Introduction to Sencha Touch 2

Background

Hi, all. I've been writing this article for a long time. Here in this series we will learn how to develop the applications for Android, iPhone, Blackberry and Windows Phone 8 using Sencha Touch.

Other articles in this series.

1. Hello World App using Sencha Touch 2
2. Sample form application using Sencha Touch 2
3. Dealing with containers in Sencha Touch 2
4. Working with DataBound Controls
5. Introduction to MVC in Sencha Touch 2

As we know there are various touch devices available in the market and it is very tough for a developer to develop the application for touch devices. To make our task easier we will look to this new framework. First we will see what a Sencha Touch is.

What is Sencha Touch?

Sencha Touch is the first ever HTML5 and JavaScript framework to develop the application for touch enabled devices like Mobiles, tablets and so on.. We will see what Sencha Touch is in the following points.

1. HTML5 and JavaScript framework to develop applications for touch devices.
2. Purely JavaScript based.
3. Supports built-in Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern.
4. Supports various platforms.
5. High performance mobile applications development.
6. One page application development.
7. High end native build capabilities.
8. Sencha apps can be developed using any existing IDE's. (Visual Studio, the eclipse and so on)
9. Well maintained documentation.

As in the preceding points you have a clear idea of what Sencha Touch is; once again we will elaborate on the preceding points to enable a better understanding.

HTML5 and JavaScript framework to develop applications for touch devices

From the preceding line you can judge that Sencha Touch is a framework for developing touch-enabled applications for mobile devices. Sencha Touch is the purely HTML5 and JavaScript framework. To develop an application using Sencha Touch you only need HTML and JavaScript knowledge; no additional knowledge is required.

Purely JavaScript based

Sencha Touch is a purely JavaScript framework. Each and every control that we generate in sencha application is done using JavaScript.

Supports built-in Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern

Sencha Touch has a built-in Model-View-Controller pattern to develop the application. As all of you are aware, the MVC pattern has a lot of flexibility to develop any application. Here in Sencha Touch we have a built-in support for the MVC pattern.

Supports various platforms

Next we can look to the platforms supported by Sencha Touch. Sencha Touch supports various platforms, the following is the list of supported platforms:

1. Android
2. iOS
3. Blackberry
4. Windows 8

Previous versions of Sencha Touch were only supported for Android and iOS but the latest version of sencha supports Blackberry as well as Windows 8. Up to Sencha Touch 2.1.0 the applications were dependent in webkit browsers. The latest version (2.2.1) of sencha has removed the webkit dependency, now Sencha Touch applications support IE 10 for Windows Phone as well as Blackberry 10.

High performance mobile applications

As we saw above, Sencha Touch is purely JavaScript based framework which is nothing but the client-side framework as we know if we are developing an application using a client-side architecture then the application performs well. Sencha Touch is purely client-side mobile architecture hence the applications developed using Sencha Touch are very high performance.

One page application development

Sencha Touch has one more feature, in other words to develop the applications we need only one HTML page. Only one HTML page can serve thousands of views. As all the web developers know that we need to create separate HTML pages for each task. Here in Sencha Touch we need not create separate HTML pages only one HTML page is enough. For each task we can create the separate views.

High end native build capabilities

Sencha Touch comes with native build options using sencha cmd. Sencha cmd is the command line tool to generate, build, package and deployment of sencha application. In future articles we will see how to generate, build and package your application using sencha cmd.

Sencha apps can be developed using any existing IDE's

As a developer we need some integrated development environments to develop the applications. Here you can use any IDE of your choice to develop a Sencha Touch application. A Sencha Touch application is nothing but all the JavaScript files hence can be included in any IDE like Visual Studio, Eclipse and so n .

Well maintained documentation

As all of you know what is the documentation. Sencha Touch has a very well maintained online documentation at http://docs.sencha.com/touch/2.2.1/

Conclusion

Form the preceding point I hope you got a clear picture of Sencha Touch. In the future we will see more about application development using Sencha Touch. For developing an application using Sencha Touch download the Sencha Touch framework from: http://www.sencha.com/products/touch/download/.