> Ben suggested trying ExtJS to me because the basic functionality of > ExtJS is close to that of jQuery. So I tried it and am pretty impressed > indeed. The raw powers of ExtJS are definitely the complex widgets. I > have never before seen an inline-editable grid with server-side sorting > and an AJAJ (AJAX with JSON instead of XML) paginator. > > I see two problems though: > > - ExtJS (all of it) is 500 KB large. At least Firefox, Konqueror and > Opera load that pretty fast. But Firebug (a debugger addon for > Firefox) has a lot of trouble with that and only a hacked version > runs half decently. > - You will write your application in 90% Javascript and 10% Pylons. > ExtJS just uses a backend like Pylons to exchange JSON information > for typical CRUD operations. You can't just use formencode with > htmlfill to validate your forms because you do not send HTML to > the browser. So you have to do some other kind of validation and > add Javascript for error handling. Don't get me started on that > ugly "for" loops in Javascript. I hoped I'd never again have to > see them since I dumped C. > > So, yes, ExtJS is mighty but for most applications it's too 2.0-ish. > ExtJS applications don't degrade at all. Although their developers made > great efforts in making the CSS and HTML good enough to work in all > browsers I could try (Firefox 2, Konqueror, Opera 9, IE 7) it's pure > bloat. Sure it's functional and I don't want to re-invent all those > wheels. But take a look at the default CSS: ~850 classes. And a normal > grid is a ten-level-deep monster of DIVs and TABLEs. Not sure I'll > finish my current project with ExtJS instead of jQuery. > </my 2¢> > > Christoph I have been using Extjs in combination with Pylons heavily for a few months (first version 1, later version 2). I have a mixed experience
- It has full feature set of widgets - It looks very nice but is bloated in many ways - Due to its size you need a lot of bandwidth on the server - It is slow to use. Opening a dialog box once a page is loaded, is very slow compared to hand made javascript. It becomes even annoying on 3 years old PCs; - extjs uses tons of css style sheets classes linked to all the widgets. Sadly enough these style sheet classes are not documented. Either you use the predefined styles, or you have hours work to do some modifications The biggest complaint I have and the main reason to stop using it is the development process. You have to write a lot of error prone javascript to tie together all the widgets; This can only be debugged using long firebug sessions. I was hoping that after the initial learning curve, the development would speed up, but that is not the case Ruben --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "pylons-discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to pylons-discuss@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
