New to ExtJS - a couple of questions

[tkeller]

Hi all!

I'm new to ExtJS and my company is currently considering it for a new application we're developing on contract. A couple of questions here:

1) We're using Symfony as PHP framework which already comes with prototype and scriptaculous integration (which we use in a couple of places) - does this setup play well with ExtJS?

2) I've seen a YUI! adapter in the 2.2 sources - what is the purpose of this? I'm asking because we're also evaluating YUI! as widget lib and could make use f.e. of the flash-based charting component there. In general, I see ExtJS components as somewhat superior over YUI! ones, but I might be wrong, f.e. when it comes to the stylability / customization of these components. Has anybody previous experience with both, YUI! and ExtJS in this category?

3) Last but not least, we, as a contractor, have to license ExtJS commercially even if we do not plan to "distribute" its source code other than letting people download it in their web browsers for the application we're building, correct? Its not that the license fee is a problem, just the "better" support contracts are a bit high-priced. Luckily I saw the dual-licensing model which is applied and I see a vital and active community which will probably be able to help out in many cases, right?

Thanks in advance for your answer(s)!

Thomas.

[Animal]

The Ext UI library can use several "base" libraries to provide event handling, DOM manipulation, animation etc. And the main Ext code plugs into an adaptor layer which accesses these services.

The default is to use "ext-base.js" which implements the adaptor interface directly and provides all these facilities.

But if you are already using prototype, jQuery or YUI, you can use the appropriate Ext adapter to access these facilities from your library of choice.

We started with YUI, but there is not the same Container->Component concept in which the whole page becomes a live, dynamic layout. They still think "widgets" which are isolated islands of dynamic HTML inside a "web page".

We use Ext to provide a desktop-like environment into which application components are loaded using Ajax. There is only one "page", with a border layout, and application components get loaded into the center region as needed.

[tkeller]

Thanks for clearing that up!

Well, I guess we're still having this more "isolated dhtml" concept of widgets in our current application, especially since a lot of server-side machinery from symfony does form generation / validation and other things. Does ExtJS still fit here or would you recommend looking at YUI!?

Thomas.

[Animal]

ExtJs still makes a lot of sense.

Contrary to what people would have you believe, it's much easier to get working than YUI.