xvi PREF
AC
E
After about a year and a half of work, I can reflect on the late nights and sacrificed
weekends spent trying to figure out ways to explain complex
concepts
so that any
developer
could
understand
them. During that time, I did my best to
interface with
the MEAP
(Manning
Early Access
Program) readers
and Ext JS
community, processing
feedback to make this book what it is.
I hope this book is helpful to you. Please feel free to visit us at the
Manning Author
Online
forum and provide your
thoughts, comments,
and suggestions.
About this book
Ext
(pronounced
Eee
-
ecks-t
ee
)
JS 3.0 is an extremely powerful cross-browser UI frame-
work for
building
rich and robust
applications,
originally
developed
by Jack Slocum
in
2006. Since then, Ext JS has
endured
explosive growth because it addresses the
need
for web developers to have a true UI framework,
complete
with a
component and
event model. That makes it still
unique
in the growing
competitive
space of Web 2.0
li
brar
ie
s.
Written by a
member
of the Ext JS
community,
this book walks you
through the
framework in great detail, from the
perspective
of a
peer-to-peer conversation.
It uses
examples both small and large to
demonstrate
how to use Ext JS effectively. It also
includes many custom
illustrations
to help
accelerate learning
of the
material.
Ext JS is an
ex
tr
eme
l
y
large framework and
continues
to grow with eve
r
y
r
e
l
e
a
s
e.
Because of the size of the framework, this book focuses on the core
concepts
that all
developers
need to know to be effective when
developing
Ext JS apps. Such
concepts
include
the
Comp
one
nt
li
f
ec
y
cl
e,
each of the layouts,
creating extensions
and plug-ins,
and so much
more.
This book does not cover parts of the framework or
modules
such as state
and
cookie
management,
Direct, and Designer. Cookie and state
management were
passed up in favor of covering
other
key
principle
topics, such as
developing
app
lic
a-
tions. Ext Direct is a way to remotely call the client side from the server side and also
allows for seamless
communication
between the client and
ser
v
er
side, but
is
n‘
t
included
because it
requires
specific knowledge of server-side languages and thus is
too broad a
concept
for this
publication.
The Ext Designer
application
rapidly
crea
tes
rich
interfaces
for Ext JS, but isn‘t covered because it wasn‘t available
during
the devel-
opment
of this
boo
k.
Who should read this book?
This book is
designed
for anyone who wants to learn Ext JS and use it
well.
Instead of
just being a
container
for recipes, this book tries to give the
reader
a deep
understand-
ing of how Ext JS works from the inside out and how to apply it in their
application
development
efforts. The examples are written so that novice and expert
JavaS
c
r
i
pt
developers
alike find them
useful.
Some skills are
required
to be able to
understand
the material in this book, how
-
ever.
Y
ou
need to be fairly
experienced
with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS,
though
you