April 26, 2011, 9:05 AM — Sencha is releasing on Tuesday Ext JS 4, an upgrade to the company's JavaScript framework that leverages plug-in-free charting technologies like SVG and VML instead of the Adobe Flash Player plugin.
Removing this dependency frees developers from having to rely on different versions of Flash and risking incompatibilities, said Aditya Bansod, Sencha senior director of product management. Previously, Flash was used for functions like bar charts. "Now, in 4.0, we're going directly to the browser technologies," Bansod said. Ext JS 4 can be used for browsers ranging from Internet Explorer 6 to Chrome 10 with no need for plugins. The framework itself is used for building desktop Web applications in JavaScript.
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"We're going with industry trends toward using more browser-native technologies, which we believe is more attractive to developers," said Bansod. Version 4 boosts cross-browser support, via a split browser document object model. Through this method, the framework tunes pages for specific browsers such as IE or Chrome. "You write the application once, and our framework manages all those differences for you," according to Bansod. Also featured in version 4 is use of a MVC (Model View Controller) development paradigm. "It separates the UI and the action and the data so you can have independent teams work on these three components."
On modern browsers, Ext JS 4 takes advantage of HTML5 capabilities, such as CSS3 styling. The upgrade features more than 270 new APIs, 35 new classes, and new documentation. A new theming engine in the upgrade makes it easier to style Web applications, Sencha said. Ext JS has been used by more than one million developers to build cross-browser applications, according to Sencha. The framework can be used with the Eclipse or Microsoft Visual Studio IDE and is available via open source or commercial licensing.
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