Book Image

Learning Ext JS

By : Colin Ramsay, Shea Frederick, Steve 'Cutter' Blades
Book Image

Learning Ext JS

By: Colin Ramsay, Shea Frederick, Steve 'Cutter' Blades

Overview of this book

<p>As more and more of our work is done through a web browser, and more businesses build web rather than desktop applications, users want web applications that look and feel like desktop applications. Ext JS is a JavaScript library that makes it (relatively) easy to create desktop-style user interfaces in a web application, including multiple windows, toolbars, drop-down menus, dialog boxes, and much more. Both Commercial and Open Source licenses are available for Ext JS.<br /><br />Ext JS has the unique advantage of being the only client-side UI library that also works as an application development library. Learning Ext JS will help you create rich, dynamic, and AJAX-enabled web applications that look good and perform beyond the expectations of your users.<br /><br />From the building blocks of the application layout, to complex dynamic Grids and Forms, this book will guide you through the basics of using Ext JS, giving you the knowledge required to create rich user experiences beyond typical web interfaces. It will also provide you with the tools you need to use AJAX, by consuming server-side data directly into the many interfaces of the Ext JS component library.</p>
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
15
Index

Bring out the flash

We've covered Ext.Fx and the other animation techniques that Ext JS offers in depth, now. But we've still got a few more features to cover when it comes to showing off with the framework. There are a number of Ext classes that provide a little extra sparkle to the top of the standard solutions. We've got LoadMask that allows you to mask off a portion of the screen while it's being refreshed, and QuickTip that offers a rich, configurable tooltip system.

These classes open up a new range of options when it comes to creating compelling user-experiences, and we're going to examine them in detail over the next few pages. A key feature of each is that they are reasonably simple to use, which is partly the reason why you'll want use them in many of your Ext JS applications.

You're maskin', I'm tellin'

The Ext.LoadMask class has a couple of different use cases. We can use it to simply display a message that keeps the user informed...