Sencha Touch is a

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

(UI) JavaScript library, or web framework, specifically built for the Mobile Web. It can be used by Web developers to develop user interfaces for mobile web applications that look and feel like native applications on supported mobile devices. It is based on web standards such as HTML5, CSS3 and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

. The goal of Sencha Touch is to facilitate quick and easy development of HTML5 based mobile apps which run on

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

, iOS,

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

, Tizen and

BlackBerry The blackberry is an edible fruit produced by many species in the genus ''Rubus'' in the family Rosaceae, hybrids among these species within the subgenus ''Rubus'', and hybrids between the subgenera ''Rubus'' and ''Idaeobatus''. The taxonomy of ...

devices, simultaneously allowing a native look and feel to the apps.

Version history and support

Sencha Touch is a product of Sencha, which was formed after popular JavaScript library projects Ext JS, jQTouch and Raphaël were combined. The first release of Sencha Touch, version 0.90 beta, was made available on July 17, 2010. This beta release supported devices running Android, and iOS (on iPhone, iPod Touch,

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operati ...

). Subsequently, the first stable version, 1.0, was released in November 2010. Version 1.1.0 added support for devices running BlackBerry OS 6.0. The latest release, Sencha Touch 2.4.2, was released in June 2015 and is designed to run on the following browsers and platforms: * Android browser, Google Chrome for Android * BlackBerry 10 * Bada Mobile Browser * Kindle Fire Browser * Tizen * Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 IE10 * Mobile Safari There are no announced plans to support Firefox Mobile.

Features

MVC Architecture

Sencha Touch follows the MVC pattern which separates the application data, the control code and view. This separation allows large scale applications to be flexible and easy to maintain.

Widget components and customisable themes

Sencha Touch has an inbuilt DOM manipulation interface which negates the dependency on other UI frameworks like jQuery. It includes a set of graphical user interface GUI-based controls (or components) for use within mobile web applications. These components are optimized for touch input. The components are: * Buttons with device specific themes and effects * Form elements such as text fields for email * Date picker and address * Sliders, selectors, and combo-boxes * A list component with momentum-scrolling and an index bar * A minimal icon set * Toolbars and menus * Movable tabs, bottom toolbars * A map component with support for multi-touch gestures such as pinch and zoom * Carousels All the components can be themed according to the target device. This is done using

Sass Sass, Saß or SASS may refer to: SASS * M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System (or M110 SASS) * Safe Amplification Site Society, a non-profit organization that promotes music and the arts within Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada * Shanghai Academ ...

, a stylesheet language built over CSS. Some of the native-lookalike themes are Cupertino Classic (for iOS6.x and below), Cupertino (for iOS 7) and Mountain View (for Android).

Transitions, animations and adaptive UI

Sencha Touch has eight in-built transition effects including slide over or under the current element, pop, flip, and cube. It supports common touch gestures built from touch events, which are Web standards but supported only by

, iOS, and some touch enabled devices. These are tap, double tap, swipe, scroll, and pinch. Since Sencha touch is HTML5 based, the layouts it offers are extremely adaptive in nature.

Charting

Sencha Touch also supports charting components including pie charts, bar graphs, line series, etc. with explanatory legends. These components support interactivity like pinch and zoom. Just like the Grid components in ExtJS, Sencha Touch offers TouchGrid functionality.

Profiles

Profiling in Sencha Touch allows you to create different profiles catering to different screen sizes. When the application is loaded, the framework determines the type of device, and its corresponding profile determines which components and functionality need to be swapped out, and the specific views and controllers that need to be invoked, saving the developer the task of creating a different application for each type of device.

Basic application directory structure

Sencha Touch applications have a basic file and directory structure as follows:

Developer tools and plugins

Sencha Touch provides IDE plugins for ease of development. Benefits of these plugins include code generation and auto-completion, code refactoring and ease of navigation to framework codebase and custom classes. Sencha Touch has plugins for popular IDEs like JetBrains, Visual Studio and Eclipse. There is a visual app builder, Sencha Architect, for building cross platform HTML5 apps. It provides addiction features like theming and command line integration.

Sample usage

Sencha Touch makes it convenient to use a map in your application using the Ext.Map component. The inclusion of "Google Maps API" JavaScript file is essential for the GoogleMaps API to work. Touch Test Ext.setup() is the starting point to initialise the application, setting up the viewport and the event system.

Comparison to native applications

Sencha Touch supports PhoneGap and Apache Cordova APIs for Accelerometer, Camera, Compass, Geolocation, Capture, InAppBrowser, Media, Notification, Splash Screen, Storage (SQLite), etc. which were previously accessible only to native applications. Sencha Touch leverages JavaScript to create most of the UI components and change CSS of DOM elements on the fly. With JavaScript Engines being more efficient and faster than before, web apps run almost as smooth as native apps.

References

Bibliography

* Jesus Garcia and Anthony De Moss, Mitchell Simoens, ''Sencha Touch in Action'', * Ajit Kumar, ''Sencha Touch Cookbook'', . * Hiren J. Dave, Instant Sencha Touch, . * Ajit Kumar, ''Sencha Touch Cookbook - Second Edition'', . * Lee Boonstra, Hands-On Sencha Touch 2: A Real-World App Approach 1st Edition, . * Ajit Kumar, ''Sencha MVC Architecture'', . * Matthew David, HTML5 Mobile Websites, Turbocharging HTML5 with jQuery, Sencha Touch, and Other Frameworks, . * https://developer.salesforce.com/page/Developing_Mobile_Applications_With_Force.com_And_Sencha_Touch

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sencha Touch (mobile app framework) Ajax (programming) JavaScript libraries HTML5 JavaScript web frameworks