I reserve the right to be excited by this one; in fact pretty much everyone’s gone “oooooh” when they’ve seen it. Last week I received the author copies of Learning Ext JS from Neel at Packt, and the book looks great. I’m going to talk a little bit about the way I approached the writing, and how I feel about it all after the fact.

Each chapter which I wrote was supposed to be around 25 pages, consisting of 6000 words. When I write a blog post, a good one is around 1000 words, so that was my comparison. I’ve not done any real writing since high school, so while I’ve continued to put out a lot of words, they’ve never been particularly well thought out, scheduled, or planned in any way. So six thousand words a chapter did cause a bit of a problem when I tried to churn out a few pages every night.

One of my techniques was similar to one of my main development ideas – don’t get bogged down in thinking how something should be done in the perfect way; just get started and refactor later. In this case, change refactor for edit, but you get the idea. I suspect this is writers block, and it was definitely a problem for me. Pushing on and getting something down turned out to be much more productive than mulling over “better” ideas. Another problem wasn’t necessarily thinking what to write, but making each chapter stretch out to the required number of words. Quite often I’d have a good couple of evenings when the writing was going well only to find that I’d underestimated how far an idea would stretch. In these cases I’d try and go in to detail on working with the subject matter or I’d think up another example to try and illustrate my points in a different or more advanced way.

Even when the initial drafts were completed, there was still a matter of sending them off for review. Editing sounds like it’s going to be the easy bit, but when you’ve been working on something for a few months you’re most likely sick of the sight of it, so revisiting it isn’t going to be high on your agenda. Still, it was an education reading over comments about my own writing, bringing me down to earth or giving me a buzz depending on how each chapter and paragraph was received. How often do you really get an outside, independent person to review your work?

Even when the edits were complete, there was still more: promotional material to be written, screenshots and code samples to be made available, blog posts to be written. After all that, and a few extra weeks, the physical copies arrived in the post and pretty much made the whole harrowing process worthwhile. Writing a book was always one of those things I’d quite fancied doing and never imagined I would, so being able to contribute to Learning Ext JS ticks a pretty cool box for me.

A few months ago I was approached by Packt Publishing to help out with one of their up and coming publications. After reading some of my blog posts and seeing some screencasts I’d done on Ext JS, they felt I’d be a good candidate to co-author a book on the subject. I quizzed them quite a bit before committing; the offer was so out of the blue that I felt I needed as much information as possible, but it’s flattering to be offered such an opportunity anyway. When I felt I could make an informed choice, I accepted, and became part of the Learning Ext JS team.

The other authors are Shea Frederick and Steve “Cutter” Blades. Shea did the first block of chapters:

1. Getting Started
   Setup Ext JS to be used on your page and troubleshoot common installation problems.
2. The Staples of Ext
   Explore some of the foundational components and configuration of Ext JS.
3. Forms
   Create complex forms, database-driven combo boxes, and populate form fields with data.
4. Buttons, Menus, and Toolbars
   Use toolbars to create compact complex navigation for your web application.
5. Gridsâ??Making Data Intuitive
   Render database-driven grids that include paging, complex rendering, and user interaction.
6. Editor Grid
   Go past the standard grid, and set up an editor grid that edits data in line.
7. In an AJAX World, You Need a Good Layout
   Create a layout that provides a very flexible and attractive user interface.

I did the middle lot:

8. Ext JS Does Grow on Trees
   Demonstrating how to display and manipulate hierarchical data.
9. Windows and Dialogs
   Focusing on displaying information in pop-up containers.
10. Effects
    Add spice to your applications with compelling visual effects.
11. Drag and Drop
    Learn how to move and rearrange elements within your application.

Steve rounded it all off with the final chapters:

12. Itâ??s All About the Data
    An introduction into the various types of data Stores, the kinds of data they can consume, how that data is defined, and how to get it.
13. Code for Reuse: Extending Ext JS
    An introduction to creating custom application components by extending existing components of the framework.
14. The Power of Ext JS: What Else Can You Do?
    A look at many of the utility classes of the library, including formatting and state management, as well as Community Components and resources.

It was certainly a learning experience. I thought I knew Ext JS pretty well before this, but having to fill 20 pages of text about a single part of the framework lead me to discover a lot of new things, not least how to fill out text to make it interesting, rather than a lecture. I’d like to thank the Packt team, my co-authors, and of course the Ext JS team for the opportunity – one I never dreamed I’d have.

Learning Ext JS is available for pre-order on the Packt Publishing web site, as well as some mainstream retail sites such as Amazon. If you do decide to purchase – and I strongly urge you to! – then please let us know what you think by leaving a review on the Learning Ext JS Amazon page.