Upgrading ExtJS and others ... amenities

Having casually glanced at the ExtJS website, I was surprised to see that the version of this wonderful library was updated, moreover, the much anticipated announcement of the next version 3 appeared. But first things first. The current release of ExtJS has been updated to version 2.2.1. This, on the one hand, is a rather minor change, not even a sub-version, but if you take a closer look, you will find quite interesting things. Full list of changes here .



Added new component class for working with data - Ext.sql, which is provided by two components. SQLiteStore provides an extension to the standard Ext.data.Store for working with data stored in the database on the client side (and the Google Gears plug-in, the Google Chrome browser itself, the latest versions of the WebKit engine, and the Adobe AIR platform) . The second component is Proxy, which extends Ext.DataProxy and provides interaction with the SQLite database. Together, these components allow you to fully work with local storage using a standard data access interface. Previously, it was the prerogative of only AIR, and now the inclusion of these packages in the standard library means, I’m not afraid to say, the beginning of a new stage of client web development. But you can remember that not so long ago another flagship of AJAX / RIA projects, Apatana Inc, announced a component for AJAX applications that implements the ActiveRecord.js database database pattern (it also has competitors right away, so for now let's wait for a full-fledged ORM, which, however, is already there , not to say Hibernate on the client side, and I already in anticipation of such a development in one of the previous notes of last year).
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A lot of changes and additions to the package work with the platform Adobe AIR. In my opinion, it perfectly shows the unrealized potential and the fact that an active rethinking of its role is now taking place and an analysis of what can / should be created for it. Obviously, this is a big plus, and for ExtJS it’s just a huge one - I repeat all the time that this library can fully reveal its potential only in conjunction with AIR, and the most interesting things are still ahead. And so, the standard distribution includes components for creating applications (App), working with the clipboard (Clipboard), debugging, the ability to download data for a tree component from a file system (FileTreeLoader), a music player and a video pane, which were described earlier , also my favorite and useful component is the notifier (Notify). By the way, I found just such a component for ExtJS itself - Ext.us.MessageWindow . The thing is very useful, especially for large applications, now I regret that I did not find it earlier, long ago, on the first project I strongly loved Dojo Widget for it (there was no Dijit then), since there was such a component.

Otherwise, there are no special changes - multiple documentation updates that affected almost all components, as well as a large number of optimizations and bug fixes, and many memory leaks were fixed, which should have a positive impact on complex and large projects. From the little things - support for new browsers Google Chrome and IE8 (mainly expressed in the correct detection of the environment where the script is running). Judging by the list of changes, a lot of bugs have been really fixed and optimization has been added, the code is gradually improving, so I can only advise you to update your project, especially if you plan to transfer it to the AIR platform in the future, but even if not, your users should notice improvements now.

This is for updates. The second most interesting news was the announcement on April 14 - 16 of the Ext Conference 2009 conference , at which they promised to tell us about the new version of ExtJS 3.0, the Ext-GWT 2.0 library and announce the new development, Ext Core 1.0. The last thing is the most interesting - if there used to be a lot of exclamations, that ExtJS is very heavy and not suitable for sites (although in reality, if done correctly, it is great). Now the main core will be allocated to a lightweight library (under a good license, MIT license, which is also very important), and can be used where the visual, interface ExtJS component is not so important, but I want to use other features. In essence, these are the development of Ext.Core, and the provision of basic AJAX functionality, work with events, DOM functions, and if the ability to automatically load additional classes is introduced in order to supplement the script with the full version of the library (like the Dojo subsystem). .require), it will certainly be an impressive project and is in great demand right now.

The announcement of version 3.0 (in all likelihood, release or at least RC) is mentioned very casually - new components like Ext.Direct, the built-in library for drawing graphs and diagrams using Flash, as well as expanding layouts and, which I personally find most interesting, the development of communication with the server side (they talk, and Comet will add). Previously, a preview version was shown , which leaves a very positive impression, I think the release will not disappoint.

The event promises to be very interesting, if someone goes with the readers - please tell us about your impressions, bring photos, promise to interview you and prepare material!