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extjsuser-interfaceextjs4sencha-architect
Redsandro
Redsandro

Reputation: 11366

Is there a GUI builder for ExtJS?

Back in the day, when ExtJS was at 2 and it was completely FOSS, there were a bunch of online GUI builders that really helped drafting your GUI.

During ExtJS 3 iirc, ExtJS was ackquired by Sencha. They sold a steeply priced commercial product called Ext Designer for this purpose. But for FOSS projects, the ExtJS2 GUI design tools still worked.

Now ExtJS is at 4 and most/all(?) of the online GUI builders have disappeared. The one I found for offline use didn't work with ExtJS4. Sencha released their new commercial product Sencha Architect for designing ExtJS4 GUIs.

But ExtJS is still dual licensed as (commercial and) GPL, and often used in GPL projects. I was wondering, given the popularity, isn't there any other method of constructing the GUI, apart from nerding it together in pure code?

Maybe a plugin for Eclipse or some other wonderful piece of FOSS, like the Java Window Builder?

We don't need to do everything in the builder, just drafting the GUI. If you want to build an entire webapp in the designer, I think Sencha Archtect would be a good choice. But apart from the people who make money with the products and can afford to pay for a commercial license, isn't there a whole community of ExtJS users who use a different (free) builder? And new users, they can learn from the code it spits out and base the rest on that.

Some of my fellow developers have moved to DHTMLX. It is also dual licenced, similar to ExtJS. It's a lot less advanced, but for simpler tasks it is very usable. And they have a Visual Composer online.

I think having a free to use GUI composer/builder is the best choice here. I can see 'new' users choosing DHTMLX over ExtJS nowadays because the ExtJS design tools are behind a pay-wall. Guess who they are going to pay if they ever want to build a commercial product.

But.. ExtJS is definitely more powerful and extendable. Hence my question.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2262

Answers (2)

Rashmi Kenvat
Rashmi Kenvat

Reputation: 1

There is one for java based micro service builder https://ec2-13-60-96-234.eu-north-1.compute.amazonaws.com/microservice

Here you just fill up the form and your project is ready to download. I thought it will helpfull for you in case working with java

Upvotes: 0

g3k0
g3k0

Reputation: 152

I am on the Sencha forums every day and I am not aware of an open source GUI builder that works with Ext4. There was one built on 2 that supposedly works with three and that may be the one you looked at. The only option that I am aware of for that type of work is Architect, which is way more advanced than its predecessor Ext Designer and, as you mentioned, is not free or open source.

Upvotes: 0

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