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

Understanding packages, classes, and namespaces

There are a few final pieces that of the object-oriented puzzle we need, in order to keep a solid grasp of our goals. We've talked about how Ext JS is a large collection of objects extending other objects, but it's also important to understand a few other pieces of basic OO terminology, and how they help in keeping things organized.

Packages

A package is a collection of classes that share something in common. For instance, the Ext.data package is a collection of classes for dealing with data, such as the different types of data Stores, Readers, and Records. The Ext.grid package is a collection of classes for the various grid objects, including all of the different grid types and selection models. Likewise, the Ext.form package contains classes for building forms, to include all of the classes of the different field types.

Classes

A class is what we call a specific JavaScript object, defining that object's attributes and methods...