I haven’t fully formed my presentation topic yet, though it will be something related to responsive design, trends in modern web app user experience, and figuring out how to apply those concepts to Ext JS applications.  How can we take an Ext app from stock theme / layout and transform it into something that looks and feels modern across multiple devices?  Should be a fun talk (I hope).

Are you going to be at the conference or in London around that time?  Let me know!

What We’re Looking For

• Experienced web developers with solid OO chops.
  We don’t have specific requirements for language experience, years of work or education – if you’re smart and have mastered at least one programming language, you should be able to pick up whatever is needed. Some things that we’ll probably work with from time to time as we go forward: JavaScript, HTML, CSS, C#, Java, PHP, Rails, Node, Git
• Some form of JavaScript framework experience.
  And by framework, we do not mean just jQuery. Have you implemented MVC or used some form of inheritance in a JS app (Ext JS, Dojo, etc.)? Let’s talk. Strong OO experience in a non-JavaScript framework could work too as long as you’re eager to learn.
• Mobile development (native and/or web).
  It’s a mobile world, and if you’re not on that bandwagon yet then you’re behind the curve. It’s not a deal-breaker, but if you haven’t done mobile yet be prepared to dive in.
• Self-starters who love agile development.
  If you need structure and hand-holding, this is likely not the position for you. This will be a highly dynamic startup environment, and you may be asked to wear many hats over the course of a typical week. The ideal candidate will thrive on that challenge.

And We’d Be Ecstatic If…

• …you’re already experienced with Ext JS.
  The Extensible framework is based on Ext JS and we use it a lot in other projects too. Prior experience with Ext JS is a huge bonus, though anyone with OO framework experience should be able to pick it up quickly.
• …you actively contribute to open source.
  At Extensible we love open source (our main product is dual-source) and have plans to contribute to the open source community even more in the future. Have you worked on anything open source? Include a link to your Github account and show us what you’ve done.
• …you live in Austin.
  Remote might work too, but ideally you’d be at the table with us most days white boarding and banging out code.

A Little More About Us

Extensible was founded by Brian Moeskau, original cofounder of Ext JS (now Sencha, a 100+ person, VC-funded company). Our first product has been shipping successfully for over a year now and we’re aggressively looking to expand our business into new areas. We’re located in Austin, Texas and looking to have an impact on the local technology scene. Through Extensible’s products and open source initiatives you could have the opportunity to write code used by hundreds of companies around the world.

If this post sounds interesting to you or you know someone who might be a fit, please let us know! We don’t have a formal application process — just send over your resume or LinkedIn page and let us know a little bit about yourself and we’ll go from there.

• Extensible 1.0.2 (for Ext 3.x): A bug-fix release for the most part with a few important fixes for IE and OSX, recommended for all 1.0.x users. For additional details see the 1.0.2 release notes.
• Extensible 1.5.1 (for Ext 4.x): A bug-fix release that also adds support for the upcoming Ext 4.1 release, which is a significant upgrade in the Ext 4.x line. Recommended for all 1.5.0 users, required if you plan on upgrading to Ext 4.1. For complete details see the 1.5.1 release notes.

Download 1.0.2 and/or 1.5.1

New Configuration Settings

One notable “feature” that was added recently in both 1.0.2 and 1.5.1 is a new file in the root of the project called Extensible-config.js. One common annoyance in the past has been how best to distribute the Extensible examples for ease of setup and use by end developers. Especially under Ext 4.0+, which introduced dynamic loading via Ext.Loader, this became quite a challenge since dynamic loading is ideal for Extensible development, but terrible performance-wise for public release. How best to maintain the needed JS and CSS includes for both Ext and Extensible, across all examples and for both development and release?

The answer now is Extensible-config.js, which writes the JS and CSS includes into the examples dynamically at runtime based on the configuration options specified in that file. Now with a simple config setting you can switch the deployment mode between “release” and “debug” (or “dynamic” under 1.5.1 to use Ext.Loader), or change the root paths for Ext and/or Extensible to easily facilitate testing against different versions. The examples should now work well out of the box (no more local editing of paths or .htaccess files required!) but take a look at the source comments in Extensible-config.js if you’d like to find out more.

Initially I just thought it was funny because it looked like a “Harry Potter at age 35″ set where he’s long graduated from Hogwarts and is now a disaffected office drone, plugging away at his TPS reports.  But on closer inspection, I noticed something quite interesting on Harry’s computer screen:

Looks uncannily similar to some other software I’ve seen before…

It makes me happy to see Extensible products being put to good use in the real world!

Have an example of Calendar Pro being used in your own software?  Please share!

Extensible 1.0.2 & 1.5.1

For the past few weeks I’ve been fixing bugs, including a few pretty important ones, and preparing for the next maintenance releases of both the Ext 3.x and Ext 4.x branches of the calendar. Most importantly, as of today Calendar Pro is fully Ext 4.1-compatible, at least as of the most current beta version (things could still change, but I’m hopeful that any remaining issues that might come up will be minor). Although Ext 4.1 is a minor point release, it’s actually a huge revamp of the rendering and layout systems under the hood, so some hiccups were to be expected. These have been addressed and the calendar is back in full working form.

I have a few additional issues to iron out and some build process improvements to make, but I expect to be able to put out the new releases within the next week or so.

Extensible 1.1 & 1.6 (a.k.a., Recurrence)

I’ve also been working on recurrence support, off and on, for a while now. Most recently I’ve been porting (well, rewriting) the existing recurrence editor widget to work under Ext 4, the only component from Extensible 1.0.x that had not yet been touched in the upgrade to Ext 4. That effort has been progressing nicely and I should have the new and improved widget done within the next few days.

I still have work to do on the event editing side to support recurrence fully, and I’ve been working on a separate blog post series that will soon lay out Extensible’s recurrence support in full detail. No ETA yet, but finishing recurrence and making it available is the highest priority feature right now.

Next…?

I have lots of feature ideas on the whiteboard right now, but nothing much set in stone yet for releases beyond 1.6. The current most popular request after recurrence is Outlook-style split day view support, which is planned.  A mobile / Sencha Touch version of the calendar has been a common request lately, what do you think? What other ideas do you have for next features?

Just a quick note that Extensible will be taking a few days off starting tomorrow, Thursday, December 22 through Monday, December 26 to spend some quality time with family and enjoy the holidays.  The forums of course are always open, but please be aware that there will likely be a delay in answering questions or responding to support inquiries over the next few days.

I hope everyone has a safe and relaxing holiday weekend, and I’ll see you next week!

Download Extensible 1.5

A few notable issues that were fixed in this release:

• A daylight savings bug in Extensible.Date.add() caused bad things to happen around the end of October.
• The new scrollbars in OSX Lion created a layout bug in day and week views since they rely on the scroll width as a layout offset for the header area. It’s now calculated correctly rather than a hard-coded pixel offset.
• The new Ext 4 CSS classname prefixes are now used in the Extensible CSS rules that rely on them (“.x-” instead of “.ext-”). The beta still used the old-style prefixes in some cases, which led to subtle CSS bugs (including faulty event colors and borders in IE).
• The DateRangeField now support the multi-line layout again.

There are many other fixes as well – for the complete list check out the release notes. If you are still using the beta, please upgrade as soon as possible!

Here are the upcoming next steps we have planned:

• Extensible 1.0.2
  This will be a maintenance release for the Ext 3 branch to push out the bug fixes that have been made since 1.0.1 (including the Lion scrollbar fix).
• Extensible 1.1 / 1.6
  This will be a new feature release for both branches focused primarily on the top two features currently in the request queue: recurrence support and split day view support (the ability to subdivide the day view into multiple columns based on some attribute like a user’s calendar).

Now that we’re caught back up with the latest Sencha release we can again start adding new features and continuing to make Calendar Pro the best JavaScript calendar available. We have no shortage of ideas for 1.7 and beyond, but we also love to hear from our community regarding what’s most important, so please tell us.

Have you been using Ext Calendar Pro successfully in your company?  Please let us know. We’d love to receive testimonials and screenshots from happy customers that we can post on our website.  You can also buy a license or support to show your support and help keep Extensible adding new features and products.

Extensible 1.5 beta

The Ext 4 compatible version of Extensible is 1.5.x, and this is now the master branch in Github.  I briefly considered releasing this version as 2.0, but decided not to primarily for two reasons:

• No new features were added, aside from Ext 4 support
• This release is a free upgrade for all existing Extensible 1.x licensees

Extensible 2.0 will be a major new feature release, and may also be a paid upgrade when it comes out (it’s not even started at this time). Because of that I felt it appropriate to keep the entire current Extensible line, both for Ext 3 and Ext 4, at the same major version number.

The first beta build of 1.5.0 is now available, or you can fork the master branch and build it yourself from source. There are a couple of known issues, so you might want to check the release notes as well. Please provide feedback and bug reports in the forums.

Extensible 1.0.1

For existing Ext 3.x users who plan to stick with 3.x for a while, the Extensible 1.x branch will also be actively maintained, and regular maintenance releases will still be made. The official 1.0.1 bug fix release is available now (see the release notes for what’s changed). It is a fully-compatible upgrade from 1.0.0 and is recommended for all Ext 3.x users.

Future Plans

Some new features will still be made in both branches (including recurrence support, which was already planned for 1.1 before Ext 4 even came out). Moving forward, most new features will start going only into the Extensible 1.5.x branch and/or 2.0 once it gets started. Extensible 1.x will be fully supported for at least as long as Ext 3.x is supported by Sencha (which will be a while yet), but just as with Ext JS itself, major new features will typically appear only in the newest versions.

Now that Ext 4 is out and the conference is over, I’m refocusing on Extensible and plan to get 1.1 out as soon as possible.  I’ve already started adding recurrence support and hope to have something committed for testing very soon.

I have also started updating the calendar for Ext 4 support, which will reside in a separate branch so that Ext 3 will still be fully supported as well.  This will not be part of the 1.1 release plan, but should also be released pretty soon thereafter.

Finally, I will have more exciting Extensible product news in the coming weeks, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise just yet…

Thank you to all who took advantage of the 1.0 pre-release sale and ordered licenses. Even though the sale is now over, it’s never too late to order a license and help support the project as we start working on new features.

Road Map

The next feature release will be 1.1, currently slated for early-to-mid-April. The primary focus will be on implementing recurrence and adding support for dividing the Day View into multiple sub-views, a la MS Outlook.  I’ll most likely sneak in a couple of additional minor features as well, like event tooltip support.

I’ll be looking at Ext 4 support very soon, and I plan to maintain separate branches for 3.x and 4.x support (for at least as long as Ext 3.x is officially supported by Sencha).  Ext 4.0 support will be provided as a free upgrade for any current Extensible 1.0 commercial license holders, regardless of how the Extensible version numbers end up working out (not sure about that yet).

I have a lot of other features already on the drawing board and will publish a longer-term road map soon.  I’m also using UserVoice to monitor community feedback on new feature requests and prioritizing based partially on that (as you can see by the 1.1 plans).  Do you have other features that you’d like to see in a future release?  Let me know!