

Firebug Plugin: Illuminations for Developers - sroussey
http://www.sencha.com/blog/firebug-plugin-illuminations-for-developers/

======
mustpax
This looks like a useful utility but also underscores a problem with
Ext/Sencha. Namely that it is a tad overengineered and does not work well with
other tools in the web development ecosystem. Ext's giant widget library
creates and manages copious amounts of convoluted DOM nodes to provide desktop
like components that never quite make it out of the uncanny valley.

If you were starting out with some plain semantic markup and adding
interaction with jQuery (or Prototype or Mootools) you would do just fine
using plain Firebug.

I am wary of tools that brag about solving problems they've caused in the
first place.

~~~
sroussey
Well, first of all, this tool also works with Dojo Toolkit, SproutCore, YUI,
Google Closure Library, qooXdoo, etc. The key take away is that if you are
doing anything more than splashy webpages with animation, then you will need
to work with a framework (like all of these) instead of a toolkit (like
jQuery).

The same thing happened on the server side some time ago when people just
wrote some html home pages with some scripting tags (aka PHP). Eventually,
when you start to create something complex, people started using some
"scripts" and then eventually started doing MVC and the like on the server.
Keeping with PHP, this means that people started using Zend Framework,
CodeIgnitor, CakePHP, Symphony, YII, etc.

Some people complained that it was too much for lowly HTML, but time and
capabilities advanced anyhow. Now that time is coming to the client, thanks to
faster browsers, and HTML5 local storage. And mobile. Latency and offline mean
storing things locally, and that means business logic at the client.

Prepare to love our JS framework overlords.

To make this tool, I dealt with all the frameworks listed. All have some
flaws. ExtJS has copious markup (and CSS), and some non-optimal layout
choices. ExtJS4, which you can download a preview of, has dealt with them. I
admit, there is some of my ideas in there they ran with. One I did not
propose, but (like Closure) they are using in v4 is rendering based on
browsers. Old browsers get the copious markup so a real and good looking UI
will be possible. And where it can be done in CSS3 instead, they use far less
markup. The fast browsers become even faster.

~~~
edambauskas
No, thank you.

I have to deal with ExtJS at my current job and I know I would never use this
bloatware for any of my personal projects.

It is just bloat.

It tries to fool you by giving you a big library of pretty things that do
nothing but blind your eyes from the real stuff that is going on. It was
probably built by some people that don't understand the web, secretly hate it
and need some desktop-programming abstractions to deal with it.

This approach has one limitation: as soon as you try to do something that the
framework designers didn't plan for, you'll run into problems and have to
write more work-around code than you would need in a straightforward manner.

Also, its documentation sucks:

\- it uses JavaScript where it isn't necessary, \- it works slow, \- it breaks
normal browser navigation, \- it shows too much information on one page for
the components that are already bloated.

Instead of doing something useful, the authors of this documentation chose to
build something to show-off.

My advice: if you are building applications with dumb forms -- ExtJS is for
you. If you want to build rich applications, customized to your user needs --
avoid it.

~~~
kaylarose
I can't agree with you more - on _every single point_.

Even dumb forms don't work right with ExtJS. One example: there is no sane (or
even insane - but documented) way of setting a default option in a combobox,
or disabling individual options. Really?!

Seriously if you feel you need to use some big desktop-in-the-browser
framework, look at SproutCore, or YUI, or Dojo, or Cappuccino, or....
_anything_ else.

~~~
superstructor
Wow you guys are seriously just haters who obviously have little (if any) real
experience building commercial-grade rich internet applications.

If you go beyond a simple page you need a decent "heavyweight" framework,
otherwise you just end up with a big ball of mud or writing your own. Extjs
happens to work extremely well for experienced JS devs.

Illuminations is an outstanding plugin of serious pragmatic use. Its already
paid for itself many times over in my work.

Oh and btw my forms work great - your obviously just a fool who blames the
framework instead of your lack of ability which is the real cause.

~~~
DjDarkman
> Wow you guys are seriously just haters who obviously have little (if any)
> real experience building commercial-grade rich internet applications.

You just called a group of people haters because they didn't support your
ideals. I think this speaks for itself.

What does commercial-grade mean to you? How many users does that mean? How
many tested platforms?

Microsoft and Google uses jQuery and not ExtJS, is that commercial-gradish
enough for you? or they probably have "little (if any) real experience"
according to you.

> If you go beyond a simple page you need a decent "heavyweight" framework,
> otherwise you just end up with a big ball of mud or writing your own.

This is a dubious claim, because:

\- other people may actually be good at writing their own stuff

\- ExtJS may not save you from writing custom stuff, because you may need
stuff that aren't included

> Extjs happens to work extremely well for experienced JS devs.

> Illuminations is an outstanding plugin of serious pragmatic use.

Can you support these claims or you just wrote them down to justify your
ideals?

> Oh and btw my forms work great - your obviously just a fool who blames the
> framework instead of your lack of ability which is the real cause.

You are obviously someone engaged in a trollish behavior for some reason.

~~~
superstructor
> You just called a group of people haters because they didn't support your
> ideals.

No they are haters because they are spreading FUD about Ext.js with no true or
substantial points to support their claims.

> What does commercial-grade mean to you? How many users does that mean? How
> many tested platforms?

ONE of our apps has > 300k users. No major bugs or usability issues on
production. And is tested on every browser with over 5% usage share (too many
to list, the info is on the net anyway) on all the major platforms (Win, Lin,
OSX).

> Microsoft and Google uses jQuery and not ExtJS

This is laughable. Microsoft and Google use jQuery for web _pages_. Not
applications. Looks at Gmail and find jQuery there ???

> \- other people may actually be good at writing their own stuff

If they want to waste their time and be overtaken by the competition who are
making better use of resources they are entitled to make that poor judgement.

> \- ExtJS may not save you from writing custom stuff, because you may need
> stuff that aren't included

It takes less resources to extend Ext.js that is does to replicate it.

> Can you support these claims or you just wrote them down to justify your
> ideals?

Having worked on RIA for over 6 years and having had Ext.js apps in production
since Ext.js 2 my experience is that both Ext.js and illuminations work well.
I'm not going to write a review and give you cypto certificates to login to
apps that are not public. Its an observation from experience.

> You are obviously someone engaged in a trollish behavior for some reason.

Spreading FUD about a framework that is completely false is trollish behavior.
I did not do that.

~~~
DjDarkman
> No they are haters because they are spreading FUD about Ext.js with no true
> or substantial points to support their claims.

Does you claiming the opposite make your comment valuable?

> This is laughable. Microsoft and Google use jQuery for web pages. Not
> applications. Looks at Gmail and find jQuery there ???

Sorry, I can't take nobody seriously who uses meaningless buzzwords in this
context. Your comment is laughable.

> If they want to waste their time and be overtaken by the competition who are
> making better use of resources they are entitled to make that poor
> judgement.

Again: poor assumption.

> It takes less resources to extend Ext.js that is does to replicate it.

What if the functionality inside Ext.js is not what you need? You can extend a
hammer to make a tank, it's just not practical.

> Spreading FUD about a framework that is completely false is trollish
> behavior. I did not do that.

Your 1 day old account and your tone suggest otherwise.

