6 Tips To Build Web Apps Fast With Sencha Tools

Today, almost every business focuses on improving its digital and online presence. This is because having an online presence allows you to reach a broader user base and makes selling your products or services much easier. As a result, businesses worldwide are creating their own web apps. These apps allow companies to promote their products/services, enhance customer relationships, and build brand loyalty. However, in today’s fast-paced world, it’s crucial to build web apps as quickly as possible to stay competitive in the market. But you must also ensure you don’t compromise on quality and performance. This is where tools like a JavaScript framework, web app builder, testing tool, etc., are helpful. These tools enable web developers to build a high-quality new web app faster.

In this article, we’ll show how to build a web app quickly and how Sencha tools can help you with this.

Which Sencha Tools Can You Use To Build Web Apps Faster?

Sencha offers a complete set of tools that speed up the web development process and help create high-performance modern web apps. These include a JavaScript framework, a testing tool, a JavaScript grid, a visual app builder, and more.

Here, we’ve listed four main Sencha tools for building web applications quickly and easily:

Ext JS Framework

Ext JS is a robust JavaScript framework offering more than 140 pre-built and fully-tested UI components for quickly creating cross-platform web and mobile apps. These include buttons, progress bars, menus, sliders, carousels, calendars, check boxes, icons, text fields, and many more. All these high-performance components are tested to work together flawlessly in any web application. Ext JS also provides charts, D3 visualizations, and data grids for building enterprise-level data-intensive web apps. Many useful extensions from the Sencha community are also available for developers.

Some other notable features of Ext JS include cross-browser support, a layout manager, and a responsive config system. The apps built using Ext JS are highly secure and fast. Moreover, these apps are compatible with all modern devices and browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari 6+, Opera 12+, IE6+, and more. With the layout manager, you can control the display of data and components across various screen sizes and devices. Additionally, the responsive config system allows the UI (user interface) components to adjust to different device orientations like landscape and portrait.

Sencha Architect

Sencha Architect is an easy-to-use visual app builder. It enables users to develop cross-platform HTML5 apps for desktop and mobile phones using Ext JS. It accelerates the HTML5 application development process by providing drag-and-drop features. This way, you don’t have to spend too much time on manual coding. Moreover, your app code is optimized for high performance. When you create a web app with Architect, all the Ext JS components are available for use. You can also add extensions from the Sencha community to Architect for repeated use or build your custom framework extensions.

Architect is known to save developers time as it eliminates the need to write most boilerplate code. Moreover, automatic code generation helps create desktop and mobile apps in less time. With this tool, you can see how your app will appear to users as you build the app.

Sencha Grid

Sencha Grid, available as a part of Ext JS, is a robust data grid for creating data-driven web apps. Enterprise-grade web apps often use data grids to display data in a well-organized tabular format. Sencha’s high-performance data grid can efficiently handle big data (millions of records) and enables users to interact with data in many ways. For example, it offers several advanced row and column operations, such as drag-and-drop, copy-Paste, row expander, column grouping, sorting, filtering, and many more. Ext JS grid also supports infinite scrolling and live data streaming.

The grid is tested across various browsers and platforms (web, desktop, and mobile) and can adapt to different screen sizes. It can handle data requests from remote or local data sources through JSON, Ajax, and RESTful methods.

Sencha Test

Sencha Test is a robust unit and end-to-end testing solution for Ext JS apps. With Sencha Test, you can deliver high-quality apps while reducing testing time and cost. It enables developers to automate test runs and supports cross-browser testing. This means web app developers can test real-time app changes from the CI system. Moreover, you can execute end-to-end tests on several browsers simultaneously.

With Sencha Test, you can keep your test code clean by writing functional and unit tests in JavaScript using page object functions. Additionally, you can store tests in a source CMS. You can also use efficient APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to target specific Ext JS components in your app. Sencha Test also provides detailed results reports for manual and automated test runs, including failed tests.

Tips To Build Web Apps Fast

You can use Sencha tools and follow these steps to accelerate your web app process:

1. Create Wireframe

A wireframe is essentially a two-dimensional blueprint or illustration that allows web app programmers and UI designers to discuss the structure of the web app. It mainly focuses on interface structure, such as space allocation for UI components, app functionality, and content prioritization. Creating a wireframe right at the start of the project before you write any code and finalize the visual design will save lots of time. And you don’t have to make time-consuming design adjustments later.

2. Release MVP

MVP, or minimum viable product, is a part of the product’s short release cycles. It is a basic version of the app that consists of all the core features and functionality. It has enough features to attract potential customers. This allows you to validate the product idea early in the app development cycle. Hence, it’s essential to keep your release cycles short and get timely feedback from the target market/end users.

3. Adopt Agile Methodology and Plan Sprints

The agile methodology involves creating and releasing small chunks of functional software quickly while adding more features over time. It focuses on effective communication and collaboration among all the teams working on the project. Sprints are part of the agile methodology. A sprint refers to a dedicated time period for completing a specified amount of work.

A sprint planning meeting refers to an event where the product development goal and plan for the upcoming sprint are established. This is done based on the team’s review of its app backlog.

4. Automate Testing

Automated testing involves using software testing tools to automate human-driven manual tasks of reviewing and testing a software product or an app. These tools save time and costs and help deliver quality software products. You can use a reliable tool like Sencha Test to automate your test runs here.

5. Component-Based UI

Adopting a component-based UI approach can help save lots of time and costs. It involves designing and developing components of the app in a way that they can be reused in other apps. For example, you can use Ext JS pre-built UI components in any app, depending on your requirements.

6. Regular Quality Assurance Testing

Quality assurance (QA) is a critical software development stage. QA testing refers to the process of ensuring that your app is of the highest possible quality. When you check the quality of each element of your app while developing it, and also when it is developed, you can save a lot of time. If you conduct QA testing once the final product is completed, solving issues will take so long.

Conclusion

Developing a web app involves several time-consuming tasks. However, you can accelerate the web development process by using efficient tools like a JavaScript framework, visual app builder, and testing tools. Sencha offers all such tools to help you quickly build high-performance, data-driven apps. In this article, we’ve also listed the key steps that can significantly speed up your web app development process.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is a web app?

A web app is a software product designed to work on web browsers. It uses different programming languages and web technologies, such as CSS, HTML, and modern JS.

What are modern and progressive web apps?

A web app developed using the best practices of modern web app development. Unlike traditional apps, these apps work on both mobile and web platforms.

How long does it take to build a web app?

The development time depends on the app’s complexity, features, and functionality. However, you can reduce the development time by following the best practices and using the tools designed to build web apps quickly.

Start using Sencha Ext JS today and build high-performance modern web apps quickly!