Sencha, the leader in powering HTML5 development for desktop and mobile applications, today announced significant updates to its Sencha Touch mobile framework. Sencha Touch 2.3 is the latest upgrade to the industry’s most popular HTML5 mobile framework for designing, developing and deploying HTML5 apps to any mobile device. The enhanced version now integrates with Apache Cordova for seamless support of native phone functionality direct from HTML5 apps. Touch 2.3 also comes with out-of-the-box native-looking themes for iOS 7, previous iOS versions, Android, Windows 8 and BlackBerry 10. Touch 2.3 will also be packaged with Sencha Touch Grid–a breakthrough add-on for easily sorting, filtering and editing large amounts of data on mobile devices–as part of a Sencha Complete and Sencha Touch Bundle. These updates provide mobile application developers a complete framework for creating touch-based, data-rich web applications that can fully utilize the features and capabilities of any mobile device.

More and more developers are embracing the flexibility and productivity gains of building HTML5 applications without commitment to a restrictive proprietary platform and code. However, as mobile devices become more sophisticated, developers and end-users alike are increasingly demanding fast, visually compelling web apps that provide the same experience as native iOS, Android and BlackBerry apps. With these updates, the Sencha Touch framework not only integrates native features into web apps, but also enhances the usability and functionality of each app.

“Sencha Touch gives us the flexibility to build HTML5 apps with a native-like look and feel for the devices our clients want to support,” said Brett Cortese, President and CEO of Universal Mind. “With Sencha Touch 2.3, we can use TouchGrid to build apps that easily handle large sets of data, and Cordova support allows us to take advantage of the community’s rich collection of plugins to access native device functionality. These features plus the new iOS and Android themes allow our developers to create almost anything they can imagine, while delivering apps faster and more efficiently.”

“As the market becomes more complex with the release of every new mobile browser, platform and operating system, HTML5 has emerged as the lingua franca of the application developer community,” said Michael Mullany, CEO of Sencha. “With these new updates to the Sencha Touch framework, we are not only making the end-user’s mobile application experience simpler, easier and more exciting, but the developer’s too. Particularly, when you are developing for the enterprise, Sencha Touch 2.3’s tools equip you with both native and HTML5 features, so you only need to create your applications once in order to run on any device without limitation.”

Get Everything You Need to Build Awesome, Touch-Based Applications in One Bundle
Sencha Touch Bundle, launched in March 2013, combines all the technology, tools and support developers need for developing mobile HTML5 and touch-based applications in a single cost-effective package. The bundle now includes the new Sencha Touch Grid, Sencha Touch 2.3 and new Sencha Touch themes Cupertino (an iOS 7-friendly theme), Cupertino Classic (an iOS-friendly theme), and Mountain View (an Android-friendly theme), as well as Sencha Architect and the Sencha Eclipse Plugin. Sencha Touch Bundle is perfect for developers and businesses executing a mobile-first strategy.

Present Large Quantities of Data on Small Screens
Sencha Touch Grid is a highly optimized grid component that makes it easy to retrieve, sort, filter and edit large amounts of data on any mobile touch device. Using a plugin architecture, Sencha Touch Grid supports a multitude of grid functions such as:
1) ViewOptions to allow showing, hiding and reordering of grid columns
2) ColumnResizing to allow using pinch gestures to resize columns
3) Editable to enable editing grid contents for an entire row (one at a time)
4) MultiSelection to enable selection and deletion of multiple rows at a time
5) PagingToolbar to quickly navigate to another page of data
6) SummaryRow to add or pin an additional row of summarize data (averages, max, min, etc.) to the top of the grid

Package Applications for Native Platforms with Apache Cordova Support and Platform-Specific Themes
Sencha Touch 2.3 offers seamless native packaging by making Apache Cordova a fully supported component with updated device APIs for camera, device, events, file and many others (a complete list is provided here). Touch 2.3 also includes an enhanced BlackBerry 10 theme and two new themes: Cupertino (an iOS-friendly theme) and Mountain View (an Android-friendly theme). Themes can be used based on their respective platforms using the theme-switching capabilities of Sencha Touch.

Automatically Update Cordova and Projects
Sencha Cmd 4.0 now supports Sencha Touch 2.3 and Apache Cordova integration. The ant cordova command enables access to Cordova 2.9.0 APIs and packaging. The app watch command runs in the background, automatically handling changes to common files and continually updating changes to projects with the minimum amount of work necessary to bring applications and their CSS up-to-date.

Pricing and Availability
Sencha Touch 2.3 is available now as a free download from www.sencha.com, under either the open-source GPLv3 license or free under the Sencha Commercial License. Sencha Touch Bundle is available at $795 per developer and includes Sencha Touch 2.3, Sencha Touch Grid, Sencha Touch Charts, Sencha Architect, Sencha Eclipse Plugin and Sencha Support. Sencha Architect 2.2 is available today at a starting price of $399 for new customers, and free of charge for eligible existing customers. Sencha Touch 2.3 remains free for commercial app developers.

More information on today’s announcement can be found on the Sencha blog at www.sencha.com/blog.