the singularity of being and nothingness
Archive for July, 2013
Sencha Fiddle Forum is Now Open!
Jul 28th
Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to check out Sencha Fiddle, the brand-new jsFiddle-style online tool from Sencha that makes creating an Ext JS or Sencha Touch snippet, test, or debugging script quick and easy. Since my previous post about Sencha Fiddle, the team has rolled out a number of bug fixes (data tabs save now!!), which make it that much better to use.
But even cooler, Sencha has opened up a forum dedicated to Sencha Fiddle. So if you find a bug, have a question about using Sencha Fiddle, or just want to suggest how it could be better, head on over and get involved. You can even now use BBCode to embed fiddles directly into any forum posts…pretty sweet!
See you there 🙂
Share this: Fiddle, Sencha Style!
Jul 19th
I’ve blogged about this before: I really love jsFiddle, the excellent online JavaScript snippet creator/editor. One of the reasons I REALLY like it is because it allows one to use the latest(ish) version of ExtJS. One of the reasons I DON’T like it is because I have to setup the environment every time to use ExtJS. Sure, it only takes a few seconds, but wouldn’t it be great if Sencha had their own flavor?
Well, this week at SenchaCon, we saw a sneak peek (perhaps not intentional…?) of a beta version of Fiddle, an online JS snippet editor/profiler. The big pull for me, of course, is that Fiddle already knows about ExtJS/Touch, so getting setup for creating a snippet is instantaneous.
Here are some the major features:
Choose Your Framework…and Theme!When composing a new fiddle, you can easily select from any of the currently available library versions…all the way back to Ext JS 2.3.0…whoah. Additionally, for Ext JS 4.2.x, you can even select the theme that you’d like to apply to the rendered content.
Mocking DataMocking data for stores and other AJAX requests is pretty slick. At the bottom of the main editing area, you’ll see the typical tabs for JavaScript, CSS, More >
ExtJS 4.2 Walkthrough — Part 11: Executive Dashboard
Jul 14th
With the successful roll-out of our workflow system, management has come up with another great idea: an Executive Dashboard. The main idea is that when anyone with the “Admin” role logs in, they should be greeted with a “dashboard” of sorts that will allow them to see a variety of details from across the application, such as snapshots of the charts we previously built, outstanding workflow actions, and the most recently added inventory records.
Of course, we’ve already built all this stuff, so we confidently respond that this is no problem, and we’ll have it done in a jiffy. So let’s get jiffy-ing!
StrategyNOTE: Code for this installment can be found on GitHub.
One of the best things about the way we’ve built our ExtJS 4 app is that we can now really start to benefit from reuse of code. Instead of having to re-create all the components (charts, grids, etc), we can simply instantiate them in new contexts and move on with our lives.
For this Executive Dashboard, we’ll reuse both of the charts that we created earlier, as we all reusing the inventory grid twice. Since we’ve already created stores and models for all of these, there’s ZERO that we have to create More >
ExtJS 4.2 Walkthrough — Part 10: Workflow
Jul 13th
Wow! Part 10 already! Looking back over the last 9 sessions, we’ve accomplished A TON. Starting from scratch, we’ve generated a brand new app, developed a nice little inventory management system, wrapped it up in role-based security, and even implemented a few shiny reports. We should feel pretty good about what we’ve accomplished, and so should our boss.
As is typical, though, pat-on-the-backs for a job well done generally come bundled with a list of 20 more things that need to be done…yesterday. In our case, management wants us to implement a role-based workflow system that will allow them to more granularly track how inventory products go from initial creation to a final “Approved” status.
This is no problem for us, however. By now, we’ve been around the block a few times with ExtJS 4. Â Sure, the details vary from task to task, but we’ve found the sweet spot for attacking problems and solving them with code. All that’s left is to implement the skills that we are mastering on a daily basis.
The RequirementsNOTE: Code for this installment can be found on GitHub.
As mentioned, we need to implement a simple workflow process into our inventory management. While the workflow process will not alter the “how” More >
ExtJS 4.2 Walkthrough — Part 9: Oooh, Shiny!
Jul 9th
In our last installment, we dealt with a very common occurrence that happens in the course of real-life development: putting out the fire of a managerial ad-hoc requirement. In our case, we implemented a login and role-management system (something which was not required in initial requirements-gathering). And even though this came out of the blue, we saw that the MVC structure and event-based development methodology of ExtJS allowed us to quickly and easily respond to the crisis. Phew.
But now, we’re back on track, and ready to develop some reports!
Reports are interesting things in the domain of the business application. In a lot of ways, reports are the ultimate goal. Sure, we need an inventory management system, and yes, being able to manage content for our Cars is really nice. However, from the perspective of the people writing our paychecks, the reports are where the real value comes into play. We can make the rest of the application as awesome as we like, but they’ll probably never use it or notice it. But if we develop some really nice reports that gives them instant visibility into what they care about…well, we’ve not only given them what they ultimately care about, but More >
