Ideas for Tutorials: Want Community Feedback!!

[ReyBango]

With Ext 2.0 already in pre-release, we're really working hard to get our documentation ready to ensure everyone is successful with this amazing new version of the framework.

I would like to ask for feedback from the community as to what you would like to see in the form of tutorials.

• Which topics would you like covered?
• Which areas have *YOU* seen where people struggle the most?
• Which 3rd party offerings should be covered?

Your feedback will be invaluable in determining how to expand our tutorials.

We look forward to your feedback!

Rey...

[SeaSharp]

I started Ext development last week so I am tripping over the usual rookie issues, however one problem I have shared with the greatest minds in this community is how to switch different components in and out of regions within an established page layout. There have been 6+ threads in the past week on this subject.

A deep tutorial is required that discusses container (Panel) containment hierarchies rendering, doLayout, panel sizing cascade, browser window size tracking and component removal.

As a separate note I have been maintaining a list of my beginner type questions over the past 1.5 weeks and my intention was to forward this to Ext support in the hope the FAQ could be expanded based on these stupid beginner questions. I imagine the regular Ext support team members are so expert they have forgotten about the confusions of a new Ext developer.

[StarrHorne]

I don't know if this counts as a tutorial, but I would love to have this:

A diagram of each widget showing:

• The elements that make up the widget: header, footer, etc.
• The id conventions and default class for each of these elements.
• What methods/properties to use to access each element.

[BernardChhun]

Which areas have *YOU* seen where people struggle the most?

I've tried to help as much a I can here in our joyful forum and here's my most-seen-posts top 10 Rey:

• Grids
• Forms
• Combobox
• Dialogs
• Trees
• Using Ext with any server-side language
• Misunderstanding of event management in Javascript
• Misunderstanding of OO Javascript
• Usage of appropriate debugging tools
• Manipulating the DOM

these last 4 aren't specifically for Ext, but I believe we could still teach it here using Ext as an example.

Which 3rd party offerings should be covered?

Stuff Jozef has made since they are the most popular.

[mystix]

might want to throw general XHR into the fray, judging by the number of ppl who still think opening the 2.0 docs / other XHR examples directly in the browser (via File > Open) without a webserver / other js modifications and expecting JSON / XML to be returned.

speaking of JSON, it might be a good idea to have a short tutorial on this too.

these aren't specifc to Ext, but it'd be good to give Ext noobs an all-rounded education.

[willgillen]

A diagram of each widget ...

I second that one. This would help tremendously!

-- W.G.

[piston]

I'd like to throw my hat in this arena as someone who has been creating small-medium sized websites, but has never had any formal training in JS.

2 things I'd like to see:

1. the level of expertise this community and forum's average user has (which should dictate what kind of tutorials you need). I think the average person that stumbles upon this site and wants to learn ext has very little JS knowledge (like me) and wants to make awesome web pages, but the tutorials and examples act as if i'm well-versed in JS. I'm no dummy - I've got a doctorate and have been working on web stuff for 10 years now, but I'm still struggling with combining 2 examples on the same page. but maybe i'm asking too much?
2. More comprehensive examples that not only show the component and .js files, but also the multitude of options each component has and what they do - all on the example page (not buried in the docs)

**edit** why don't you post a polldaddy poll on the front page asking what level of web knowledge people have? i'd think that would be a good thing to know if you were going to start creating tutorials in earnest.

[patspam]

Perhaps not so much a tutorial as an architectural overview of Ext?

[liero]

+1 for the architectural overview (something like an UML diagram)

thanks

[mikegiddens]

I seem to have a good working understanding of 2.0 and feel my weakness are in the areas of:

- DragDrop custom solutions. I.E. custom view drags
- How to go about making useful plugins
- Dynamic GridPanels/Column models
- Custom Delegations/Actions

The basic stuff is well documented and just takes a little time to wrap your head around it. The more advanced stuff is where I fall a bit short so anything that is not common sense would be nice.

-Mike