Pathfinder Development » When is an Ajax Framework Worth Mentioning

When is an Ajax Framework Worth Mentioning

Dietrich Kappe, Monday, July 30, 2007 @ 5:45 am

I'm getting a bit more selective in which Ajax frameworks and libraries I give more than a passing thought. There are just too many of them out there, like weeds after the desert rain. For a framework to be worth attention, it has to have at least one of the following going for it:

Unusually clever; something new.
Extremely well executed, small and focused.
A complete solution, soup to nuts, with widgets, OO utils, Ajax utils, package management, etc.
Something that supports agile development, e.g. TDD focused

I'm sure we're all familiar with the FURPS acronym (Functionality, Usability, Reliability, Performance, Supportability). The last one, "supportability," is an important one that often gets overlooked. Essentially, how difficult or expensive will the system be to support over time? So perhaps there is a fifth reason, supportability. That may be hard to gauge in a marketplace of libraries and frameworks that is changing so quickly; a framework that is hot today may be supplanted or abandoned tomorrow. So how about a proxy: a framework that developers are absolutely gaga over?

One of the soup to nuts frameworks I haven't mentioned previously is Ext JS. What is Ext JS? From the FAQ:

Ext is a client-side, JavaScript framework for building web applications. In early 2006, Jack Slocum began working on a set of extension utilities for the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) library. These extensions were quickly organized into an independent library of code and distributed under the name "yui-ext." In the fall of 2006, Jack released version .33 of yui-ext, which turned out to be the final version of the code under that name (and under the open source BSD license). By the end of the year, the library had gained so much in popularity that the name was changed simply to Ext, a reflection of its maturity and independence as a framework. A company was formed in early 2007, and Ext is now dual-licensed under the LGPL and a commercial license. The library officially hit version 1.0 on April 1, 2007.

So, an extension of YUI, but now it's own thing. Even better, Ext JS runs on top of other Ajax libraries and you can pick your favorite one, Prototype, YUI or JQuery.

Touching back to the supportability discussion above, there are some things to like here:

They are backed by a commercial company, offering open source and commercial licenses.
They have a large and enthusiastic developer following.
They have a growing footprint among large companies.
They are a soup to nuts framework, with basic Ajax and DHTML utils all the way to complete widgets.
Lots of documentation and tutorials.

And then there is the enthusiasm factor. All of the developers I've talked to are absolutely gaga about Ext JS. Gaga. That, to me, is a higher recommendation than any feature list. However you feel about Ruby on Rails, the framework has had a salutary effect on development frameworks in general. With it's transformation into a product and services company, few people remember that 37signals started out as a user experience design (UXD) company. They used to be our competition in Chicago. It took a UXD company to focus on providing good user experiences to developers, not just end users. So, if you're an aspiring framework designer, keep user experience in mind for your developers. What will make their life easier. Maybe then developers will love your framework as much as they love Ext JS.

Now a little sample of Ext JS. Just a simple data grid. The data and layout are handled through different pluggable behaviors. Nice.

I'll have a few more things to say about Ext JS, along with it's use with DWR and AIR.

Technorati Tags: ajax, extjs

Topics: Ajax Frameworks, Javascript Libraries

agile ajax

Comments: 4 so far

@Dietrich: Thank you for the kind words about Ext JS and we appreciate you taken the time to post about it. I think that Ext is still viewed as a complimentary extension to other libraries but as you mentioned, as of version v1.1, Ext is now a standalone library on par with the likes of Prototype, jQuery, YUI and Dojo. While the adapters are there to allow users of the first 3 libs to leverage Ext’s awesome UI controls, the dependency is no longer there.

Hopefully, people will start to make that distinction.

Again, thank you for your wonderful post.

Comment by Rey Bango, Monday, July 30, 2007 @ 11:23 am
What I like about Ext is that the source-code of the library is very well written with OO all the way and full with comments that make the library very easy to extend.
http://www.rodrigodiniz.qsh.eu

Comment by Rodrigo, Monday, July 30, 2007 @ 11:33 am
Ext is the cat’s pyjamas.

I had been cobbling stuff together by hand and am now
really enjoying working at a higher level of abstraction.

It’s all about being much more productive.
Web apps are fun again.

–dan
Very satisfied (almost smug user

Comment by Dan, Monday, July 30, 2007 @ 9:18 pm
The example doesn’t quite do the Ext Grid justice. You need to style the “myfeed” div in the iframe to height:450px so that the grid is sized to the iframe size, and uses it’s own internal scrolling which (of course) scrolls the body while leaving the headers static.

Comment by Animal, Tuesday, July 31, 2007 @ 2:35 am