Ext

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.

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.

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!”.

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.

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.

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 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.