What are some viable Ext alternatives/competitors?

[mikeasi]

Just curious, what right now are some legitimate Ext alternatives and competitors? I was talking with a coworker about my preference for Ext for all things when it comes to RIA's, and he made the remark that "not everything has to be done in Ext." I responded that I didn't know of any frameworks nearly as robust or mature as Ext, and most of the frameworks I've seen consist of a lot of widgety things and none seem capable of doing things like Ext's layout manager does. Thoughts?

[mitchellsimoens]

There is no JS framework that can match Ext JS

[mprice]

I'm interested in the same. We have struggled with performance and memory usage in ExtJS for years, and are about to embark on a replacement effort. We are eyeing up the following so far:

1. kendoui.com
2. wijmo.com
3. a smattering of jqueryui based components

There is no doubt that none of the options will provide the robust application framework that ExtJS does....but unfortunately we have no choice due to the negative feedback from our customers based on performance/memory.

[h.wagner@telekom.de]

There are quite a few "alternatives" mentioned on an older list from StackOverflow:
"

1. Mochaui.com looks interesting (moved to github). https://github.com/mui/mochaui
2. ampleSDK (interesting approach)
3. DojoToolkit and their nice set of widgets
4. The always changing jQuery UI
5. The radical Cappuccino
6. rialto
7. A bit rough on the edges Echo
8. Simple UI kit UKI see demo
9. vaadin (Requires Java)
10. jxlib.org based on Mootools
11. A bit beta, but Prototype-ui
12. Simpler widgets livepipe.net
13. dhtmlx.com
14. HTML5 + MVC sproutcore, see their demo
15. qooxdoo see widgets
16. http://www.linb.net/

"
#3, #9, #13 #15 and even #16 seem to perform better than ExtJS under some usual "business scenarios" .

[mankz]

In that list I'd say Dojo is pretty much the only serious competitor if your want a mature web app framework. If all you want is a simple widget framework then there are lots and lots.

[joeri]

Not a competitor, but it could become one:

http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/front-end

SAP's toolkit for developing html5 web apps. It's not as bad as you would think, and it doesn't require a server-side component.

As far as actual competitors, i think dojo is the main one, if you're going for a widgetlike approach. Others are cappucino and Sproutcore. If you're looking for databinding, but can live without widgets, ember.js looks interesting.

[mprice]

In that list I'd say Dojo is pretty much the only serious competitor if your want a mature web app framework.

I've looked just a bit at dhtmlx.com and on the surface it seems nearly as powerful as ExtJS. Being such a full featured framework though, I worry about the same performance and memory challenges that ExtJS has. Anyone have any experience with it? This relevant blog post was interesting - http://www.dhtmlx.com/blog/?p=1525

Also worried about support. Like ExtJS, the only help to be found would be the dhtmlx community itself. jQuery and jQueryUI, on the other hand, is so widely adopted that the internet support is nearly limitless.

[mitchellsimoens]

Like ExtJS, the only help to be found would be the dhtmlx community itself.

Just going to nit pick this one sentence out. You are a support subscriber so you have access to our support portal so help is given by Sencha. Also, we have several Sencha employees that patrol the forums, the portal has response times and guaranteed response so the community isn't the only help that you get for Ext JS.

[mprice]

Sorry about that. I definitely didn't mean to say that Sencha support is not adequate. I just meant that I can google a jquery or jqueryui related question and get all kinds of resources across the internet. Google results for an extjs question are really limited to what exists here in the Sencha community.

[jemptymethod]

But ExtJS is kind of like the Progressive Insurance of Javascript/UI frameworks: it will let you evaluate the competitors right in their own forums