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

Object-oriented JavaScript

Over the last several years, we've seen a drastic shift with regards to client-side scripting in browser-based web applications. JavaScript has become the defacto standard in client-side scripting, with support for it built into every major browser available.

The issue has always been in each browser's implementation of the Document Object Model. Microsoft's Internet Explorer, having taken the majority share of the browser marketplace, helped to gather support for a modern Document Object Model, to which all other browsers had to adapt. However, after the release of Internet Explorer 6, Microsoft halted new development of their browser for several years, other than to provide security fixes. Added to this was Microsoft's play to try and create new standards. Rather than implement JavaScript, Internet Explorer actually implemented JScript, which ran JavaScript files, but had a slightly different implementation that never garnered momentum ...