I want to build a mobile site in Sencha which showing HTML content on a tablet device, containing many objects/divisions/containers with similar layouts and properties.
Take this example window:
Is there a best practice or recommended way to achieve reusability and DRY for writing those containers in Sencha Touch 2?
What types of objects would you use? Does it make sense to use HTML div objects + CSS?
Also, does it make sense to use Sencha in this case?
Here is how you would achieve that layout using Sencha Touch:
Unfortunately it is pretty hard to explain, but hopefully it makes sense.
I've also created a very simple example of this layout, viewable here: http://www.senchafiddle.com/#jxiA8 (make sure you press Run).
As for which objects/components; they would all be Ext.Containers. Ideally you would use the MVC structure to create custom classes (which would extend Ext.Container) for each of these items.
This is definitely a great use case for Sencha Touch. It is great for creating rich applications like this.
Best approach to render the list of items in the Orange and Yellow containers is probably with a DataView.
Relying on itemTpl to draw each item as per the official documentation of the Ext.dataview.DataView component or using an item renderer, as per the dive into dataview article. (Note that the code in that article may not work as sencha as changed a lot between the different beta versions - #rdougan's associated demo on github may be more recent).
I did expand on the layout code contributed by #rdougan to add an example of how to implement the Reusable dataviews (gist).
That demo code also contains a quickly baked solution for data injection (applyStore and injectStore), so to make it possible to define an "OrangeContainer" once and only once and pass down different data for the "highlighted" and "list" versions of the views at the top and bottom of the screen, respectively. I have no idea whether this is a good or reliable way to do it. I would be interested in feedback on this.
Related
I am trying to create a new project with the new GUI BUilder (I've already made hand-coded project). I watched Steve Hannah's tutorial about creating a sign-in form. If the sign-in form was hand-coded then it would have to use eg a Y-BoxLayout Manager. However in the tutorial everything is laid-out without resorting explicitly to this layout manager what I understand because the designer provides the layout.
But I wonder why new the GUI Builder offers such containers with specific layout managers ? What are the use cases when they should be used, and are they meant to be used as is (as ready-to-use examples) or the designer should remove the components inside with custom ones ?
Thanks in advance for the shed lights ;-)
The current version (3.7.2 and earlier) works best with a flat layout (i.e. not nesting subcontainers). The next release will include improvements that make it easier to work with nested layouts.
There are many reasons why you might want to use a nested layout. A couple of use-cases that come to mind are:
If you're laying out a form that has more than one logical section and you want to be able to lay them out independently. In this case using a couple of sub-containers that both use LayeredLayout themselves can make things a little easier.
If the layout has a nested list (i.e. box-layout-y) that you will populate in code at runtime with content that you load from a web-service, etc..
Recently, in working with AngularJS, I really like many of the features, like creating custom abstract data factories, etc.
KendoUI also has similar features like MVVM, SPA routes, etc. that AngularJS offers, so I'm curious about what the benefits are of mixing the two (other than the rich UI features of KendoUI)?
-- Update --
I'm asking this question for clarification, and for those who may be slightly confused about the benefits of each, and why one would use both in a project, rather than one over the other.
For example - Javascript unit testing capabilities (simply done with Angular controllers, but have not seen anyone doing this with KendoUI).
It seems like Kendo is trying to do it all, but does UI best.
Thanks.
-- Update --
Since writing this question I have gone through and integrated the KendoUI grid with Angular using OData and have written a tutorial here at www.whatsinyourlunch.com on how to accomplish this, in hopes that this will be useful for others.
The stack is AngularJS, KendoUI, OData, WebAPI2, .Net MVC5, C#, Entity Framework accessed through a generic repository.
I know this is old but here is my two cents. The more you use Angular the more you will realize you don't need Kendo. The Kendo/Angular integration is a bit of a hack but it seems to get the job done. The only reason I find to use Kendo is the grid. I've tried the Angular grids out there and they are riddled with bugs and formatting issues.
I think it's important not to be a purist and to just use whatever combination of tools that accomplish what you need. I tend to try to move away from being dependent on paid commercial libraries but the grid is just solid. Any paid product will probably have more support and upkeep, as well as personal access to the development team (vs. well maintained free products from large companies or single developer projects that waste away). I have seen so many great free products get abandoned. However, if you want a great free grid and can't stomach paying Telerik $1000.00 for just a grid, DataTables.net is a great alternative and what I currently use.
You have to love Telerik's support which is the best reason to use their stuff in my opinion. They are lacking some things in Kendo like a good date range calendar, tag cloud, etc. The charts are also lacking compared to say Highcharts. I use the date range calendar from Keith Wood, although he doesn't seem to respond to emails. I found some great angular controls for other things like drop downs, etc. as well. I used to not understand why people use a hodge podge of stuff, but it is the best tool for the job that is important.
I personally would not go any further than using the rich UI features of KendoUI in Angular directives. The rest should be Angular. Or use KendoUI exclusively.
Mixing them works fine. You don't have to use all of the framework code (MVVM, etc.) included with Kendo and can just focus on the rich UI features. We use several of their controls, including a highly customized version of the grid. Angular is perfect for this because we built directives to wrap the Kendo controls and encapsulate the 80% configuration that happens every time so the developer could focus on the 20% that is different in their page/module/whatever. Our project successfully engages over 20 developers in a distributed team on a project with tens of thousands of lines of code and we've had great success using the UI features of Kendo with Angular.
On our current project we're using both Angular and Kendo (mainly for the grid). We didn't mix the two and this would also be my suggestion. Angular should be the one responsible for your application logic and Kendo should only be concerned with managing the widgets.
Kendo provides there own kendo-angular library, which contains directives for most of their widgets.
Here are a couple of points of my experience which doesn't favor the mixing of KendoUI with AngularJs:
Though there are kendo directives for AngularJs, a lot of UI related stuff will end up in the controller (configuration, events, complex templates) and it's difficult to keep jQuery out of it.
The initialization and display of kendo components does add a serious time penalty to each page (grid, tabstrip, ...)
Events and method arguments are not coherent across the kendo framework (i.e. select method of grid vs listview vs combobox)
The use of templates with the grid (or listview) or responding to grid events does not feel like AngularJs.
Components behave differently than the native controls they try to replace (i.e. event order and databinding of combobox vs native select)
As soon as the look and feel of the kendo components has to be customized, one has to become familiar with the CSS classes used by kendo.
The KendoUI grid is great, but if the project doesn't need it, there's nothing to be gained by mixing the two.
I think mixing of them is not a good approach. you should ask yourself a question "witch one is more required and useful in my project"
I had decided to use kendo beside angular because of its rich grid components. But I canceled it.
The main controls of kendoUI is grid. But you need to watch every element of it to have a complete binding and it make it slow. Also dataItem of a row in grid does not return the original data.
you need to watch paging, filtering , sorting ....
But for other controls of kendo we have fewer problems.
My requirement is a build a web form designer in a browser - just like how Zoho Creator (or something similar to other browser based designer tools like proto.io, protoshare, gomockingbird, lucidcharts etc).
Have a tool box/palate on one side, a canvas and a properties box that always shows the properties of the selected control.
I definitely don't think that using JQuery and working with DOM elements will give a scalable solution like these (proto.io, lucidchart etc.). After numerous trials, I feel that AngularJS is the way to go, but it does not have native support for drag-drop and hence I want inputs from community members like you may have more experience with AngularJS on whether what I am setting out to do, is Angularjs the right framework to use for this kind of a solution?
See screens shots of tools like Proto.io - something very similar to what I am setting out to build. Just that my palate will contain form controls like textbox, label etc which I will drag and drop on the canvas instead of the shapes that proto.io has.
Angular is fine. But the main idea of these kind of frameworks like Angular, Dojo, backbone is to structure your application with a specific designed pattern.Hence getting benefit from that pattern. And Angular will help you construct your app into MV* pattern. i may think what you need now is a graph library that support things with canvas , drag-drop , palettes, templates, overview, etc. Some may be useful are JointJS, MxGraph,Draw2D, Data-driven Documents, gojs, mindfusion.
Draw2D supports Angular as well. The lib has a boilerplate app whichs shows
how to use the draw2d stuff in combination with angluar.
The examples shows how to structure your app with Controller, Factories and two way
data binding.
I think you can use the draw2d boilderplate with any other DragDrop lib. It's just
a pattern how to integrate a third party lib into angular.
Angular has many hooks and pattern which supports any kind of lib
Greetings
Andreas
Seems like the answer to how to position components in Sencha Touch / Ext JS, especially with percentage or proportionally is pretty much to use some type of container with a layout type.
This seems like a step backwards to me - similar to what HTML Tables were for web page layouts. Create a containing structure that controls the layout and in each "cell" you have some content.
Specifically, if you have a component that you don't want SIZED based on these rules, only positioned - that is essentially what all the Sencha Touch / Ext JS approaches seem to be.
Layout type hbox, vbox, columns, flex layout, anchor. They all create containers around your components, instead of just directly positioning your components.
Am I missing something integral, or is this really the way it is?
Besides from the obvious problem of over-nesting, it seems like a more complicated approach, and creates a dependency between each component and the other components on the page.
I would like to have a way to say "this component is 30% from the top and 20% from the side", potentially also sizing the components using percentage - but not always.
The percentage / proportion approach is a must if you're developing for multiple devices.
If you are just getting started with Sencha Touch, it is easy to get caught up in the huge amounts of markup it creates. The key to developing in Sencha Touch is to let it do its thing and allow yourself to do things the 'Sencha Touch Way'.
Also, feel free to add classes to the components you are creating. You can manipulate these with CSS almost like a normal website.
Go through the docs. The frameworks have been around for a while, so, your issues with it have probably already been addressed.
I am required to use the Extjs framework in my next project. So what features are available in it? There are so many javascript frameworks available in the market like the DOJO framework.
In my opinion, the principale avantage of ExtJS is the Store mecanism. you can have a store which hold your data (as a database table) and tell some UI widget to display data from the store.
this is great because:
you bind your widget to a store, then it automatically update it's ui when element in the store are added/modified/deleted
you can easily display your data in multiple form without worrying about updating echa place (each widget update itself automatically)
others thing done right:
event
ability to extend ExtJS classes
How it stands up to competition...
To see how Extjs stands up to its competitors, you could review the impressive comparison chart hosted on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_JavaScript_frameworks
Where to get it...
I'm sure you could find tons of information on http://www.extjs.com/. Keep in mind that you're going to pay a handsome fee to use Extjs.
How to learn it...
If your initial impression is good, you could peel into the Learning Center where you'll find API documentation, tutorials, and more.
To learn about different features, just have a look at the ExtJS Examples page. It should give you a good initial impression of what's available. There are grids, editable grids, tabbed views, trees, windows and other dialogs, menus, toolbars, etc.
Be aware that all of the functionality shown on the examples is not available out-of-the-box, though - some of them require you to include extensions (plugins) developed by the ExtJS user community.