* In my recent experience with their grid, I got the impression that the devs responsible didn’t know enough about CSS to know that if you find yourself using JS to solve basic layout problems, you should feel bad about yourself professionally.

* Bad HTML – loads and loads and loads of div wraps with crap-tons of classes and IDs asserting themselves all over the place. (to be fair, the IDs don’t pop in on elements with existing ones).

* Bad CSS – Widths on multiple wrapped elements with on average 6-8 framework JS-inserted classes make things real fun if you need to make a tweak or minor modification or just stretch something a touch. Oh no. This is ex-Java dev CYA code at its very best. Don’t mess with MY code mister! I wrote it that way for a reason that I of course never documented. Oh and don’t touch the HTML either. And you better stay away from the CSS too.

* Border-Box! – I did learn something new! You can change the box-sizing model to a border-based one given all the various modern and IE options nowadays. This is actually very useful in places, especially when you want percentages dictating horizontal sizing. I’m not sure it’s very inter-framework-and-stuff-that-was-already-in-place-before-EXTJS-friendly to apply the non-standard border-box sizing model to EVERY SINGLE ELEMENT ON THE PAGE however. Jesus H. That it didn’t even rub their instincts the wrong way to avoid that little issue kind of blows my mind but it smacks of the sort of giant hammer approach to problems that I’ve seen all over the place. Fixed now apparently, but I couldn’t care less. I’m ripping this code out of our site like a bad tooth. The sooner the better. It’s actually less time-consuming to write my own grid than monkey around with this foolishness.

JQuery = Sonic screwdriver in capable hands. Build anything you want rapidly if you know what you’re doing without ever touching a plug-in.

ExtJS = Do stuff you’d never though possible if you’re no good at this stuff. Stay very far away if you’re expecting a great deal of customizing or layout finessing no matter who you are.

And what in ExtJs core is faster than JQ? It’s not like they both do one operation. If you’re going to compare your compact sedan to the Honda Civic it’s helpful to know whether you’re talking about the engine or the ashtrays.

In 2010…

1) Extjs Can be implemented on a widget by widget case, and it’s on Google CDN, so load time is once ever.
2) Extjs Core is smaller than jQuery and has different licencing to Extjs Full so you can include it in all your projects, it’s also a lot faster than jQuery core
3) There is a jQuery connector so you don’t have to rewrite any of your existsing code, and you can extend it.
4)

At the time of this post, I don’t think Ext Core was available. You could build a subset of Ext JS, but it would have been licensed under the GPL.

The team over at Ext recently did the smart thing and released a based library under a permissive license to remove the confusion when compared to the other libraries.

The one thing that we started to notice was, the size of the lib is of little consequence.

We came across YUI’s seed, and Dojo’s base, jQuery, and many others. The one thing that stood out was to build an actual web page, we were including many additional “plugins” that increased page weight beyond these “base” libraries.

If you are just adding a behavior to an element then these base libs might be enough. I doubt that’s a webpage worth talking about though.

What we found with Ext Core, is a good balance of functionality that enabled good coding practices, with minimal plugins.

The Core Manual is awesome, as are the API docs. Having a company behind the library also made us feel more comfortable with selecting Ext Core.

Might be worth giving Ext Core another look.

Purpose: Extjs does much much more that JQery. If all you need is DOM manipulation, you should check out Extjs-Core, which is much more tailored to your specific needs.

Licence
Ext-Core is GPL, I think

Size
Ext-Core is small and fast

Familiarity
Of course you have to get used to the new API. However, Extjs has the BEST documentation I have ever seen in a Javascript library. Actualy it has the best documentation I have ever seen at all in 15 years of software development.

I’d love to use jQuery instead, particularly since ASP.NET supports jQuery, but there’s not a single extension to jQuery that comes close (jqGrid is still WAY too buggy).

For consumer apps, an excel-like editable grid may not be a big deal, but corporate applications and b2b apps use grids heavily. For some reason there just aren’t many options to address these needs, and most corporations end up spending big $$$ to roll their own.

Even if you pay for the commercial license it just gives a lot of license hassle. If you open source it and other people contribute to it, you can also pay up, at least if you do want a more free license for your software or not be screwed later if you use it under a different license.