Making development with Ext JS fast

Question

Ext JS is a nice framework for web UI, but I found that building and putting stuff together takes a long time and painfully slow.

This might be a general problem when working with JavaScript, but does anybody have any way to speed things up?

What can I use? Better IDE with good JavaScript suppport? GUI designers? Code generators?

I need some way to speed up common things like building grids and forms but yet let me do complex things like creating custom components easily.

I'm using ASP.NET MVC. Coolite seems nice at first, but I feel that I'll be having trouble when creating any custom components later on.

Answer 1

There's always Ext GWT, which lets you use Eclipse tooling (and all of the advantages that gives you, such as refactoring, swift code navigation, etc.) to create your Ext/JavaScript app.

Answer 2

When you download the ExtJs library, you find lot of sample applications for common requirements like Grid panel, forms, form elements etc.

Regarding IDEs, you dont find mature productive tools, but check the below link and wish it could be of help to you http://www.extjs.com/blog/2008/02/01/ides-plugins-and-tools-for-ext-js-20/

But if you really wish to develop custom components, you need to get through knowledge,start approaching with ExtJs-provided sample apps.

Answer 3

If you want to get faster at anything, practice it until you fully understand how it works and how to make it do what you want. If you are just starting out, why would expect to be able to work as quickly as you do when you are working on something that you are very familiar with?

Answer 4

ExtJS is building a designer right know so you can look forward it, the only problem I think is not gonna be free.

you can see a video demo there, in term of release date I think this is due to the first quarter of this year.

Answer 5

I say learn the framework. But to develop apps, I use IntelliJ IDEA, which has partial code completion, etc. It costs money though.

Answer 6

Once you have some practice and understanding of how ExtJS works, you'll get faster at it. By using the examples for reference, and building up my application in small pieces, I've gotten much better (and faster) at developing stuff with ExtJS. A great way to get started is to find an example (or two) that kind of do what you need, and modify (or combine) them to see how they work together.