Ext JS 3.0 RC1.1 Released

May 04, 2009 | Aaron Conran

The Ext Team is proud to announce the release of Ext JS 3.0 RC1.1 available for immediate download. This new version of the Ext framework is the culmination of many long hours of dedication by the Ext Team. We appreciate our community of testers and supporters whom have made the stability of this release possible. Ext 3.0 is another leap forward providing increased performance, consistency, flexibility and UI enhancements to make you more productive - all without a significant size increase.

There are many enhancements in Ext JS 3.0, too many to include in a single post. Some of the major features in Ext JS 3.0 are the splitting of Ext Core and Ext JS, Charting for visualizations, additional User Interface improvements, CRUD-like support with Ext.data.DataWriter, Remoting using Ext.Direct, CSS enhancements to make theming easier, and Accessibility improvements - Section 508 and ARIA support. We also fixed several browser issues for the latest Chrome and Safari releases and added IE8 support.

Ext Core

The first major change to Ext JS 3.0 is that it has been built to sit on top of the new Ext Core library. Ext Core 3.0 is a lightweight library intended to give you all of the functionality to enhance a webpage. Drawing upon our experience creating rich user interfaces, we isolated the most powerful features used to enhance new or existing web pages and placed them in the Ext Core library. Developers familiar with Ext JS can leverage their existing skillset to provide an enhanced user experience to their web pages.

Winston Churchill once said, "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give." As avid members of the open source community, Ext continues to give back. This time, we are releasing Ext Core under the permissive MIT license to be used by all for free.

New UI Features

Ext JS 3.0 introduces several new UI Components and enhancements to many existing components.

New UI Components

• RowEditor
• ListView
• Charting
• ButtonGroup
• GroupTabs

RowEditor

Editing a row in a grid just got a lot easier. The RowEditor is another great new UI component allowing you to rapidly edit full rows in a grid. You can even enable a validation mode which uses the new AnchorTips to notify the user of all validation errors at once.

ListView

ListView is a high performance, light-weight version of a grid like display. It provides you with selection, column resizing, sorting and other DataView features. The columns have percentage based widths and uses templates to render the data in any required format. If you need to show your data in a grid like display without some of the more advanced features of the Grid, then ListView is the perfect solution.

Charting

The Ext.chart package will allow you to visualize your data with flash based charting. Each chart binds directly to an Ext.data.Store. The new FlashComponent class, which extends BoxComponent, allows you to easily create custom Flash Components. By binding the charts directly to an Ext.data.Store, you don't have to worry about updating your chart, they will update automatically.

ButtonGroup

ButtonGroup is a new component that will allow you to group together Buttons of different sizes to create complex toolbars enabling your users to find the most common actions first. We created an example to show the flexibility and power of this new component.

Sample code:

 
var btnGroup = new Ext.ButtonGroup({
       title: 'Clipboard',
       columns: 2,
       defaults: {
            scale: 'small'
       },
       items: [{
           xtype:'splitbutton',
           text: 'Add',
           iconCls: 'add16',
           menu: [{text: 'Add'}]
        },{
           xtype:'splitbutton',
           text: 'Cut',
           iconCls: 'add16',
           menu: [{text: 'Cut'}]
        },{
           text: 'Copy',
           iconCls: 'add16'
        },{
           text: 'Paste',
           iconCls: 'add16',
           menu: [{text: 'Paste'}]
        }]
     });
 

Grouped Tabs

Horizontal navigation can always be challenging. We've introduced GroupTabs to assist you in creating portal layouts similar to iGoogle, or providing a interface to access similar tasks quickly.

Sample Code:

 
var viewport = new Ext.Viewport({
        layout:'fit',
        items:[{
            xtype: 'grouptabpanel',
            tabWidth: 130,
            activeGroup: 0,
            items: [{
                mainItem: 1,
                items: [{
                    title: 'Tickets',
                    iconCls: 'x-icon-subscriptions',
                    tabTip: 'Tickets tabtip',
                    style: 'padding: 10px;',
                    html: Ext.example.shortBogusMarkup         
                }, {
                    title: 'Subscriptions',
                    iconCls: 'x-icon-subscriptions',
                    tabTip: 'Subscriptions tabtip',
                    style: 'padding: 10px;',
                    html: Ext.example.shortBogusMarkup         
                }, {
                    title: 'Users',
                    iconCls: 'x-icon-users',
                    tabTip: 'Users tabtip',
                    style: 'padding: 10px;',
                    html: Ext.example.shortBogusMarkup         
                }]
            }, {
                expanded: true,
                items: [{
                    title: 'Configuration',
                    iconCls: 'x-icon-configuration',
                    tabTip: 'Configuration tabtip',
                    style: 'padding: 10px;',
                    html: Ext.example.shortBogusMarkup
                }, {
                    title: 'Email Templates',
                    iconCls: 'x-icon-templates',
                    tabTip: 'Templates tabtip',
                    style: 'padding: 10px;',
                    html: Ext.example.shortBogusMarkup
                }]
            }]
        }]
    });
 

Enhanced Components

• Buttons
• Toolbar Overflow
• Menu Overflow
• AnchorTips
• Buffered GridView
• Debug Console

Buttons

Buttons in Ext JS 3.0 have been refactored to be a valid BoxComponent which enables them to partake in layout management. Buttons can now scale to any height or width and have advanced text positioning. Rather than being limited to only positioning buttons in a buttons configuration, they can now be placed anywhere you please.

Toolbar Overflow

Toolbars can now create a menu for items that don't fit the visible toolbar area. The items in the menu still react with the same handlers as the toolbar items. This new behavior is turned on by default and can be disabled with the configuration option enableOverflow.

Menu Overflow

Menus now also handle overflowing in a more gracious manner. Whenever a menu gets so long that the items won't fit the viewable area, it provides the user with an easy UI to scroll the menu. This feature is turned on by default and can be disabled by the configuration option enableScrolling.

ToolTips

Tooltips now support an anchor configuration which will allow you to bring attention to a particular element or component with a small callout arrow.

Sample Code

 
new Ext.ToolTip({
        target: 'bottomCallout',
        anchor: 'top',
        anchorOffset: 85,
        html: 'This tip\'s anchor is centered'
    });
 

Buffered GridView

Buffered GridView enhances performance by waiting to render rows until they are visible. As your user scrolls away from content which is no longer visible, the BufferedGridView will clean up the old DOM markup to minimize the DOM structure. As a result of the smaller markup, the performance of resizing, forceFit, autoExpandColumn and other layout and DOM manipulation features in a large grid will improve substantially. Buffer GridView is limited to working on fixed height rows.

Debug Console

The Debug Console has been revamped and we have added three new tabs, named Component Inspector, Object Inspector and Data Stores which are specific to Ext Development. Component Inspector will show you all components which have currently been registered with the ComponentMgr and the parent child relationships among components. By mousing over a particular component you will notice that it will be masked on the page. The Object Inspector will allow you to inspect objects and peek inside their contents. The Data Stores tab will display all stores which have been registered with the StoreMgr and how many records are currently loaded into each store.

Summary

This blog entry covers all of the user interface components which are new to Ext JS 3.0 or which have been significantly enhanced. Stay tuned for another entry that details all of the non-ui related improvements such as Ext.data package enhancements, Accessibility improvements, Ext.Direct and the refining of memory management within Ext.

Upgrading

User upgrading to Ext JS 3.0, will be happy to hear there are little to no breaking changes. We took great care in only creating breaking changes where absolutely necessary. You may encounter issues upgrading if you were previously manipulating private properties of an Ext.menu.Menu or an Ext.Toolbar or if you had custom styling of an Ext.Button.

Following a tradition started with Ext 1.0, we are offering a pre-release sale with hefty discounts to upgrade your 2.x license. If you've thought about purchasing an Ext License, for a limited time, you can purchase online for less than an Ext 2.x License. There's no better time to support the Ext team.