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Future of Sencha's Ext JS from the viewpoint of a geospatial developer
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Why the future of Sencha's Ext JS is looking a lot less promising IMHO now than 5 years ago (from a geospatial developer perspective): | |
* the default look and feel of Ext JS is starting to become an issue (people seem fed up with the desktop like look and feel) | |
* do you still meet (geospatial) (core) developers enthusiastic about the technology? | |
* the migration from version 3 to 4 is a PITA and might not even happen for some libraries, which will give people the choice of moving on to a different technology (at the same or even less cost) [1] | |
* no single solution that works well on both mobile and desktop | |
[1] Please note that I currently have no clue what the new framework / technology is that people will migrate to most, or based on which frameworks new libraries will be created. | |
Also, as a developer, I have invested a lot of time and energy in this technology, so for me this is a bad thing in a way. | |
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@bartvde. I fervently believe that Ext JS continues to rule as the absolute best choice for serious JavaScript app development - and to address your specific concerns:
Yes our classic theme was looking outdated. But I hope you like the look of our new Neptune theme which shipped today for Ext JS 4.2. (http://www.sencha.com/blog/sencha-march-madness). It's contemporary (flatter, more angular and more spacey), but continues to have all the detailed behavior that I think has always made Ext JS the best choice for complex apps - proper behavior under nesting/no-nesting, a rich layout system etc.
Yes the migration from 3 to 4 is not straightforward (even with the compatibility layer and migration guide). In retrospect, we were a little too ambitious with 4.0 and changed too many things at one time. We've definitely learned from that.
Mobile/Desktop We took the stance early that you needed to develop a different style of app for phone/table vs. desktop. We intend to make Ext JS more tablet friendly in the future, but it will still be a better user experience to design something from the ground up for a touch interface.
We take our open source licensing seriously and everything we do in the frameworks side is open source under GPLv3 as well as commercial. We have a great roadmap ahead for both Ext JS and Touch, and I hope you'll think about coming to SenchaCon this July in Orlando to see the community in action.
All the best,
@mmullany (Sencha CEO)