Today we’re thrilled to share with you the first developer preview of Sencha Touch 2. Sencha Touch 1.0 launched just one year ago and has become the leading framework to build mobile HTML5 apps. Today, we’re delivering a preview of our biggest update to the framework yet. We’ve focused on three key areas: Performance, Ease of Use, and Native Packaging. We’d like to share with you the details of each of these.
h3. Performance First
Our number one goal for Sencha Touch 2 is performance. Web apps can’t be beaten for convenience, but you want them to be fast too. There’s the measurable stuff: fast to boot up, fast to layout, fast to switch orientation, and fast to render. But there’s also the intangible aspects–scrolling needs to feel smooth and animations should be fluid and flicker-free.
h4. A Brand New Layout Engine
One of the key targets for performance improvement was the layout engine. The Sencha Touch 1.0 layout engine was extremely powerful and great for laying out apps just the way you want them, but the price for all that power was often reduced performance. This was especially evident when rotating the device, where layout updates could take up to a second to complete.
Our mission in Touch 2 was to dramatically improve layout performance while maintaining the flexibility that developers are accustomed to. To achieve this, we rethought how to size and position things on screen. The result is massively improved layout performance across the board. Screens pop onto the page much faster when navigating through the app, giving a much more fluid experience, but the most dramatic improvement is when changing a device’s orientation. The new layout engine is so fast we had to use a high-speed camera to measure it. Here’s the Kitchen Sink buttons example running on 1.x and 2.x, slowed down to one quarter speed:
Watch this video on Vimeo
That’s a Motorola Atrix rotating with 1.1 and 2.0. Shooting at 120 frames per second, Sencha Touch 1.1.0 takes 118 frames (0.98 seconds) to update the application layout. With Sencha Touch 2.0, it takes just 42 frames (0.35 seconds) for the exact same example. You’ll see see similar speedups throughout all the demo apps with Sencha Touch 2.0.
h4. Android Performance
Watch this video on Vimeo
The second big improvement we’ve made in Sencha Touch 2.0 is Android performance, particularly when it comes to scrolling and animation. Many of you noted the fact that Android devices were noticeably slower when scrolling through large lists, and that animations could be choppy and exhibit weird visual artifacts.
Touch 2 gives Android its own optimized mechanism for achieving both smooth scrolling and fast, fluid animations. We’ll go further into the technology behind these advances at SenchaCon later this month, but for now here’s the Motorola Atrix again, showing just how much faster 2.0 feels on Android devices.
Startup Time
The third major area of performance improvement is in Sencha Touch startup time. We’ve optimized everything we can put our hands on with startup. And so far we’re seeing between 10% to 25% improvement in startup time on a range of devices, when testing our Kitchen Sink example. This app is sizable–it demonstrates almost every component in the framework and on many devices loads almost a second faster in 2.x:
h3. Easy to Use
The second objective of Sencha Touch 2 is to make it easier to create applications. There are many things we’ve done to improve this, from simplifying configuration options, to providing more example code and completely overhauling the documentation.
h4. Class System and Apps
Sencha Touch 2 uses the powerful new class system from Ext JS 4. This gives us all of the benefits of dynamic loading, intelligent builds that only include the classes you use, mixins, configurations and all the other features of the new engine. We have a full guide to the new class system on the documentation site.
We’ve also brought across the improved application architecture from Ext JS 4, that includes ComponentQuery and production build support. All these features haven’t been at the expense of download size. We’ve been able to keep the total download payload roughly the same size, and that’s before build optimization.
h4. Streamlined Component Configuration
In the past, if you ever needed to set/get a config like “label” you would need to create your setters and getters yourself. Now, with Sencha Touch 2 you get this out of the box. The new class system gives you the ability to set up @configs@–simple properties that are automatically given getter and setter functions, defaults and more.
Sencha Touch 2 makes use of the config system throughout the framework so whenever you see a config on a class you already know that you can reconfigure it at any time (even after it is rendered). Even better, because the config’s setter name always follows the same pattern you already know what function to call.
For example, we can give a Text Field a label when we instantiate it and then know we can easily change it later:
var text = Ext.create('Ext.form.Text', { label: 'My Field' }); // anything we can configure also has a setter function // its name always follows the setConfigName pattern text.setLabel('Another Field');
From the Sencha Touch documentation, every listed config option has a getter and setter function. They all follow the exact same pattern of getConfigName and setConfigName. This makes it really easy to configure and reuse components throughout your app.
h4. Great Documentation
We’re totally obsessed with improving our documentation for Sencha Touch 2. The new docs feature all of our examples and videos baked right in, but the real improvements are in the class reference.
All of the most widely used classes in Sencha Touch 2 feature excellent documentation right in the API reference. Interspersed with the class docs are dozens of live examples that run right in your browser and let you see (and even modify) the example code on the fly. We’ve also brought all of the SASS variables for each Component into the API docs, making it much easier to see what you can customize.
Finally, we’re shipping 11 brand new guides out of the box. Check out our work in progress with guides that explain core concepts like Layouts, Components and Classes, and others that cover how to use components like tab panels, forms and carousels. For Sencha Touch veterans there’s a What’s New in 2 guide, and the new Getting Started guide takes you through building your first app from scratch.
h3. Native Packaging
One of the most common questions developers ask when building Sencha Touch apps is “how do I get my app in front of customers?” In many scenarios, building and deploying apps to the web is exactly what developers want and customers expect. In some cases, getting apps in to app stores is an added bonus.
Today, along with Sencha Touch 2 preview, we’re shipping a developer preview of our SDK Tools 2.0. This first preview is available on Mac OSX and packages your app for submission to the Apple App Store. The new SDK Tools include a new @sencha package@ command that enables you to take your Sencha Touch app and package it up for submission to Apple.
To make a developer’s life easier, on iOS the packager doesn’t require the native SDK so you can package without having to download the iOS SDK. Just download the SDK Tools and you’re ready to build. For developers who do have the the native SDKs, you can use the SDK Tools to directly push your app to the iOS emulator so you can see how your app will run on device.
There will be many more capabilities in our packaging tool by final release. If you’re interested in getting started, embedded in the documentation is a new guide that has all the details on how to use the new packaging capabilities. We think you’ll be as excited as we are with how easy it is now to build and package your web app for native distribution.
h3. Developer Preview
This is just a developer preview so we’re not quite feature complete yet. At the moment the main items missing from the release are multiple carousel animations, sortable tabs, draggables and history/deep linking support. These will all be coming back into the framework before general release.
As a preview release, *APIs are not yet frozen.* This should be fair warning. Because the API is not yet frozen, we’re also not yet guaranteeing backwards compatibility with Sencha Touch 1.x.
Everyone attending SenchaCon later this month will also be able to attend “Jamie Avins’ talk”:http://secure.lenos.com/lenos/sencha/SenchaCon2011/sessions.htm on migrating apps from Sencha Touch 1 to Sencha Touch 2.
h3. Conclusion
From faster startup time to Android advances, from fluid scrolling to amazing documentation, from native packaging to the new class system, Sencha Touch 2 will be a major step forward for developers looking to build mobile HTML5 applications. We’re very excited about all the improvements to Sencha Touch, and we’re excited to see what developers will accomplish. Join us in the forums and keep an eye on the blog as we post more articles on Touch 2.
And of course, if you want to meet the folks behind Touch, join us at SenchaCon in Austin, Texas!
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Great job guys!!
Another work of art! We’rspeechlesschless. Mostly because our jaw dropped on android’s new performance improvements. Well done Sencha, well done.
So psyched, awesome work dev team!
I’ve been waiting to get my hands on this. It looks awesome guys. Wonderful work as always.
A shame the preview is not compatible with the BlackBerry PlayBook :(. I wanted to see if it was finally possible to use animations in apps, but the kitchensync demo make the browser crash and the doc doesn’t load on the device.
You dropped the dispatcher and routes?? Color me disappointed. That was the shinning jewel in Sencha touch 1.1
Certainly awesome work moving the two frameworks closer to a unified platform, but I personally feel like they are missing a large piece of the application puzzle with out a routing and dispatching system.
@esatterwhite nope, routes are coming back in an even better form. Like I said, we’ve dropped a feature or two from the PR so we can get it in your hands faster :) (I actually mention the routing stuff in the post)
I just installed the SDK and tried to package and run the twitter application on the iOS simulator. Just Awesome.
Awesome! Congrats dev team!!!
@esatterwhite This is just a developer preview so we’re not quite feature complete yet. At the moment the main items missing from the release are multiple carousel animations, sortable tabs, draggables and history/deep linking support (a large portion of MVC). These will all be coming back into the framework before general release.
Great work. Is this all the changes will be in final version 2.0? Will there be any new UI controls like Grid control will be added in final version?
Not a single new UI control? I mean, still no data grid??
First, THANKS, AWESOME !!1!!!!111 :)
Out of all removed features, I’d vote for router stuff to be #1 prio. :)
But then, I’m already happy. :)
@Murali @VH We don’t have new UI controls planned for 2.0. We’ve focused on three key areas: Performance, Ease of Use, and Native Packaging. We do have plans for new controls after 2.0 is released.
How to find the list of removed items? I don’t see anywhere in this blog.
SASS variables right in the API docs… nice touch. :)
Thank you, Jamie. Is there a roadmap for ST so we’d have something to plan our effort around?
@VH – as Jamie said we don’t have any new UI controls planned for Touch 2. We’ve had a strong focus on the fundamentals, like performance, Android, native packaging, and the like and that’s all been in response to what our customers have been asking. In the community we’ve seen tons of people build on top of the core classes in Touch to create things like data views and grids and other cool features like that. Of course, we’d love to bring some of that in to the core framework but in Touch 2 we’re focused on the features and areas I mentioned above.
@Murali – we haven’t removed features, they’re just not in preview yet.
Congrats guys! This looks very promising, well done.
This is the first Web UI Toolkit, which doesn’t suck on the Android (2.3) browser. Awesome job! Thank you so much!
@Aditya, all new features are great and I am sure you will get tons of positive feedback from guys building x-platform consumer apps. But since we build LOB apps, new features in 2.0 don’t help us that much, except, probably, better Android perf (we’re targeting primarily iPads and Windows tablets, where perf is OK), so we’d need to know how the roadmap looks like. Is it available? Because ST not having a given control is not necessarily a problem. The problem is not knowing when or whether certain feature will be implemented. Not having a roadmap is going to be a huge impediment for business ISVs adopting ST.
Cool!
Good job. I’m looking forward to playing with this when I get home.
Great work I’m sure but the Motorola Atrix is a dual-core beast of a phone and is one of the fastest out there atm. As a developer I’d like to know how well it performs on something like the Droid or Galaxy S.
I am a little concerned about app start up times, how related to the size of the kitchen sink demo is this?
Put another way, if I produced a native iOS package for a small productivity app in Sencha Touch 2, and which loaded 0.5k of text data from local storage into a list home page, how fast would it load on the iPhone 4 (non S)?
Nice!, wonder when we can get the full version in our hands
@Shaun we’ll record some more videos to show those other devices, but the performance improvements are pervasive (Galaxy S 2 looks great for example). Atrix was just the first device I picked up…
@camelCase there are definitely more improvements on bootup time coming, we’ve spent more time on layout speed so far
Are there plans to include a wrapper for native/device integration e.g. Getting acces to the camera when I have the app wrapped in the native wrapper?
Yes James there will be device APIs.
awesome!
Fantastic! Seems like you guys have been busy :)
You guys are amazing.
“JAW DROPS” exactly …thats what I see when I talk about Sencha Touch to our clients.
And this Native Packaging features… is awesome.
I tried to port my existing app (using Touch 1.1), but found the component property ‘contentEl’ missing. contentEl was helpful in reusing my library of components. Is there a different way to place an already created element in an touch 2.0 component? I certainly don’t want to use the ‘html’ property.
Would appreciate a feedback comment.
I picked up v 1.1.0 about a week ago and was about to drop it today because I could not easily wrap my mind around it and some of the samples I need don’t even work.
I’m hoping that the documentation in this version will get me enthusiastic again.
I don’t mind working hard to learn something new but I need the appropriate documentation to do that.
Experienced developers forget that even the basics is not obvious when you start something new.
I know its not a final version but I should be able to tell quickly if I can wrap my mind around it.
Good luck to both of us.
great stuff guys! the changes are EXACTLY what I’ve been needing: performance is the biggest thing for sure
I tried dropping this in straight up, and got a regModel error, but I’m assuming there will be some sort of v1 to v2 migration document
can’t wait for the final release
@Rakagod would love to hear how you get on :)
@eliss we de-emphasized gaining good compatibility for this preview release as not everything is finalized yet. As well as rounding that out (we are able to do a full diff between 1.1 API and 2.0 API to verify) we’ll be providing a migration guide once we hit that milestone
We are happy to see this new developer preview and are evaluating the update of our #1 Sencha Touch app COOKLIST (https://www.sencha.com/apps/cooklist/ ) from 1.1.0 to 2.0.
Can you tell anything about SCSS changes? Did the structure/variables change very much?
Thanks!
Great work Sencha.
I don’t see any mention of the packager working with android or blackberry.
Is this expected to be available closer to full release?
Also, Is there any example of how Native API’s will be exposed to us?
Am I the only android user who doesn’t want an iphone look and feel when running a html5 web app on an Android phone?
Awesome news and job !
What about Windows Phone support ?
Is there an official platform support doc ? Would be great to see a matrix like the one from JQuery Mobile guys :)
@Gregor layout-level CSS changed a fair bit, most components themselves have very similar markup to before though
@mwrf yes the native packager creates Android build, we just accidentally clipped that out of the guide. We’ll push an update shortly
@Christian more theme options are on the way
@David windows phone has such a tiny share that we’re concentrating on the bigger players first. However, we have been removing webkit-specific stuff where possible to make supporting platforms like windows phone easier to add
Hmmmm… There seems to be some problems with event detection on Android. Flicking doesn’t work (moves the whole app and breaks the UI a little), you have to be very gentle when wanting to scroll down lists.
Hope fully this will be fixed in DP2 :)
Great release guys.. Is there a alternative for the ptype: pullrefresh (Pull To Refresh for Ext.dataview.List)?
Awesome! This couldn’t have come at a better time for me :D can’t wait to get my head into this.
After playing with it last night, I feel that 2 is a giant improvement over 1.1 in terms of ease of use. Now that Sencha 2 more or less mirrors the ExtJS4 format, has there been any thought to creating a unified API? So that I can write an application once in ExtJS4, and have it appear correctly in mobile/desktop browsers?
Are your support Android, Blackberry, Mango phone Native Tools also?
I read that the migration speech from 1.x to 2.0 will be covered in the sencha conf. How soon after can we expect (or hope) to see the videos on your website? Unfortunately I can’t make it :(
Seems that Ext.os is missing from the API docs but used in several examples. I assume that will be added in the final version?
@Dewey Pull to Refresh is high on the list of things to bring back in the next release or two
@Michael thanks :D More to follow on Ext JS 4/ST2 convergence (it’s non trivial…)
@lee native packaging for Android is already supported
@Eric conference is in 2 weeks, videos will take longer. We’ll put something up in the meantime to make life easier. Compatibility is explicitly not included in this preview though
FYI- when trying out this new release with touch charts, I got an error in touch-charts-debug.js line
339:
Ext.applyIf(Ext.fx.Manager, Ext.util.Observable.prototype);
Ext.util.Observable is undefined.
Great work Guys!
Please make the docs more mobile browser friendly. When i try to view the docs from my phone’s browser the scrollbars (ie the docs) are unusable (SGS 2 stock android browser)
What about the Charts? When will it be upgraded to the new touch version?
Great work! fantastic as always!
@Ari and @Chris: we’re already porting Charts internally, will get it in your hands as soon as we’re happy with it :
@Zoltan definitely :)
tks a lot Ed!
this is a great news!
Great news and a lot of improvement! Great work guys!
However forms are still broken and it’s a deal breaker. When you try to enter something into the Name field in the Forms example the second edit field appears, partially overlaying the first one. Tested on Android 2.3.3.
thank you for answer Ed Spencer…
And I have another question..
if sencha touch2 will be released some day.
Do Sencha Touch1 live also… and update new version… 1.2.. 1.3… 1.4 …?? or Died??
@lee we’ll be publicly releasing Sencha Touch 1.1.1 shortly. There is a 1.2 also in the works, though most of our attention is focused on the (vastly superior) 2.x line
Sencha Touch 1.1.1 is now available from the Touch download page.
I’ve been trying to package the kitchensink for android. But every time i package it following the Native Android Packaging documentation i get an .APP file instead of an .APK .
Am i doing something wrong or is this a bug?
Great Thank you for Answer Ed Spencer. ^^
Out of curiosity, what was the motivation to create a Sencha packaging scheme for iOS and Android versus using PhoneGap? Does the Sencha packaging scheme do the same thing as PhoneGap by creating a native web view and running the content inside that web view?
@Chris – one of the major reasons people use Touch & Ext JS is that it’s all fully integrated and designed to work together. A chunk of touch developers are packaging their apps for store distribution, and we wanted to integrate packaging seamlessly into Touch and touch tools if we were going to maintain the best possible experience. We thought about embedding phonegap, but decided that we didn’t want an external dependency, particularly when the functionality is pretty straightforward, and the code base is small.
I believe the Sencha packaging into iOS and Android is an essential step for developer adoption. Also, now that PhoneGap has been acquired, who knows it’s future as far as cost or changes.
Keep up the great work, Sencha. I am a huge fan and hope to have a handful of Sencha Touch 2.0 apps by the end of the year.
@Vitaly That form issue is an open item for us, but any further details you can provide would certainly help us resolve it. You can post the bug in our forums at https://www.sencha.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?92-Sencha-Touch-2.x-Bugs
well done , great job !
Hi guys, anywhere I can find more documentation on the native packager? My first tests aren’t so smooth… (“iPhone Distribution: ambiguous (matches “iPhone Distribution: —” and “iPhone Distribution: —” in —.keychain)”) – It should be noted I have multiple iPhone distribution keys.
Also, I’m not sure how to properly fill in certificateAlias for iOS as there’s no example.
sencha-touch.js vs sencha-touch-all.js?
I see the entire library (compressed) grew a couple hundred K. What’s included in the 93K sencha-touch.js lib?
@Evan it’s carrying a lot of backwards-compatibility stuff that we’ll tear out into a separate file, expect that to drop significantly
@Rob are you referring to the provisioning part of the process, before the actual packaging?
And by the way — somehow forgot to mention — SOLID RELEASE, GUYS. Cannot wait until I’m able to deploy the GM. Android performance is so critical to our app and you’ve seemed to nail it.
@Ed Spencer
Well, I already have two different provisioning for my Sencha Touch app: one for me, and one for the company I’m building for. So, I brought over my www folder from phonegap, and wrote a quick configuration file. When I run “sencha package config.json”, I get that error. The problem seems to be that it doesn’t know whether to use my certificate or the company’s certificate. I’d like to help it out (use my certificate now, and switch to company’s later).
@Rob I suggest you create a thread in the Touch 2 bugs forum (https://www.sencha.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?92-Sencha-Touch-2.x-Bugs). Drop me a message and I’ll make sure the right people see it
@Evan thanks, we appreciate that :)
we have already developed a half of the application, should we upgrade to sencha 2.0 now??????????
please reply……..
Starting a new project that will depend on touch charts for lots of content. We need usable output in the next couple of weeks. I’m assuming this means we have to stick with V1 for the time being?
@Ed – Thanks, message posted – looks like Jamie’s team is looking into it.
@Others who are looking at upgrading – The new interfaces have a changed a bit, and the Docs and examples are still being filled in. If your processes are like ours – you’ll likely want to put this in a future release schedule, rather than immediate change. It is cleaner and faster though – awesome job team Sencha.
I download the example of Sencha Touch 2 Developer Preview version.
But the nestedlist example can’t not show the lists, it’s all empty.
It’s seems the 2.0 version have good performance enhancement on Android, I want to try this preview version on my production as soon as possible.
Can you give me some advice to try new nestedlist ?
@James rather hard to tell what you mean, http://docs.sencha.com/touch/2-0/#!/example/kitchensink/index.html has a NestedList powering its navigation… (there’s also a second NestedList inside the User Interface section of that example)
Great review, Ed! Very thorough.
I agree, documentation is quite well. I was having some issues at first but documentation got me through without having to nag support or my nerdy friends. :)
Great job guys. Apart from packaging will ST 2 SDK provide some of the native functions PhoneGap provides? What will be the relationship between ST 2 and PhoneGap?
Congratulations for the great work guys! ST is amazing
I started a job using ST1.1 and now I’m tempted to move to ST2 to finish it up.
But history support/deep linking is a must in my app…do you know when it would be available?
Thank you very much.
Nice work: 2.0 is way faster and gives me hope for HTML5 as a viable option on Android.
Really like the new features but if I’m honest it took me a LONG time to wrap my head around how to lay out the application. The automatic getter generation threw me.
To save others the trouble I put a simple MVC app-scaffold together on github using ExtJS4.0 MVC as a reference. Fork it here:
https://github.com/FrancisShanahan/SenchaTouch2MVCHelloworld
Again, nice work.
-fs
@Francis that’s fantastic, thanks :) We’ll be adding something similar to the framework in the next release or two
@Claudio we’re tentatively expecting history to come back in either the next release or the one immediately after it
@Jack thanks, docs have been a high priority for us (we’re not done yet though!)
Do you plan support for Opera Mobile and Firefox Mobile?
@edspencer
Thanks, We actually use the dispatcher as an abstraction layer for 3rd party api like tracking analytics, and as a way for parts of the application to communicate with other parts of the application. Sure we use it for navigation and deep linking, but deep linking is not the primary why we are interested in the dispatcher.
Been following Sencha touch with interest eventhough i’m not into mobile apps development. Can anybody tell me if i can use ST for non-mobile devices like Kiosk with touchscreen?
@phil We haven’t experimented with it, but hypothetically, if it were WebKit and provided touch support, ST would be fantastic on a Touchscreen Kiosk…
@phil This is what I do in my day job, We use sencha touch for our Kiosk applications, running with chrome in kiosk mode. It works a treat, better than any android device I’ve tried running touch 1.0 on anyway.
The only stumbling block is that you will need to create a touch keyboard if you want to enter data.
I’ve created my own by extending Ext.Sheet, It behaves like any mobile browser keyboard, popping up
whenever a text field is entered into. I’ll have to stick it up on github soon.
You don’t need to worry about all the performance issues you see talked about both here on the forums and elsewhere, in my experience. Tweet me @mwrf if you have any questions.
Awesome! Looking forward to ST2 Dev time!
So far, so great. Great work by all, can’t wait to see the progress!
Any information as to when the next DP drops?
@mwrf, thanks… sounds great indeed. but i can’t just run a chrome because it needs to be integrated with our kiosk app. it’s like exiting web temporarily and need to pass information with one another. hoping that OpenWebkitSharp (.NET Webkit browser control) will achieve my future requirement, just in time for ST 2.0.
Damn, I was hoping to get a filter on Nestedlists. I’ve been waiting (im)patiently for this release and they haven’t addressed this, although it has been discussed many times on the forum.
Malky
@mwrf that sounds amazing, tell us more
@Mike will probably be week after next but no guarantees
sorry, but I’m absolutely angry.
I spend so much time with the fu… Version 1.x and it is ready for our customers, now a new version is on the marked and nothing works….
Absolutely……
by the way.
the version 2.xx solved not the problem with input forms in android browser.
->: examples/forms/index.html
open it with a normal Android phone browser, edit a field and scroll down or up and select a other field (appear 2 input fields)
it looks like the version 1.xx
i tried running the getting started on Chrome 13 but the blogs are not showing. i can see an error “Origin null is not allowed by Access-Control-Allow-Origina”. any idea?
Hy Ed! I’m very happy with your work! I will defenetly donate you, when my app will run well.
Did you manage that local storage worke with TreeStore?
@Samuel don’t donate; go make something awesome with Sencha Touch, then come back and tell us all about it – that’s all the reward we need
@phil you’re referring to the Getting Started guide for Touch 2? Those links are hard coded in the guide, seems unlikely that you’d see that error for that reason…
Thanks for your reply Ed…
I will tell you as soon as I’m ready. :-)
But what about the LokalTreeStore? Is it possible to make a local store for TreeStore?
Good job! :-) Thank you!
If we have access to the internal SQLite database in iOS with Sencha Touch 2?
Hi Ed, is there any plan to release the next version of sencha touch (bug fixes mostly)?
Thanks
Hi Ed.
I am wondering if the Ext.regApplication” is part of the preview version?
Cannot find this function anywhere.
kind regards.
btw. In this developer release the links to example apps from the docs often don’t work. They link to (for example) /sencha/docs/touch/examples/kitchensink/index.html instead of /sencha/examples/kitchensink/index.html so there’s a relative path problem in there somewhere.
Is there any way in this version, I can use routing ?
It’s amazing..I am just speechless..
Quick question: I downloaded the Sencha 2 and was trying to run orielly example from the examples folder however it is complaining about Ext.reg method. Is this method removed?
@Babar not yet, but it will be in very soon.
@pravin That example has not yet been updated to 2.0. It will be in an upcoming release.
hello Sencha team
I love the new API document!
But I test the new 2.0 example on my Android (Samsung ST5570),
I don’t see any performance on my machine,
is my phone’s hardware too slow ?
Hi guys,
It will be great to have some answers on several questions. Does it have sense to begin a new project using Sencha Touch 2.0 PR2? Is it possible to use Sencha Touch 2.0 PR2 using MVC pattern? It’s very important to know because in the other case I will try with Sencha Touch 1.1.1.
Hey guys, I’ve been developer-previewing ST2, to see what it feels like.
Outcome: http://www.redditui.com
Perf is feeling great in this version! There’s some important features missing, which necessitated some javascript hackery, but otherwise, I’m really looking forward to the next release
Is there *any* guidance as to the timeline for something like a release for ST2? I’ve spent probably 70% of my time over the last three months working around inscrutable gotchas, horrible layout bugs, inconsistent data package behavior, and documentation full of holes. I love the concept of ST, and frankly have sunk too much time into it now to go back, but at this point I’m regretting not just building on native platforms as the v1.x line was obviously rushed to release and has cost us tons of time. Combine that with the total lack of guidance on roadmaps and release schedules, and it’s getting hard for me to recommend Sencha to anybody at this point.
I’m glad there’s a v2 that addresses at least some of this, but without some guidance as to what the rollout schedule is, it’s impossible to make a decision on whether or not to abandon the v1 code and start investing time in ST2, since a lot of code will need to be re-written. Can Sencha PLEASE at least sketch out a roadmap?
Finally – why is there all this focus on native packaging, when there are several other, much more mature projects out there to do that and there are so many basic problems with the Sencha Touch platform itself?
Well said, John Doe. +1
Awesome work Team Sencha..
I have a query.. Will native packaging for android too is expected in future St 2.O releases..?
John Doe. +1
“I’m glad there’s a v2 that addresses at least some of this, but without some guidance as to what the rollout schedule is, it’s impossible to make a decision on whether or not to abandon the v1 code and start investing time in ST2, since a lot of code will need to be re-written. Can Sencha PLEASE at least sketch out a roadmap?”
@Jay: just look at AppMobi (or, I’m sure, others), you get native packaging sans SDKs, for Android and iPhone, right now, for free. There are plenty of non-Sencha solutions out there for that already.
John Doe, I agree with what you’re saying. There were other priorities than to include yet another packager. And a roadmap would be more than useful because at this stage, who wants to spend time working on a beta if one doesn’t know if the features he needs will be available in the final release. I wouldn’t advise anyone to start with ST1 for anything but a simple app requiring no more than a few hours to complete. It’s too broken to build complex, reliable apps.
The SDK for Mac crashes on install due to some 3rd party dependencies (at post install step) on Mac OS X 10.7.2..
Has there been any word/response from John Doe’s blog post? It is critical, in order to maintain momentum AND to add support from more “corporate” customers (or potential customers) that at least a 6 month road map with scheduled deliverables are spelled out and document. Yes, plans can change and shift. Yes, timelines and dates can slip. No, current users and potential users can’t be left in the dark. If this is just a “hobby” piece of software then fine – no road map with schedules is needed; however, that is not the impression (nor should it be). Many of us have our road maps and deliverables we have to give customers and we can’t afford to offer silence – we need to be responsive to them, to the market, and against our competition. I urge those here that can, please tell us something. If you want help developing that road map, a schedule of deliverables, or whatever, let me know and I will help – I do this for a living. In the meantime, please consider what we all have said here within the last week. Silence is not a response.
agreed, Steve Straley.
My team just started to talk about jquery because we don’t have any idea when the version two is going to be release. We felt that sencha is not supporting us anymore… that is really sad. We see more roadmap in opensource projects than here… it is really sad!
I am trying to hold the next version of my mobile app just because I want to upgrade to ST2, but I think maybe it is time to move forward and really look other options… I don’t think there is other framework better then ST2, but the way things are going it is better to have other options…
agreed, Steve Straley.
My team just started to talk about jquery because we don’t have any idea when the version two is going to be release. We felt that sencha is not supporting us anymore… that is really sad. We see more roadmap in opensource projects than here… it is really sad!
I am trying to hold the next version of my mobile app just because I want to upgrade to ST2, but I think maybe it is time to move forward and really look other options… I don’t think there is other framework better then ST2, but the way things are going it is better to have other options…
Thanks for all your comments. Sencha Touch 1.x is an accomplished SDK that has been used to build a huge number of applications – just look at http://www.sencha.com/apps for what people have built with it.
We’ve already shipped PR2 of Sencha Touch, and in today’s newsletter (which you should sign up for) there’s a detailed walkthrough of porting an app from ST1 to ST2.
We’re shying away from giving specific dates for betas or releases, but as guidance, Ext JS 4 took about 3 months from first preview to release and Sencha Touch 1 took five months from first beta to release. Other projects keep their releases in alpha and beta status for over a year before release – we don’t do that and it’s not our track record.
Michael,
Thanks for the update. The question below relates to a bug in the current build (as demo’ed in the show and tell of this blog.). Maybe someone from your team can verify if it is a known issue?
>> The SDK for Mac crashes on install due to some 3rd party dependencies (at post install step) on Mac OS X 10.7.2..
Michael,
Thanks for the update. I understand the tendency to “shy away” from dates. As a Director of Development I, too, don’t like to give dates especially without LOE’s or worse, specs. But I have to assume when a preview of a pending release is announced that the LOE’s and specs are in place which means a date can be calculated. I push back all the time when I don’t know but when I do know, I announce it (internally and externally) with a road map and a timeline. I cannot imagine that your processes are any different.
Turning to “what other people have written” – that is a good marketing confirmation statement; however, for someone new to this and having to make a decision about future products, I cannot in good conscience make any decision based on what I now know as an older version and what I don’t know, what a new version may entail. Since I don’t know your track record that isn’t important to me – a road map is – our customers expect that from us and we expect it in turn whether it is Microsoft, CodeJock, or whomever. Think of it this way – I don’t want to schedule resource burn rates based on something that I know will change, especially when I have limited resources for planning, scheduling, and commitments. In short, our customers expect that from us and we, as your customers (or potential), expect that in turn so we can bubble up our release dates, expectations, and road maps.
Again, if you want assistance in this area I will be glad to help.
Steve
in thes image
http://img1.sencha.com/files/misc/20111010-sencha-touch-startup-times.png
ST1 is more faster that ST2
Is st2 better ?
sorry i confuse in the last message.
ST1 need more time to start APP -> ST2 is more faster and better
How the heck did you guys get that performance on your android phone? I just dropped the examples onto our webserver and I am getting really laggy lists and forms… I wish it were as smooth as that but.. it’s not…
Michael,
I just signed up for your newsletter. Is there a way I can get the archive of that “detailed walkthrough of porting an app from ST1 to ST2?”
When is Touch V2 pr3 comming out ?
Will pull2refresh and listpaging be included in this version
I am really missing this ..
Thanks in advance