WEBIX BLOG

JavaScript UI library Webix allows redefining the appearance of many elements through templating. For example, in tree view we can define the look of item through the following template:

Here you can see the two main components of webix templates: common helpers and property placeholders. Common helpers are predefined pieces of logic which renders some common elements (tree icon in the above case). Property placeholders are markers that will be replaced with data from related data object.
By using html tags in the template we can change the look of component in many ways.

An Interactive tutorial is an easy-to-use and demonstrative way to learn JavaScript libraries from scratch. Developers may read the guide, code in the neighboring block and preview the results on the same page. All the mistakes that are made by “JavaScript students” are highlighted at once so that you can correct them.

Webix presents several detailed interactive tutorials that are divided into the following topics: a general tutorial for beginners, DataTable tutorial and Form controls guide.

One of the latest cool APIs of the modern web is web sockets API. It allows creating real-time apps, where users can collaborate, get notifications and data updates whenever the data is changed. This article will show how you can create a simple web chat by using Webix and web sockets API.

Web chat is a “hello world” for real-time web apps. You can grab the final code from github.

Are you looking for an easy-to-use tool for fast prototyping? Would you like to share your UI experiments in popular social nets?

Webix presents a live coding tool “Code Snippet” that allows you to code UI with Webix and see the results of your work immediately.

This tool enables you to code in JavaScript and HTML, load data in JSON and XML formats or apply 6 Webix skins to decorate your UI.

Good news! Now you are able to define custom colors and fonts for a web interface created with the Webix library. We are releasing Webix Skin Builder – online tool, which you can use for interface customization.

You may choose one of the eight predefined color schemes from the list of base skins (air, compact, clouds, glamour, light, metro, terrace and web) or create your own web app style.

Where it may be useful

HTML5 provides multiple ways of arranging elements on the page. However, while building web apps we can still face tasks that can’t be solved with pure HTML and CSS. For example, there’s a problem of mixing percent and fixed size values in the same row. Another task that exercises the developers’ minds is making columns of equal height. The CSS Grid specification looks like a promising solution to such problems, but it’s currently at the draft stage and implemented only in Internet Explorer. If you need to have a greater layout flexibility here and now – that is where Webix Layouts can help.

What the purpose is

Modern web apps can be rather complicated. It’s not uncommon that a single page can consume data from multiple sources, part of which can be provided by third party API or by a related application that resides on some other site. And that is where a problem occurs. A page hosted on one domain can’t access data from a different domain.

For example, if you have a page hosted on //app.mydomain.com, which tries to load data from the //data.mydomain.com, the data loading will fail. Any browser blocks such kind of data loading operation for safety reasons. Moreover, a request to a different port, such as //app.mydomain.com:5000 for example, will be blocked as well. URLs pointing to the same domain but to different ports are treated as URLs pointing to different domains.

The reason

Webix is mostly a UI framework, it is oriented for usage in complex client side apps with a lot of controls and complex business logic. At the same time, it can be effectively used for solving common tasks without the necessity of learning any third party libraries. Let’s check these Webix features by creating a simple “ToDo” app. The ToDo App is like a “Hello World” for frameworks. It is the basic app, which shows how the main functionality of the framework can be used.

You can grab the code of final version from GitHub or check the online demo.

One of the key advantages of the Webix library is the ability to work on both desktop and mobile devices. A web-based user interface created with Webix will work properly on both platforms. Still there are some recommendations which will help you to achieve a better user experience while developing your mobile web app.

In this article I’ll try to describe the most significant features of mobile applications development. Let’s go into details by creating a simple ‘contact list’ app. This is a common app that allows users to create a contact list, look up the necessary contacts and view their details.

You can download the full sources of the actual working application from the github repo or go check a live demo.

Not so long ago, the drag-and-drop functionality was used in web apps quite rarely. With HTML5 coming on the scene, native drag-and-drop has become easily accessible and popular. The functionality that required lots of coding efforts before, now can be added with a few lines of HTML code. While developing the Webix library, we tried to keep all features and advantages of native drag-and-drop. At the same time, we’ve added new capabilities that might be useful in web app development.

Component Level Drag-and-Drop

While HTML5 drag-and-drop is focused on an HTML element, Webix drag-and-drop concentrates on the UI components. For example, try to drag items between the tree and the grid in the demo below: