I have recently read the first book written about the js library Ext.js.
The book is written bye : Shea Frederick, Steve 'Cutter' Blades and Colin Ramsay.
I was a bit afraid of bying the very first book about Ext and honestly I have to say that after the first 2 chapters my doubts were growing very fast.
Infact the book in the firsts chapters tends to treat really basic arguments with a very scholastic approach. Many writer tend to start their books with quite basic staff but in this case think the first 30/40 pages could have a had a better use.
After that things start to get interesting. The book analize Ext approaching the Form api passing then to Grids, Tree, Layout Drag and Drops etc... Any macro area of the Api is analyzed with some working example and many suggestion and tips.
The examples for any argument are well documented and explained.
I also appreciated the fact that the authors spent a lot of pages giving tips or ideas on how the example could be coded in a different way pushing the reader to explore more the Ext Api.
And here was the big surprise about Ext. Following the book examples I found a lot of Ext features that are are documented only in the api with no higlight in extjs web site or forums.
I so discovered how really work the store class and the easy that is to implement your application ( also without usign ext widgets ) using the Store class as your dataset repository. This makes your app really agnostic about the data format you are receiving. Ext map the data using a reader class and makes your application not coupled to the kind of data format ( array, json, xml ) that your application is receiving.
I was also impressed about the gris and especially working with the inline editing. Ext is able to make your data persist on client marking as dirty the modified elements up to the data commit. Amazing.
So. I was surprised about Ext power and stability.
I have already started to play with the library widgets ( but I am also considering the Ext Data funsctionality with no Ext widget support ) and I really want to recomend the book that can really open your eyes to the Ext powerfull World.
