After much frustration with not having this feature, I developed a plugin to allow that allows you to attach a key (letter) for which to trigger the handler of an ExtJS Menu item. I call it Ext.ux.TDGi.MenuKeyTrigger. I cannot tell you enough how many times I wished this was in some of the Ext JS applications I was developing and testing.

As an avid keyboard junkie, I really hate to have to move the mouse a lot. Hell, being an OS X user, there is much to be desired with the UI in this arena, especially after using Windows since 3.0 and getting spoiled with its well-baked accessibility features.

I developed this plugin about 8 months ago, but have had little time to really polish it due to the the work on my book, Ext JS in Action. But with that nearing completion, I’ve taken the time to release it tonight in it’s beta form, in hopes that I could get some feedback to improve it.

Github repo: http://github.com/tdgi/Ext.ux.TDGi.MenuKeyTrigger

Example here: http://tdg-i.com/js/examples/ext3/plugins/MenuKeyTrigger/

The following image came from the example above:

We had a great turnout for our Ext JS Meetup at General Dynamics on 2/23/10, with nearly forty people attending.
.

We’d like to thank Ext JS for sponsoring the Food and drink and General Dynamics for providing the meeting place

High Definition of the videos of the Presentations

Jay Garcia’s ExtJS Meetup presentation on 2/23/10 from Jay Garcia on Vimeo.

Pat Sheridan’s ExtJS Meetup presentation on 2/23/10 from Jay Garcia on Vimeo.

General Dynamics to host an Ext JS and JavaScript Meetup

After a successful and full meetup at Three Pillar Global on 1/19/2010, General Dynamics has graciously invited us to host a meetup at their Northern Virginia location. Pat Sheridan and Jay Garcia have selected two key topics that are essential to building dynamic and robust Ext JS applications.

About the presentations:

Theming Ext JS, Pat Sheridan

I’ll give some practical code walkthrough on understanding the default theme CSS, using Renderers, and writing/ overriding Ext Templates to give your app a unique look and feel.

Using Base Classes, Jay Garcia

Jay will explore the benefits of using base classes to improve and standardize application infrastructure.
He will walk through a real time example writing a base class and two implementation classes.

Food and refreshments to be provided. We look forward to seeing you there!

Address:

Where:
General Dynamics
15000 Conference Center Drive
Chantilly, VA 20151

RSVP Link: here.

The official ExtJS.com/forum link here.

About the presenters:

Pat Sheridan is a successful Ext JS developer that leverages his user experience background to accelerate successful development with RIA JavaScript frameworks, including Ext JS. With success stories such as the complete rewrite of the U.S. Treasury’s Pay.gov website and the production of four large RIA applications for the Financial Regulatory Authority (FINRA), he continues to dominate this space with a progressive thought process that enhances the development and user experience alike. He demonstrated his UX leadership with the release of an Ext JS 2.0 OmniGraffle template that has garnered over 50,000 downloads world wide.

Jay Garcia, author of the up and coming book, Ext JS in Action (http://extjsinaction.com/), provides daily support on the Ext JS forums as well as free extensions and widgets to the library. He is an author for JSMagazine, the Ext JS blog and his own blog at http://tdg-i.com. He’s developed enterprise-level applications using Ext JS since early 2006, when it was known as “yui-ext” and has continued to support and assist in the expansion of the product ever since.

Thank you!

Our Ext JS meetup on 1/19/2010 at Three Pillar Global was rather successful! We had over 30 developers show up with less than three weeks notice of the event. This caused an overflow of visitors, where they had to sit outside of the room.

Some photos

Pat Sheridan:

Shea Frederick

Jonathan Julian

The Audience

Videos: More to follow after the other presenters approve their presentation videos

Yesterday, JSMag team released the November 2009 edition of their monthly e-periodical. In this edition, you can find my Ext JS component life cycle article and an awesome IDE comparison by a fellow community leader, Shea Frederick.

The first 10 people to use coupon code “3z2u8hh” to get this month’s edition for free.

Click on the image below or visit http://jsmag.com/latest to get your copy.