by cachius | 2025-12-11 14:51:56+00:00
And it spawned ExtJS. Which could have been React, but they messed up. Literally they built a faster Facebook app 'Fastbook' in 2012.

Short history lesson:

https://medium.com/hackernoon/the-rise-and-fall-of-ext-js-c9...

In August 2006, a guy by the name of Jack Slocum (now CEO of Alta5) began to blog of his experiments with YUI. Over time, these experiments became more complex and Jack would start to bundle them into what would later be named YUI-ext (Yahoo UI extensions) — the precursor to Ext JS (Extensible JavaScript).

Jack Slocum’s blog was used to communicate his vision for YUI-ext and garnered community support from around the world. The release of the Grid component for YUI-ext would forever change the trajectory of the library and the community as the GridPanel would become the core UI component for many applications to come.

Throughout its early life, Jack continued to build upon YUI-ext by adding features to the framework, such as animations, Modals, Tab Panel, Resizable elements and a layout manager that greatly expanded upon the YUI framework. These components would seldom extend the YUI library and had their own rendering functions.

YUI-ext created a foundation for web programmers unlike anything the world had seen before and many developers flocked to the framework and invested in the newly formed community. The net result was the explosive expansion of YUI-ext.

From YUI-ext to Ext JS In January 2007 we found Jack extremely busy to push out YUI-ext 0.40 and it is this version where we find the namespace of the framework change from YAHOO.ext to a much simpler Ext (pronounced “ekst J S” or “E-X-T J S” by some of us old-school community members).

February 2007, Ext JS 1.0 was being developed in tandem with a new website, ExtJS.com. In April 2007, the launch of ExtJS.com was announced to the community along with the release of Ext JS 1.0.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230222210535/https://jackslocu...

For those that don’t know, Ext JS was one of the first JavaScript frameworks in the early days of Web 2.0. It was the first framework to offer a complete package of everything needed to build full-fledged applications using just JavaScript in a web browser. At one point, it was used by over 2 million developers worldwide, 70% of the fortune 500, and 8 of the top 10 financial institutions. It was years ahead of everyone else, open source, and had an incredible community of passionate people contributing to its success.

As that success grew, so did the number of copycat competitors. They eventually started taking the code and assets and embedding them into their own frameworks. Adobe embedded it in Cold Fusion and other competitive frameworks followed their lead without any contribution to the framework or community.

At the time the thought of competing directly against a behemoth like Adobe was scary. How could they take our product and offer it as their own? I took what I thought was the right action to “protect” Ext JS from being “stolen” by changing to a more restrictive license. That was a huge mistake.

Looking back in hindsight, without the fear, I have a much clearer picture. I see what truly made Ext JS great was not the code - it was all the people who loved, contributed and supported it. As we worked on making our own dreams a reality, we helped others do the same, sharing our knowledge, code, and solving tough challenges together.

That is what really mattered — our community. That is what I should have protected, not the code. You were my closest friends. I am sorry I changed the license after we all came to an agreement on the first license. That was a breach of integrity and you deserved better. I would do it differently if I could.