Help me compare GXT to ExtJS

[hstang]

Hi everyone,

I am evaluating Ext for inclusion into our upcoming product and I want to know which framework between GXT and ExtJS is more complete in terms of performance, stability and features. I've been reading this forum and some members suggest that GXT is slower and not as feature-complete compared to ExtJS. Can anyone confirm this who has real working experience dealing with both frameworks?

While I am much more comfortable doing Java, I can invest into learning Javascript that is required for ExtJS if my research suggests GXT is still not mature enough for large-scale application development.

Any suggestions, opinions and comments are appreciated on this matter.

Thank you

[jpnet]

I have used both and feel that I am qualified to answer this question. I currently use GXT. I started using ExtJS. It's my perception (I have not done any benchmarks) that ExtJS is faster than GXT (generally speaking). Others may have differing opinions. However, the performance of GXT is adequate for my needs. I deploy my application on a corporate intranet and it works great in Firefox and Rails on the backend. I have encouraged the usage of Chrome, and it is smoking fast on Chrome.

The application I have developed is very large, and I would much rather develop a large enterprise application in GXT over ExtJS. The reason being: I feel that Java lends itself better to the development of large applications because of its class model vs Javascript's prototype model. Also, I got very tired of looking for bugs in my Javascript code with Firebug. Debugging my GXT application with Eclipse has been a cinch.

As for a feature comparison, I have not noticed any shortcomings in GXT vs ExtJS. However, others have. The GXT team is working hard to lessen the gap. The release of GXT 2.0 in two weeks should help as well.

The major downside with GXT vs ExtJS is the size of the community and lack of quality documentation. You will feel that the documentation is not adequate, because it's not. You will be reading a lot of examples and asking a lot of questions on the board. However, the support team is usually pretty good at answering questions in a prompt manner.

Since you are accustomed to Java, I would definitely recommend choosing GXT. The applications you produce will stun your users by their beauty!

Hope this helps. I also wrote another post (http://extjs.com/forum/showthread.php?t=60715) on this matter.

-JP

[sven]

I started using ExtJS. It's my perception (I have not done any benchmarks) that ExtJS is faster than GXT (generally speaking).

To add some informations: GXT 2.0 got many performance improvements.