As a long time follower of Peter-Paul Koch's style of Javascript, and someone who has long avoided its use where I could solve the problem server side, I have found myself strangely drawn to the world of ExtJS.

I was asked two weeks ago to perform some style changes to a product which our company has been designing. It's a dashboard utility for businesses with major data quality projects, designed to link in with our flagship product DataTrawler. The problem is that it has now been through the hands of four lead programmers each with their own idea of how it should hang together and remains a little short on documentation.

Step in developer number 5, whose key expertise is in wxWidgets. He wants to concentrate on completing the python development and asked if I would style the GUI in ExtJS.

I'll admit to a lot of teething problems, but the framework genuinely hangs together, and can be used quickly to develop fat client applications. My big grumble remains that it is too Ajax focussed and too glitz and glamour. Their key examples include Ajax responses and even javascripts which are php generated. I've been styling plone websites for a long time now and am comfortable converting definition lists into menus and dialog box style layers. ExtJS offers no such device, but I'm sure it won't be too hard to bolt in. I suspect it might need a few proprietary attributes. I'll keep you posted.