How Successful People Make The Most Of Their UI Widgets

Nowadays, people operate software applications on multiple devices across different operating systems. Hence, a user interface is a key factor when designing user-friendly software applications. Application responsiveness, compatibility, support for multiple OSs, great look and feel of UIs, consistency of UI elements, reusability, accessibility, and easy-to-use simple UIs are typical non-functional requirements of modern mobile and web applications. Sencha Ext JS JavaScript framework provides a wide range of UI widgets to develop high-end user interfaces. It provides numerous components such as login forms, admin dashboards, buttons, list views, data grids, charts, calendars, trees, D3 elements, forms, toolbars, and data binding widgets. In this article, let’s discuss how to make your project successful using Sencha UI widgets.

How to populate data using grids?

Using grids is an excellent way to visualize tabular datasets. You must use at least one grid for data visualization in most enterprise-level applications. However, you have to visualize millions of data efficiently and enable advanced operations on the grid in large-scale data-driven applications. Sencha Ext JS provides Grid with various features, such as the following:

• basic Grid
• grouped Grid
• locking Grid
• checkbox selections
• cell editing
• row editing
• sorting
• grouped headers, etc. 

Additionally, it provides add-ons and advanced features such as filtering, advanced search, pagination, row-expander, grid exporting, summary rows, drag and drop, and grid. You can use the Sencha grid widget in your applications to visualize data sets easily.

The following image shows a Sencha grid with pagination.

Source: https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.5.1/examples/kitchensink/#paging-grid

The following example shows a widget grid provided by Sencha.

Source: https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.5.1/examples/kitchensink/#widget-grid

How can you operate the pivot grid?

When dealing with datasets, you have to show summaries in tables. You don’t need to implement summary tables or construct burning queries to summarize data from the database. You can use pivot grid components provided by Sencha as a solution for summary tables, as they can be used to analyze large data sets and gain valuable summary data. The pivot grid shows synopses of data columns abstracted from a large dataset. Besides, it enables you to lock some columns when there are multiple columns.

Can you use charts to visualize data?

We use charts to represent aggregated or classified data from a given dataset. Usually, you have to integrate an existing chart library or develop your own to visualize data in a chart regardless of the language you use. Yet Sencha Ext provides you with different types of charts, such as columns, 3D columns, bars, lines, area, scatter, box plots, navigators, and pie charts. 

It allows you to customize the chart sizes, names of categories, axes details, and colors of charts. Sencha even allows you to change the chart themes to match the general theme of your site.

The following screenshot shows a simple pie chart generated using Sencha Charts.

Source: https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.5.1/examples/kitchensink/#pie-custom

How can I use Form UI widgets?

When developing web applications, you must design at least one form to accomplish your CRUD operations. So it would be best to consider certain factors while designing forms, such as the consistency of input elements, browser compatibility of elements, error handling and validations, and the reusability of components. Sencha Ext UI widgets provide you with a wide range of pre-built form elements such as text fields, email fields, password fields, checkboxes, radio buttons, combo boxes, number fields, sliders, file uploaders, and many other commonly used elements in the industry. Moreover, Sencha forms offer some other useful features that can help speed up development. 

(1)Provides the ability to group certain input fields using the FieldSet feature. You can graphically separate a specific set of fields in a form and divide them into form groups.

(2) You can use single labels to introduce multiple fields using container fields.

(3) You don’t need to implement common form validations as Sencha provides you with inbuilt validations along with form components.

How to use the Calendar component?

Sencha offers various user-friendly calendar widgets with a modern look and feel. They include advanced calendar panels; month, week, and day views; and time zone supporting calendars with drag and resizing validations. So you don’t need to waste your time anymore implementing calendar views or applying different libraries. You can easily apply calendar widgets in your applications according to your requirements using the calendar widgets from Sencha.

Resource : https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.5.1/examples/kitchensink/#calendar-panel

How do button widgets help you in development?

Buttons are a basic component that is frequently used in most software applications. We use them to perform different action items, such as triggering an action, rendering specific UI elements, loading data into grids, launching external links in popups and new tabs, redirecting to another page, and CRUD operations in forms. 

So you must maintain the consistency of the look and feel of the buttons during the development phase. However, you don’t need to worry about these concerns as ExtJS offers a diverse set of button widgets, including:

• Basic button elements to trigger actions
• toggle buttons
• menu buttons which render a list of values upon a button click
• split buttons
• left and right text buttons, which can apply icons on the opposite side
• link and segment buttons

Hence, you can use button widgets in your applications according to your requirements.

How can you bind data with components?

We must create dynamic state transition UI components in web development according to user interactions and data changes. It requires users to bind data with specific UI widgets. You have to use methodologies such as ajax, jQuery, and react hooks to construct those kinds of data binding components based on the JavaScript framework you use. Sencha provides you with different types of data binding mechanisms, such as the following.

• Dynamic data binding upon button click
• Two-way data binding – upon one component state or data change, another component changes accordingly.
• Formula bindings – change output values upon input values according to a given formula.
• Association, Chaining stores bindings – bind data into a grid and filter and load associated data upon clicking on rows or performing crud operations on data.
• Chaining stores, Chaining combo boxes, and selections.
• Binary operations, Ternary operations, etc.

When you connect a specific UI widget with the data binding mechanism of the component, its state gets changed upon any update on data.

How can we use Tree components?

Tree components provided by Sencha are useful when you need to apply tree hierarchy UI widgets in your application. It provides you with different tree widgets, such as basic trees, tree recorders with expanded collapse features, tree grids, check trees, and two trees.

The following example represents a tree grid.

Source: https://examples.sencha.com/extjs/7.5.1/examples/kitchensink/#tree-grid

How can we visualize data using D3 UI widgets?

Data visualization plays a significant role in modern software applications as we use that data for decision-making, future predictions, and understanding user behavior. D3.js is the most popular and robust library among data visualization libraries in the industry. Moreover, it can be easily integrated with your application. Sencha ExtJS provides different D3 UI widgets such as Herach components, Heatmap components, Custom SVG, and Custom Canvas widgets.

How can we use pre-built UI templates?

Most developers struggle to adapt to new JS frameworks and structure the project according to the framework. Sencha provides UI widget templates to understand the project structure and speed up the development of your project. 

ExtJS provides templates, such as Login templates, account creation CRUD forms, reset password forms, and admin dashboards. You can easily apply and customize them within your application.

Why should you use Sencha Ext JS?

Now I believe you have sound knowledge of Sencha UI widgets and how they contribute to the success of your project. Sencha makes UI design easier and more efficient as it is easy to set up, supports multiple devices across different OS, brings advanced UI widgets with functionalities, provides validations, and helps create attractive UI components. This framework even allows you to design and implement your own customized UI widgets with its larger community, numerous blog posts, and documentation.

So let’s get started with Sencha UI widgets right away.