2011 Product Roadmap Update

The year has started off with a bang for us here at Sencha, and we’ve been working hard across all of our products. In the last three months, we’ve shipped Ext Designer 1.1, Sencha Touch 1.1 and a beta release of Ext JS 4. Now, we’d like to share with the community what we think the rest of the year looks like and what to expect from our frameworks and tools. I should add the standard disclaimer that this is our best estimate of what will happen when, but we have no doubt that these will continue to evolve.

Ext JS

As we mentioned in the Ext JS Beta 1 announcement, we’re on track to deliver the final version of Ext JS 4.0 by the end of April. We started releasing Ext JS 4 as a developer preview in mid-February and we’ve had a huge amount of feedback from the community. With the community’s help we’ve fixed over 600 issues since PR1! We’re excited to keep working on making Ext JS 4 the best Ext JS release yet. After 4.0, we tentatively expect a minor release sometime in the summer.

Ext GWT

During SenchaCon 2010 we said that we would release Ext GWT 3.0 in Q2 of 2011 and we remain on track for this. Much like we did with Ext JS, we’re preparing a series of Ext GWT preview releases and betas this spring, with final product delivery this summer. One of the primary goals of Ext GWT 3 is to bring the library more in line with the current GWT design and features. This includes changes to support GWT Handlers, UIBinder, MVP, Editors, SafeHtml, RequestBuilder, AutoBean and others. We have also refactored our stores and loaders which now work with both AutoBeans and any standard Java bean. It will also be easier to use Ext GWT Components with GWT Layout Widgets, and to use GWT Widgets with Ext GWT Containers.

Ext Designer

The 1.1 release of Ext Designer added many new features that helped make a component and UI designer’s life easier and better integrated into the developer workflow. We’re planning one additional release in the Designer 1.x family to support Ext JS 4 and hope to make it available by summer. Looking ahead to Designer 2, as we talked about at SenchaCon 2010, our plan is to take a major leap forward in Designer functionality and make Designer a more general purpose application builder for both Ext JS and Sencha Touch developers. You’ll see improvements like integration of the MVC, better data integration and other fun surprises we’ll share soon. Expect to see Designer 2 in preview this fall.

Sencha Touch

In early March we released Sencha Touch 1.1 with support for features like pull to refresh and BlackBerry OS6. We’re in full gear on Sencha Touch 2.0 and aim to be in preview this summer with it. Sencha Touch 2.0 will be an evolutionary step in our Touch product, and we’re looking to bring greater consistency in the core platform between Ext JS and Touch. In the spring, we’ll also release a touch compatible version of our charting package so developers can make beautiful, mobile-friendly, plugin-free charts.

Sencha Animator

Currently in Developer Preview, we’re super excited about the progress we’re making internally on Animator. Targeting a mid to late summer v1, we’ve made great progress on preparing to move from the developer preview state to our first beta and we anticipate delivering the first beta in 4-6 weeks. You can look forward to many new features in each Animator release heading to v1 that make it feel more comfortable to a user of animation tools. We’ll be adding in things like better easing visualization, new keyboard shortcuts, and many other “pro” features. Our community has been fantastic in providing us feedback on how to make Animator a first rate tool for interactive and animated content in HTML5.

And More…

This is just an update on the public commitments we’ve made for our roadmap, we’ve also got a few new things under wraps that we’ll be launching this summer. We hope to update you on those just as soon as they’re ready for unveiling. Thanks for being part of the Sencha community, and keep the feedback coming!