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jQuery is dom traversal and manipulation (with a common ajax interface) - ExtJS is (was) a UI framework. It's an apples and oranges comparison - I worked on sev

jQuery is dom traversal and manipulation (with a common ajax interface) - ExtJS is (was) a UI framework. It's an apples and oranges comparison - I worked on several ExtJS projects, all of which used jQuery for one thing or another. I think it's actually pretty accurate to say that frameworks like angular are more responsible for its decline since their feature sets are much more similar.

irrational 9y ago
What about jQuery UI? We used that extensively back in the day. According to Wikipedia, its first release date was back in 2007. http://jqueryui.com/ http://jqueryui.com/
IgorPartola 9y ago
That is all technically correct (best kind). But that’s not how it’s viewed by the scores of people new to web development. Broadly speaking, you can use both to create a dynamic UI, just at very different levels of abstraction. And at the time when an ExtJS license cost hundreds of dollars and jQuery was picking up pace and was proper FOSS, someone new to web development would be much more likely to reach for jQuery. The problem with jQuery was that it was almost good enough: it has a system of plugins which were abused to no end to make things like morals and calendars and whatnot. And then there was jQuery UI which promised all the loveliness if jQuery but for UI (I still shake a little when I remember it). jQuery was and still is great as a helper for “I want to show/hide this thing on the page”. It’s just the show/hide behavior can quickly morph into 2-4K lines of spaghetti code manipulating all the UI and having all the business logic built in.
- johnny22 9y ago
  interesting autocorrect modals to morals.
Joe8Bit 9y ago
Of course you're right, and maybe I phrased it poorly, my intention was to highlight the jQuery eco-system as the main puller of folks from ExtJ e.g. jQueryUI and the 10,000's of jQuery plugins that replicated ExtJS/Sencha functionality several dozen times over (with various levels of quality).
hajile 9y ago
Angular certainly didn't kill ExtJS. I was on a project that tried to move from Ext to Angular 1. UI-grid alone forced us to stay with Ext. Add in all the other Ext components and moving to Angular along with re-creating everything simply didn't make financial sense. For what it's worth, I think they later re-wrote in React and integrated the Ext grid in that.

irrational 9y ago

What about jQuery UI? We used that extensively back in the day. According to Wikipedia, its first release date was back in 2007. http://jqueryui.com/ http://jqueryui.com/

IgorPartola 9y ago

That is all technically correct (best kind). But that’s not how it’s viewed by the scores of people new to web development. Broadly speaking, you can use both to create a dynamic UI, just at very different levels of abstraction. And at the time when an ExtJS license cost hundreds of dollars and jQuery was picking up pace and was proper FOSS, someone new to web development would be much more likely to reach for jQuery. The problem with jQuery was that it was almost good enough: it has a system of plugins which were abused to no end to make things like morals and calendars and whatnot. And then there was jQuery UI which promised all the loveliness if jQuery but for UI (I still shake a little when I remember it). jQuery was and still is great as a helper for “I want to show/hide this thing on the page”. It’s just the show/hide behavior can quickly morph into 2-4K lines of spaghetti code manipulating all the UI and having all the business logic built in.

johnny22 9y ago
interesting autocorrect modals to morals.

Joe8Bit 9y ago

Of course you're right, and maybe I phrased it poorly, my intention was to highlight the jQuery eco-system as the main puller of folks from ExtJ e.g. jQueryUI and the 10,000's of jQuery plugins that replicated ExtJS/Sencha functionality several dozen times over (with various levels of quality).

hajile 9y ago

Angular certainly didn't kill ExtJS. I was on a project that tried to move from Ext to Angular 1. UI-grid alone forced us to stay with Ext. Add in all the other Ext components and moving to Angular along with re-creating everything simply didn't make financial sense. For what it's worth, I think they later re-wrote in React and integrated the Ext grid in that.