Packt Publishing has sent me a complimentary copy of Ext JS 3.0 Cookbook Book which I will be reviewing after I get back from my holidays.

As we all know, the web has always been dominated by either jQuery, scriptaculous and MooTools, just to name a few.

Ext JS is yet another JavaScript library which can be used to build rich internet applications. Check out the samples, I am pretty impressed on what it can do.

Here is a description of the book:

Using Ext JS you can easily build desktop-style interfaces in your web applications. Over 400,000 developers are working smarter with Ext JS and yet most of them fail to exercise all of the features that this powerful JavaScript library has to offer.

Get to grips with all of the features that you would expect with this quick and easy-to-follow Ext JS Cookbook. This book provides clear instructions for getting the most out of Ext JS with and offers many exercises to build impressive rich internet applications. This cookbook shows techniques and “patterns” for building particular interface styles and features in Ext JS. Pick what you want and move ahead.

It teaches you how to use all of the Ext JS widgets and components smartly, through practical examples and exercises. Native and custom layouts, forms, grids, listviews, treeviews, charts, tab panels, menus, toolbars, and many more components are covered in a multitude of examples.The book also looks at best practices on data storage, application architecture, code organization, presenting recipes for improving them—our cookbook provides expert information for people working with Ext JS.

Ext JS 3.0 Cookbook

Some minor updates to lesterchan.net and hence I bump the site version to 3.30:

• Combined these 5 JavaScript files together:
  • Simple AJAX Code-Kit (TW-Sack)
  • ThickBox
  • Docking Boxes (DBX)
  • Docking Boxes Key File
  • lesterchan.net’s JavaScript File
• Minified CSS and JavaScript files using YUI Compressor
• Moved Google Analytics JavaScript code to the footer
• Added “My Wish List” (shopping cart icon) to the Welcome Area
• Changed “Posted By” to “Posted by”
• Added a new poll entitled “How Often You Visit lesterchan.net?”

The remaining optimization involved upgrading my plugins used on this site as well to WordPress 2.8 nightly which is not recommended for a production site and hence I will only further optimize this site’s JavaScript when WordPress 2.8 comes out in March/April.

This week is my second week of school. Tutorials going to start next week and projects are already started coming in. Going to get real busy after Lunar New Year. That basically sums up my school life so far.

JavaScript In My WordPress Plugins
I have been making use of some of my free time last week to convert 5 of my plugins that uses JavaScript to use jQuery JavaScript Framework instead and also replaced the SACK AJAX Framework to jQuery as well. Instead of including packed JavaScript using Dean Edwards Packer, I replaced it with minified JavaScript using YUI Compressor. Minified JavaScript has better performance even though it is slightly larger in file size when compared to packed JavaScript because the browser do not need to unpacked the packed JavaScript. Also, I have moved the JavaScript from the header down to the footer as it gives better loading times. You can read about it in details on my WordPress Plugins Blog.

Changeling
Caught Angelie Jolie’s Changeling last week. It was a pretty long movie lasting about 2 hours and 30 minutes. The start and middle part of the movie is pretty good, but as it gets towards the end, it gets pretty draggy.

Blogout’09
I was invited by Claudia who is a member of The Digital Movement to give a talk about “Using Wordpress as a blogging tool” in the upcoming Blogout’09 which will happen on the 6th and 7th March 2009 at the 8Q Sam. The first day (6th March) is a trade event. I will speak on the second day (7th March) which is open to the public. Tentatively my slot is from 12pm to 1pm. Expected turnout should be about 200 to 300 people. I am going to be so nervous!

Today is the eve of Lunar New Year, I hereby wish all Chinese a very Happy Lunar New Year!