Learning Ext JS Review

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Learning Ext JS ReviewThe index to this book is grossly inadequate, I've tried to look up various terms, and they are not where you would expect to find them alphabetically. For instance, there is only one entry for JSON under "J" but as I read the book there were probably another dozen references, which instead are presumably organized under the appropriate heading within the index. But someone who is just "Learning ExtJS" as per the title won't know how the topics are or should be organized, and then is in the position of perusing the entire index or even book, which defeats the purpose of an index.
There is another glaring issue regarding JSON, and that is that the book perpetuates gross misinformation about the JSON data interchange format. In particular, it refers to the omnipresent configuration objects used by ExtJS as JSON, and this is indisputably inaccurate; all you have to do is visit [...] for instance to learn that string keys within JSON objects must be double quoted, but this is not the case with ExtJS configuration objects.
It's not entirely the authors' fault though, as even the ExtJS documentation regarding the "JsonStore" object bogus-ly refers to an object literal as JSON when the value contains "new Date(....)" which is NOT allowed in JSON. Regardless, the authors should know the underlying language and data formats sufficiently to not perpetuate this misinformation. Douglas Crockford, inventor of JSON, has written that Javascript is the most misunderstood programming language, and now JSON is on its way to becoming the most misunderstood data interchange format, and this book just exacerbates the process.
As programmers we are supposed to be painstakingly precise, so such grossly inaccurate and misleading information is anathema, and calls into question the validity and veracity of the rest of the material. Even without the issues surrounding JSON, there are too many other inaccuracies for this volume to warrant unmitigated praise. The "notes" in particular, to which special attention are drawn every few pages or so, are unclear sometimes to the point of being non-sequitirs because they refer to material a half-page or page away.
The above all being said, after initially reading half of the chapters of this book, I have picked it up on average once or twice a day in my first couple of weeks working with the framework, so it's by no means entirely worthless. However, I expect how often I refer to this book to decrease dramatically in the near future, and not just because of the atrocious index. Rather, so much of this book barely scratches the surface, and the shame is it doesn't have to be this way.
For instance, Chapter 9 regarding tree structures does well to note at the beginning that this is ideal for dealing with files and folders hierarchies. But then instead of showing off this functionality for this purpose, the example diagrams show branches and leaves of the tree named "aardvark", "bee", "cockroach". This might be fine to illustrate sorting, but these diagrams are used throughout the entire chapter, most of which has nothing to do with sorting, nor does the chapter go on to cover using trees to represent file and folder hierarchies whatsoever; it's as though the authors have never really used ExtJS's tree functionality.
In the end all I will be able to do with the book is give it away; it can by no means serve as an enduring reference. If you need a lot of hand holding, this book might be appropriate, otherwise stick with the online documentation and forums.Learning Ext JS OverviewThe book provides plenty of fun example code and screenshots to guide you through the creation of examples to assist with learning. By taking a chapter-by-chapter look at each major aspect of the Ext JS framework, the book lets you digest the available features in small, easily understandable, chunks, allowing you to start using the library for your development needs immediately. This book is written for Web Application Developers who are familiar with HTML but may have little to no experience with JavaScript application development. If you are starting to build a new web application, or are re-vamping an existing web application, then this book is for you.

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