From a UX design perspective (design freedom, interaction polish, usability, skin-ability, etc.), what JavaScript UI framework is best? Particularly, we are looking at ExtJS and JQuery. And, yes, we need a good grid control, so I'm leaning toward Ext.
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5Don't you mean jQuery UI?– rick schottAug 19, 2010 at 19:28
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jQuery UI has a bunch of controls, but you would probably need to extend out to other plugins depending on the situation.– Glen LipkaAug 20, 2010 at 1:03
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jQuery is not comparable to ExtJs, it's better to compare it with jQuery UI.– Afshin MehrabaniDec 15, 2012 at 6:37
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6 Answers
Im on the jquery evangelism team as well as a speaker at the upcoming Extjs conference. We use ExtJS extensively at Marketo.
If your requirements are simple, publically accessible, and being done by web developers, then use jQuery.
If this is a more complex situation, you have more hard core engineers, behind a username/password, then I suggest ExtJS.
ExtJS is a lifesaver for our flagship product and we clearly fall into the latter camp. However, for our public website, We use jQuery because its more lightweight and easier.
answered Aug 19, 2010 at 20:15
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Any comments on the levels of support from any of these libraries? (From the community in the case of jQuery UI and Sencha in the case of the commercially licensed library.) Aug 20, 2010 at 11:09
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2Ive tried dojo. Its complicated like extjs, but without all the great components. Regarding support, both have been very good. The Jquery community is stellar, plus stack overflow works great as a fallback. Aug 21, 2010 at 16:04
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This is a bit off topic, But what is the serverside technology you use with Ext JS?– vimJul 12, 2011 at 6:23
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Am I a year late in responding? :( Sorry. It's PHP, although we aren't super happy with it. Jul 6, 2012 at 21:58
I know you want to know ExtJS vs jQuery, but I'd have a serious look at the BBC's glow framework. The BBC considers usability and accessibility top priorities, and has designed its javascript framework around those elements in order to meet its own standards & guidelines.
- Here's an overview of the widgets: http://www.bbc.co.uk/glow/docs/1.7/api/glow.widgets.shtml
- This is an overview of the standards support the BBC requires in all its web software: http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/futuremedia/technical/browser_support.shtml
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Seems like a nice library, with laudable goals. However, our needs are quite different, not requiring nearly as much browser compatibility. Aug 20, 2010 at 11:10
of all the frameworks I have seen ExtJS has the best controls. So if you need nice data bound controls ExtJS is what you are looking for.
If you need nice animations, menu and plain old UI effects jQuery is better simply because there are much more plugins.
From a UX design perspective, you are never going to beat something that has been designed for your users' specific needs.
Because of that, if you really had to pick between jQuery UI and ExtJS, I'd go with jQuery, since it is more about providing the basic skeleton that you need. ExtJS is over-designed.
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The subclassing system lets you modify the existing behavior, which is what we did extensively. It still saved us a ton of time versus building it all from scratch or starting with a jQuery plugin. Aug 20, 2010 at 1:02
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We invest a lot of effort in building and customizing things to real user needs. What we need is a great library for the basics. Not all of the screens in our products are "core" and deserve the investment of engineering time. I'm designing patterns and archetypes that can be used for all the other stuff, like form fill-ins, data table display and manipulation, etc. Aug 20, 2010 at 11:13
I think both have what you need. Try both of them for a while and see which works better for you and by using which framework you feel better!
ExtJS has more controls built in it but jQuery UI core is a little child and you should extend it by plugins ( plenty of them around internet!! ).
But I prefer jQueryUI, it is simple and light weight.
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+1. Absolutely correct. Its actually about the requirements. Dec 15, 2012 at 7:28
If you need a powerful grid than look at dhtmlx framework: http://dhtmlx.com It has a very good set of UI widgets, and the grid control is one of the best JavaScript grids I've seen.