Is Ext JS a superset of jQuery?

Question

So jQuery handles DOM manipulation, event handling, and special effects. Ext JS also does that, plus has a lot of built-in UI components.

Here's the question. Is there anything substantial that jQuery has that Ext JS doesn't?

Here's the context. I've been wondering what reason people would have of using both Ext JS and jQuery. Some guesses:

• They feel more comfortable with jQuery, but need the extra capabilities of Ext JS
• They have a site already in production with jQuery, need to add Ext JS, and don't want to rewrite what's already there
• There's something that jQuery has that Ext JS doesn't

Answer 1

To put it really simple: ExtJS is to Ext Core what jQuery UI is to jQuery.

ExtJS and jQuery UI are both component libraries
Ext Core and jQuery are both javascript frameworks aimed at dom manipulation and Ajax.

Answer 2

Basically, ExtJS provides a completely different set of features that jQuery. Like you said, jQuery is designed and optimized for DOM manipulation (selectors, attributes, traversing, effects etc), whereas ExtJS' primary purpose is to provide a rich component library for user interfaces.

If you're working with the DOM and you aren't creating any kind of user interface then stick with jQuery, but if you're creating a rich web app then ExtJS is for you.

Whilst ExtJS provides some basic DOM manipulation in it's Ext.Element class, it is nothing on jQuery and many people use the two together for this reason.

Answer 3

EXT JS has a much better user interface library. Generally, people like the ease of writing javascript code with JQuery, but are wowed by the polished user interface of the EXTJS widgets.

So, to answer your question - no; both are standalone Javascript frameworks / libraries. They both do all of the things you mentioned. It's just that EXT JS does the UI stuff better, and JQuery does the DOM manipulation stuff better.

Answer 4

Maybe its because jQuery does have many plugins available while extjs has few plugins available contributed by its users.So some developers might benefit from jQuery+Extjs implementation.