Addressed to web developers who can use this toolkit for better web development, this book describes Webix: a user interface (UI) toolkit for building web applications.

Webix is available in two versions: a standard (free) UI library under GNU license and a pro (commercial) version available for purchase in four different editions. This book covers the pro version. Compared to the standard version, the pro version has many more widgets and advanced functionality. However, most of the applications presented in the book can be developed with the standard version. I couldn’t find the Webix version number used in the book.

The author starts by presenting the evolution of web development, from static Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) pages; to dynamic pages using server tools, for example, the common gateway interface (CGI), Active Server Pages (ASP), and Java servlets; to client UI tools (Dojo, jQuery UI, Angular). Another modern aspect is how to transform a web application into a touch-based mobile application. The author recommends Webix as a very good UI toolkit to build web applications, listing the advantages of this tool: a modern look with a lot of flexibility, the availability of all the form controls, a good layout system, and overall ease of use.

The first half of the book is a detailed presentation of the toolkit’s elements: widgets, controls, forms, and data components. Each section comes with code snippets and screen images. The material is easy to follow and understand due to the downloadable code, which is referenced in the book. This code allows readers to execute code and exercise many of the Webix features.

The second half uses more than 200 pages to build a real interactive application: a personal information manager to process a user’s appointments, tasks, and contacts. This application can run on a browser, a mobile device, and as a desktop application. To make it work on native platforms, it uses the PhoneGap framework to build applications for mobile devices using cascading style sheets (CSS3), HTML5, and JavaScript. A chapter also deals with cloud sharing the application’s data between multiple devices.

The book ends with a video game developed in Webix that uses CSS3 animation.

I like this book because it is a comprehensive and easy-to-follow presentation of a remarkable web UI toolkit.