Automating Unit Tests

August 02, 2012 | Arthur Kay

One of the first questions I always hear when starting with a new client is “How can I build unit tests for my application?”

It’s obvious that many people understand the benefits of unit tests – developers want to minimize the number of bugs in their code and managers want to reduce the amount of time required to test an application before release. Although the concept of unit testing has existed for years, software teams are only now beginning to explore building tests for their Rich Internet Applications (RIAs).

Extensions, Extensions, Extensions

July 24, 2012 | Ted Patrick

Extensions provide developers with valuable features beyond those that ship in Sencha’s frameworks, and are a very important part of the Sencha platform. At Sencha, we are investing to improve the ecosystem of extensions on our platform and I wanted to share an early look at our progress.

A Survey of JavaScript Timers on Mobile

July 16, 2012 | Michael Mullany

Desktop browsers have had high resolution, high consistency JavaScript timers for the last few years. As a result, many web developers have become used to creating production-quality animations using zero-second callbacks via setTimeOut() and setInterval(). However, on mobile devices, this style of animation programming can have subpar performance and consistency – we wondered if it was due to poorer timer implementations. We researched the issue and found that while older Androids and iPods have noticeably poorer timer implementations than desktop browsers, the most recent Android and iOS tablets and phones seem to have mostly caught up.

First Thoughts Learning Ext JS 4.1

January 17, 2012 | Ted Patrick

I wanted to share my thoughts on learning Ext JS 4.1 from a developer new to Sencha. The article highlights my initial progress, perceptions, and discoveries in learning Ext JS.

Introducing Siesta: A Testing Tool for Ext JS

December 14, 2011 | Mats Bryntse

Siesta is a new unit testing framework for Ext JS and other JavaScript code. Testing Ext JS, or any JavaScript-centric web framework, can be difficult because the available tools are not really suited for the task. Most popular web UI testing tools don’t offer enough help unless your application uses simple static HTML pages. This is where Siesta is different from the rest, because its top priority is Ext JS testing.

IE10 Preview: HTML5 First Look

September 23, 2011 | Michael Mullany

Simply put, (and with the caveat that we were running on the notably overpowered developer preview hardware) the IE10 HTML5 experience is one of the best we’ve seen on any platform to date. After a decade of web neglect, Microsoft is back with a vengeance.

Using Ext Loader for Your Application

June 27, 2011 | Jay Garcia

Today, we’ll be looking at creating a small application that makes use of this new class Loader system, exercising the dependency management system. Along the way, we’ll discuss various configuration options for the Ext Loader system.

A Web Developer’s Wishlist for iOS 5

May 26, 2011 | James Pearce

With Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference 2011 just a few weeks away, we thought it would be a good time to think about what they might announce at the sold-out event. We take a look at Mobile Safari from a web developer’s perspective to see what it needs to stay on top of the heap.