| LATEST POST: February 15 |
A while back in the Ext forums I mentioned a Forum Gadget I was working on for Windows Vista created with Ext 2.0. The gadget gives the ability to monitor the Ext JS forums (all posts or by individual forum), perform fast searches and supports both docked and undocked mode.
I have been asked quite a few times recently about how difficult it is to take an existing Ext JS application and convert it to Adobe AIR. My answer - theoretically it should be pretty easy if you aren’t using any AIR specific features. However, I thought I would see for myself, using the soon to be available Ext AIR adapter that allows Ext JS to run in the AIR application sandbox.
The Ext 2.0 API is very extensive and remembering all of the functions, properties or configs available is virtually impossible. The API documentation is very thorough, but it would be nice if IDEs would provide code assist options in JavaScript as they do in other languages such as Java and C#. Luckily, there are some IDEs and plugins available that do just that — and also have direct support for Ext 2.0.
The Ext team is proud to announce the immediate availability of Ext v1.1 for download. The 1.1 version includes the new stand-alone version of Ext, a lightweight HTML editor, a new Ext.Ajax utility class, enhancements to DateField and DatePicker, expanded documentation and bug fixes.
On of the things updated in Ext 1.1 RC1 was DomQuery, the CSS selector implementation in Ext. There seems to be a trend sweeping through all of the popular JavaScript libraries of implementing or improving existing DOM querying using CSS selectors. In fact, since my original post with querying benchmarks for the various selector implementations, overall selector processing power has gone from Pinto power to a Mustang GT 500.
Ext JS is an excellent framework for building web applications that have desktop like functionality in a web browser. But what if you could take your JavaScript powered application and run on the desktop like any other native application? The launch of Adobe AIR (formerly Apollo) has made this not only a reality, but extremely easy. Armed with early access Ext 2.0, Aptana IDE and a 4 pack of Red Bull I set out to build my first AIR application.
