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

Summary

We have learned a lot in this chapter about presenting data in a grid. With this new-found knowledge we will be able to organize massive amounts of data into easy to understand grids.

Specifically, we covered:

  • Creating data stores and grids for display
  • Reading XML and JSON data from a server and displaying it in a grid
  • Rendering cells of data for a well formatted display
  • Altering the grid based on user interaction

We also discussed the intricacies of each of these elements, such as reading data locally or from a server—along with paging. We also covered formatting cells using HTML, images, and even lookups into separate data stores.

Now that we've learned about standard grids, we're ready to take it to the next level, by making our grid cells editable just like a spreadsheet—which is the topic of the next chapter.