Sencha Touch and Internet Explorer 10

Question

Sencha Touch is brilliant but IE cannot open websites which is developed using Sencha Touch. I am not interested in using IE, but my opinion is not important since many others may use it.

Since Microsoft announces HTML-5 Support and I have worked with the great tools to make native apps even using HTML-5 and Java so it is obvious that IE 10 must support HTML5. But it seems sencha touch websites cannot be explored by IE 10 too, since I cannot explore Kitchen Sink (on sencha.com) using IE 10 however I can easily do this using Chrome.

Further to this problem, I want to make an web-site for a small company, is it right to use Sencha Touch to develop it or jQuery is a better choice? (I yearn for you say Sencha Touch :) since I am completely unfamiliar with jQuery)

I appreciate the time you are spending. Sincerely yours, PEYMAN MORTAZAVI

Answer 1

Call me old-fashioned, but when I see the Kitchen Sink demo failing in IE10, I blame the developers behind the demo, and not those behind the browser. IE10 is an oustanding browser that is worthy of our attention, and not merely for the fact that it will be used by millions upon millions immediately following its official release, but also because it's a great browser from a technical perspective.

If you're going to build a solution for your clients, you should avoid libraries that wish to distance themselves from supporting half of the market, meaning they don't actively develop with IE in mind. The excuses for not supporting IE simply aren't there today as your code won't require that much variance to work properly in the latest version of Microsoft's browser.

Use jQuery, jQuery Mobile, or jQuery UI. You can get some great UI from and with all of them, and you'll find excellent support in all major browsers.

Answer 2

I am porting my Sencha Touch 2.0 app to 2.2.1 in order to support IE10. So I have first-hand knowledge in the effort.

1. all Sencha websites / apps build previous to 2.2.0 and by developers targeting webkit browsers will never work on ie10 reliably because a bunch of stuff had to be done to the core of Sencha Touch in order for ie10 to work. Everyone has to go back and do what I'm doing... line by line of CSS and a few JS changes as well (esp if you do canvas stuff)

2. Running an old "kitchen sink" which was not properly architected for 2.2.1 and tested on IE10 is not going to work either. I do not know how much time Sencha folks spent testing kitchen sink on IE10 ...but one would assume...

3. I think what has thrown Sencha for a loop is developers don't have time or money to build business apps twice - once on ExtJS for laptop/desktop and 2nd time on Sencha Touch 2 for tablet touch/gesture support. This is the strange land of SDK's because the tablet real-estate so closely resembles that of a small laptop -- ergo as long as your UX people a really good, they can architect an experience that crosses over from tablet to laptop pretty good by building one code base in Sencha Touch.

But oooops - Sencha figured we'd all be building to small phones - a market dominated by webkit browsers. If that were the case, then this argument of IE market share would not hold - we all know Windows Phone numbers. It's hard to fudge/spin that. What's causing the rub is the tablet-laptop screen size being so similar.

IMHO...

Answer 3

IE10 in the Windows 8 preview is the same version that is slated for the tablets and mobile devices they have been producing. Saying it is for desktop support is not a very useful statement. The problem is this is what Microsoft is about to spend a very large amount of money marketing and pushing to businesses. This is not a case of a tablet/phone library not supporting a desktop, but of a tablet/phone library not supporting a target platform that is about to have billions of dollars of marketing spent to deploy it.

Answer 4

Any mention of Internet explorer seems to evoke deep emotion in everyone! However IE is a fact of life.

I would suggest that you use Google Chrome Frame. The first time IE visitors arrive at your site you can alert the user to install Google Chrome Frame and redirect them. It's a bit messy for the first visit but after that it should be seamless.

As I understand it Google Chrome Frame no longer requires admin rights to install.

Obviously people should just install Chrome in the first place but nobody's perfect.

Answer 5

Sencha Touch 2 is not designed to work on IE10. If desktop support is important for you, then you should use Ext JS 4.

Answer 6

Chrome and Safari use WebKit which Sencha Touch requires in order to function.

Internet Explorer might be able to display Sencha Touch apps in the future:

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/11/06/microsofts_ballmer_considers_using_webkit_within_ie.html

http://www.favbrowser.com/opera-firefox-and-internet-explorer-to-implement-webkit-prefixes/

But who knows?

Answer 7

I had spent a month getting a project to work with Sencha Touch, but had to choose a more accessable framework. The goals of the project were to work across as many browsers (desktop and mobile) as possible. The webkit preference for Sencha, while admirable in how it is achieved, made it unusable for my needs.

I am glad they changed their licensing since I tried it. That was the second stumbling point for our project.