intangible benefit is that every course is taught be an actual Ext Core Team member. That’s right. These are the same developers that manage and update the Ext framework on a daily basis. This allows us to maintain good quality control for our courses and reassures our clients that they are are being mentored by a true Ext expert.

Consulting - A helping hand

One of the areas of explosive growth for Ext has been our consulting services. Invariably, there will be times when a client will need a helping hand to get a tough project completed or supplement their staff with a mentor or team that can ensure their project is a success.

EXT-JS is a technology partner who understands our design goals and then delivers innovative technical solutions.

~ Jordan Ellington, President
TransPerfect Deal Interactive

As the developers of the Ext framework, we’re in the unique position of having the most comprehensive knowledge of the Ext framework and the capability to fully customize it to suit a client’s unique business needs. Our projects have spanned several areas including:

• Full application development
• Custom control creation
• Code reviews
• Mentoring and guidance

and in many cases are usually accompanied with training courses to better help our clients be self-sufficient. In fact, one of the newest additions to our training and consulting offerings is the Ext Jumpstart Program. This program provides for 2 days of training followed by 1 day of on-site consulting and mentoring to help our clients get up to speed quickly. On the 3rd day, a Ext Core Team member will work with the client to help build their foundation, develop layouts, understand how to tie things together and, in many cases, develop a working prototype within a couple of hours. This new program has become immensely popular.

Ext Services = Ext Growth

The introduction of our services practice is an extremely important moment for Ext JS. The ability to offer clients services past a simple license or forum support helps to distinguish Ext as a framework which can be leveraged in critical business applications. Many companies want and need to have a certain level of commitment in order to move forward with a technology and we’re providing them with the level of reassurance that we can assist them every step of the way.

To learn more about our services or if you’re interested in scheduling a training session or in need of a mentor, please contact us at services@extjs.com.

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. Some notable issues that have been addressed include:

• Fixed various overflow/scroll issues related to form fields and grid
• Workaround included for the Firefox 2.0/Mac overflow:auto invisible scrollbar bug
• Fixed several issues related to destroying form elements
• Multiple GridView and GroupingView fixes
• Various other minor bug fixes and documentation updates

For complete details on what’s changed, please have a look at the 2.0.1 release notes. We encourage all Ext 2.0 users to upgrade to 2.0.1 at your earliest convenience.

An excellent barometer of a project’s growth and acceptance is the creation of community extensions that complement 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.

Server-Side Initiatives

Ext is a client-side framework and is focused at providing a strong foundation for client-side developers. More and more, though, we’re seeing demand from the server-side crowd to offer some form of support from within application server technologies such as ColdFusion, .Net, and Java. Another step forward in the community involvement model is when developers begin to offer integration capabilities for a framework into their own server-side environment. This is something that has really taken off and we’ve seen a number of server-side projects spring up to tackle this demand.

ColdFusion

With Ext v1.0 built into the Adobe ColdFusion 8 application server and powering most of the Ajax-enabled controls, it was obvious that sooner or later, CF developers were going to want to see how they could extend the built-in capabilities of these controls. Being Ext-driven, many developers soon realized that it was just a matter of looking at the Ext API documentation and leveraging the full capabilities of the Ext framework. Unfortunately, ColdFusion included Ext v1.0 which is substantially less feature-rich than Ext v2.0 and with no method of upgrading ColdFusion to the newest release, some very innovative developers took matters into their own hands and created extensions that provide a path to Ext v2.0. Following are three ColdFusion frameworks that have started the work of wrapping Ext into a server-side framework usable by all ColdFusion developers:

• Ext.CFC - Created by Brian Love, this was the first notable component that tried to provide server-side integration with Ext. We posted about Brian’s work on the Ext blog in early December.
• cfExt - Dan Vega was next in line, coming up with a component class that would provide access to the Ext 2.0 windowing capabilities. Several iterations later and after a ton of community feedback, Dan released cfExt which has received a tremendous amount of positive feedback and support within the ColdFusion community.
• ColdExt - The most recent addition, ColdExt by Justin Carter, takes a different approach using a tag-based implementation to expose the Ext API to ColdFusion developers. This is actually a great way of doing things since ColdFusion’s language, CFML, is mark-up based and the use of a tag library should make it very intuitive for CF developers to use ColdExt

As of this writing, Dan and Justin have been in contact and may take steps to consolidate their efforts into one nice project.

Java

The Java language is synonymous with server-side development and a large number of Ext developers use Java daily for their projects. And as should be expected, these top-notch Java developers have taken steps to incorporate server-side support for Ext:

• MyGWT - MyGWT is an open source Java library for the Google Web Toolkit which uses Ext to make all of the UI components look amazing.
• ExtTLD - The brainchild of Jaro Benc, ExtTLD is an ExtJS code generator based on the JEE tag files that provides a XML style component definition as well as a wide IDE support(Eclipse + WTP 2.0, Netbeans, IDEA, etc.)
• GWT-Ext - Developed by Sanjiv Jivan, GWT-Ext is a powerful widget library that provides rich widgets like Grid with sort, paging and filtering, Tree’s with Drag & Drop support, highly customizable ComboBoxes, Tab Panels, Menus & Toolbars, Dialogs, Forms and a lot more right out of the box with a powerful and easy to use API

Java developers are notoriously picky about which libraries that they use so these frameworks are a testament to the capabilities of the Ext framework.

Ext Ecosystem

The growth of the Ext community continues to astound us and really helps to motivate the team to continue to enhance the framework. We’re now thinking of ways to make extending the framework easier for our community so that a whole ecosystem can be developed around Ext. Having our users be successful is EXTREMELY important to us and we will continue to look for ways of improving Ext’s functionality and flexibility.