Creating Sencha Ext JS App Prologue

Going to Ext JS is like diving into a very deep ocean where you only have flippers. But don't worry, you will not be alone. I will be accompanying you through the whole process. And I don't want to warn your regarding Ext JS because this is a fun stuff to learn.

If you knew some Javascript then  we are good to go. If you knew Backbone.js leave it, if you knew KnockoutJS leave it also because it will be a different world for you now.

We will be entering the Sencha Ext JS world once you take the red pill.

Before anything else, I will give you some tiny introduction about EXT JS.

The Framework itself

Ext JS is said to be the best Javascript framework ever built, it's not free if you will be using it for your company sake but it is free on GPL license. But this should not stop you from learning the best Javascript framework.

Why not go with jQuery UI?

If you thought Ext JS is like another jQuery UI then you are wrong, Ext JS is not just UI, table and grid widgets because you will not be handling just the UI itself but the data behind it. 

With the widget offering from jQuery UI, you might jump to that bandwagon but how about integrating some Restful Api on it and manipulate the legendary DOM? Then that will be the start of your code horror. I've seen lots of application that fall from jQuery code conventions.

On guard!

Ext JS has a very steep learning curve but it doesn't mean that it not possible. Once you get familiar with this MVC framework you will be just like walking in the park.

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Ext JS: Walking to an unknown territory

So it is almost decided now, we are doing our back office application with ExtJS (Thanks to my colleague who suggested it). After doing some research, I found out that ExtJS is one hell of framework that will surely boost our development.

But the thing is we never encountered ExtJS on our development life cycle and good thing is we are capable JavaScript programmer.

Today I will be taking my first step on Sencha ExtJS and I hope it will be easy for me to comprehend everything but I know it will not be very easy because ExtJS has its own convention.

Goodluck for me... And expect a day to day blog and status of my ExtJS development.

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Coffeescript with Love - A very simple introduction of Coffeescript

First I want to scold myself, I should spend at least an hour to check out Coffeescript. I have been skipping articles regarding Coffeescript in NetTuts and missed ManilaJS session last few months ago where the speaker is the maker of Backbone.js and Coffeescript, the Jeremy Ashkenas.

After a week now, I'm happy to see myself improving a lot on Javascript with the help of Coffeescript. It is time consuming to describe each benefits of Coffeescript because this is so awesome in so many ways.

If ever you decided to spend at least 30 mins of your time with Coffeescript then it's a good choice.

Everything start in Coffeescript Official website

Visit the site! There's a console for you to try Coffeescript on your browser.

Semi-colons will miss our gentle touch

If your a Ruby person then you might find Javascript a bit tedious on adding semi colons on every command or line you made. But that's okay, I'm a PHP developer and I survived it.

In Coffeescript, the semi-colon button will miss our touch since most of the convention doesn't require it.

Fuck Global variables!

Messing up the global variables in Javascript is a pain in the ass and it will be real pain the ass for maintaining your code base. But don't worry we will still access or write global but it will be much safer and easier on Coffeescript.

A better OOP 

I'm not saying Javascript is not good language for OOP but with Coffeescript it will give us more understandable way of creating Class and instantiating it.

class Animal

The code above will create an class name Animal which can also be extended on this approach

class Dog extends Animal

I know this is a very short take on how awesome Coffeescript is but this pieces change how I wrote code on Javascript. On my experience, Javascript has a big chance of getting a spaghetti code if not careful watched but having a more readable code your colleague can easily dive in to your chocolate mud playground.

So try it!

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