George Hernandez said
A few years back, I was looking around for a JavaScript library for building interactive web applications. I took a list of JavaScript libraries [Wikipedia], read some reviews, and tried a few of them out. Eventually I settled on Ext JS for several reasons, but what really whetted my appetite was their samples and demo page. Their samples were elegant, powerful, and usually worked on any browser. If you have acquired a hunger for Ext JS, then Ext JS 3.0 Cookbook by Jorge Ramon, can certainly serve you a good number of dishes.
When I learned Ext JS, there were no books. I had to learn by playing with the product and by using resources on the Ext JS [extjs.com] website. The examples on site are almost pure code and no explanation (the code is self explanatory!). The API documentation is good but terse and dry with few examples. The forum is excellent and is probably the greatest Ext JS resource --it's like talking to Ext JS experts about your specific problems. As on of the few books on Ext JS, the Ext JS 3.0 Cookbook is a welcome resource. It has examples and explanations!
The set up of Ext JS 3.0 Cookbook is useful and simple. Related "recipes" are organized into chapters. A recipe is a specific task of something you want to do with Ext JS. Each recipe is set up, pictures are provided if applicable, then the ingredients (code) is put together step by step. Specific things are emphasized, and explanations are given of how it works.
Ext JS 3.0 Cookbook is a great way to jump start a new programmer on Ext JS. The programmer should already know HTML, JavaScript, and client-server interaction across the Web. This book would have been quite useful when I started learning Ext JS, but even now it covers parts of Ext JS that I haven't used yet.
Overall, if you need to get a good foothold on Ext JS, then I recommend Ext JS 3.0 Cookbook (2009) by Jorge Ramon and Packt Publishing. If you're using Ext JS and it can help you get over that one little point that you've been stuck on for a few hours, then it's worth it.
Adam J. Rackis said
Clear, concise, practical. This book is loaded with useful recipes, which are well explained and easily modified to suit your own project. Honestly one of the best tech books I've bought in a long time.
Matthew Reid said
I've been using ExtJS for the last year and have experienced the transition from version 2.0 to 3.0 and have been rather pleased with the results it has delivered for numerous web projects I've coded. After trying many other JS kits and frameworks including Jquery, Mootools, and several others I have generally settled on ExtJS to solve the layout and user interface parts of my applications because of its ease of use and flexible nature for expansion. The framework is an extension of the Yahoo javascript framework, otherwise known as YUI, but with many quality extensions. This book comes as a welcome guide to the general tasks that the framework will solve as well as some of the more unique and in-depth items that it can provide. Quite simply it's a book with over a hundred examples of all the best features of the ExtJS framework. The examples are well explained with detailed write-ups that are fun to read. The examples also have immediately usable code for dropping into place or modifying for your own needs. If you're interested in learning more about this amazing framework or are already acquainted and need a quick guide to expand your abilities, then this will be a good reference to own. Before I get going you can see the book here.
The book starts out with an overview of the way that ExtJS handles DOM and data types, which is all very basic stuff but required understanding as well. It's a good start to understanding the base elements if you are a bit rusty. It's also a good chapter to see how ExtJS handles them since it might not be what you are used to if coming from another framework. After enough pages to answer most typical questions of that topic the book dives into the UI building aspects of the framework. This is where things get really good as I've always enjoyed how the framework builds UI for the web. You get examples for containers and positioning, accordion functionality, card and tab based windowing, column and table layouts, and the windowing functions for full browser UI building. I've used many of these features all in one layout and the results are a effective and efficient manner of data distribution and information organization for content driven sites. The book even covers dynamic building of UI elements, which comes in handy for a user interface that grows and changes with the needs of the user.
After you build your UI you need methods to get content into the application and ways that the user can interact with the app. The book addresses these needs as well. Plenty of examples abound for all of the required manners that users will be using forms, date fields, combo boxes, remote data loading via JSON and XML, as well as covering grid panels and data tables. Of course it must be mentioned that there are numerous examples that discuss the AJAX features of ExtJS since this is one of it's major strengths and successes. If there's a way to use remote data calls via XML or JSON, it is covered in this book. We also get a nice run down of trees and tab data which is inevitably useful for many purposes. If you are interested in progress bars and customized progress circles the book covers those with over 20 pages of examples. Just before the topics are finished off Jorge covers the functions for building rich charts and graphs. Details involve static data display, remote data display, as well as auto-refresh of data for realtime charting. Patterns, class extensions, plugins, and 'keeping state' are the last topics of the book. They offer quality methods for customizing ExtJS with your own JS code and keeping the user's data consistent between sessions.
Overall this is one of the best books I've read about ExtJS. It's as if the author took all of the items that I had to research over the last year of using the framework and put the solutions all into a nicely readable form with quality code examples that are explained in a useful manner. If you are looking for a book that touches upon the most common and some of the more esoteric options of the ExtJS framework but don't feel like scouring the online forums and hundreds of pages of documentation then this is the book for you. If you haven't already built your own code for the features that the chapters discuss then the examples given will save you time and get your projects up and running fast and efficiently.
Art said
ExtJS 3.0 Cookbook is definitely geared towards JavaScript developers who have some basic understanding of and experience with ExtJS 3.0. If you're brand-new to ExtJS, you may want to wait a few weeks until you've spent some time playing with the various components and layouts that ExtJS offers.
As an experienced ExtJS developer, I can say with absolute certainty that I learned some new tricks while reading this book. I wrote a full review on my blog ([...]) but here's the short version.:
Ramon's approach to explaining the examples is virtually flawless, and the box-style headers make it easy to follow. I haven't seen too many coding books use this technique, so kudos to whoever thought of it!
If I had to pick a single reason to buy ExtJS 3.0 Cookbook, it would definitely be Chapter 9 (Well-Charted Territory).
Why?
For starters, the ExtJS website samples don't do a great job explaining how to use many of the available charts. The online documentation also lacks direction. Jorge is the first person I've seen who thoroughly explains how to use each type of chart, and his examples are both unique and helpful. Kudos!
I've read a lot of programming textbooks, and none are nearly as helpful or interesting as ExtJS 3.0 Cookbook. It is a quick read for containing 356 pages, and Jorge Ramon does a fantastic job offering tips and tricks for ExtJS developers.
Regardless of your experience level, the ExtJS 3.0 Cookbook will absolutely teach you something new!
Josh Holmes said
For full disclosure, Packt Publishing sent me a review copy of this book. They did not ask for a positive review, just a review.
This is the first book by Jorge Ramon that I've read. This book is exactly what the title says that it is, a Cookbook. It's got 109 solutions to problems solved by Ext JS 3.0. I was expecting, like a lot of other books to get a fill of all of the philosophy behind what they are trying to promote but that wasn't the case. This book just in with no nonsense and gets right to the code.
Every chapter is laid out exactly the same. It starts off with a list of problems solved in this chapter and a very short paragraph that gives an explanation to why these are related problems. The rest of the chapter is broken in to "recipes" all of which are laid out exactly the same as each other as well with sections "Introduction", "How to do it", "How it works", an optional "There's more" and a "See also" section. The intro is typically a short paragraph that describes when this recipe is going to be useful and optionally contains a screenshot or two of the solution. The How to do it section is almost all code with just enough text to explain where to put the code that you are looking at. The How it works section explains a little more about the events and the libraries that are at play and how they effect the code snippets that you just wrote. The There's more section points out potential pitfalls or other benefits that this recipe brings to the table. The See also section points out related recipes that you should look at in addition to the recipe that you're looking at.
So what's my opinion on the book?
if you are trying to understand JavaScript and/or Ext JS 3.0, this book is not the book for you. There are plenty of other books out there that will step you in at a little more manageable pace.
However, if you are somewhat familiar with JavaScript and Ext JS 3.0, this is a great recipe book. The code is clean and readable. The problems are problems that I see on a semi-regular basis. I like it for what it is. It's a handy reference and a set of problem/answers that solve discrete problems. It's a good formula and I'm probably going to write a few blog posts in that format to feel it out.
The price, $49.00 or 30.99 Pounds is a little steep but if it cuts an hour or two out of your research and development time, it's paid for itself. Also, you can download the code from Packt Publishing in a zip file and copy paste from that so it's definitely going to save you time if you are using Ext JS 3.0. This was something that I missed at first to be honest and only caught when I went back to reread the preface and saw the link to where the source is zipped up.
Another interesting note about Packt Publishing is that on their "About Packt Publishing" page in the back of the book, they mention that when they publish a book based on an open source project that they pay royalties back to that project. I don't know how much they pay in royalties to the project but that's a really class thing to do. If one is making money on an open source project, they should contribute to it somehow either through code or financially or both.
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