Comments on: Converting Ext to jQuery

By: Thomas Hansen

Thomas Hansen — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:14:41 +0000

I don’t know which server-side system you’re on, but if you’re on ASP,NET you might want to check out Ra-Ajax (http://ra-ajax.org)

By: admin

admin — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:46:53 +0000

@JDD – thanks for the links. I don’t know how I overlooked the serialize function! GetJSON isn’t a direct replacement for Ext’s decodeJSON though, which takes a string an returns an object. I don’t know of any jQuery function that does this.

It was unfair of me to compare the jQuery filesize with that of the entire Ext library, but even with only the core Ext functions the library is still 145KB, almost ten times the size of jQuery. Size wasn’t the only concern though: We weren’t making use of Ext’s UI widgets, which is its the main strength. We were mainly just using DOM selection and modification functions which is where jQuery really excels, making it the best choice for this project.

@Richard – thanks for you comments. For this project we don’t really require the more advanced UI widgets that jQuery UI provides. I’ll certainly be using it on other projects though!

By: JDD

JDD — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:24:49 +0000

I just think its silly to compare file size when sure the entire package of Ext may be 546KB, But jQuery + the entire uncompressed jQuery UI (excluding themes) is 677KB. I dig that you have shown devs how converting from Ext can be done with jQuery. I just think you did it for the wrong reasons.

- JDD

By: Richard D. Worth

Richard D. Worth — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:20:50 +0000

These are great examples. Thank you for sharing. If you haven’t already, you might take a look at jQuery UI http://ui.jquery.com/ . For example, the jQuery UI Dialog plugin provides another alternative replacement for Ext’s dialog. And since you mention blockUI, the equivalent would be dialog’s modal option:

$(“#id”).dialog({ modal: true });

By: JDD

JDD — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:10:07 +0000

You do know you don’t have to use the entire Ext package right? I think they even have a build customizer.
That combined with gzipping should have made the file size a none issue. Could have saved you a lot of rework time :/

I also think jQuery has JSON and form serialization:
http://docs.jquery.com/Ajax/serialize
http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins:Forms
http://docs.jquery.com/Ajax/jQuery.getJSON

- JDD