What's New in Web Dynpro ABAP

Several new or changed features are available for Web Dynpro ABAP.

Instance Styling for UI Elements and Page (New)

It is now possible to create custom style definitions to change the visual appearance of specific UI elements (for example, the background color of Buttons). You can also add a custom style class to the whole page of a Web Dynpro ABAP application (for example, to insert a background image).

You use interface IF_WD_CUSTOM_STYLE_MANAGER (method CREATE_CUSTOM_STYLE) to create custom style classes. Style definitions are defined within objects of interface IF_WD_CUSTOM_STYLE.

Styles can be assigned to UI elements by matching the names of the style definition and the UI elment property styleClassName. This property is available for all UI elements that inherit from UIElement (for example, Button, InputField or Table) and for MatrixData and MatrixHeadData.

Method ADD_PAGE_STYLE_CLASS_NAME of interface IF_WD_CUSTOM_STYLE_MANAGER allows you to add a style class name to the whole page of the application.

You can find an example in component WDR_TEST_CUSTOM_STYLES.

For more information, see the system documentation for IF_WD_CUSTOM_STYLE_MANAGER and IF_WD_CUSTOM_STYLE.

Support of Blue Crystal Theme (New)

You can now apply the new SAP standard theme Blue Crystal to Web Dynpro ABAP applications to give them a Fiori-like appearance.

You can enable this theme by setting Web Dynpro application parameter WDTHEMEROOT or URL parameter SAP-THEME to the value sap_bluecrystal.

For restrictions regarding Blue Crystal support, see SAP Note 2000125 Information published on SAP site.

Standards Mode for Embedded Web Dynpro ABAP Applications (Changed)

You cannot combine different IE render engines on a browser page. For example, IE9 Standards mode cannot be combined on a page with IE8 Quirks mode.

In certain cases, it is now possible to automatically switch to the required render mode:
  • SAP NetWeaver Business Client (NWBC) for HTML

    If NWBC is running on the same server instance as the Web Dynpro ABAP application, it is now possible for NWBC to retrieve the preferred render mode before starting the application. In this case, NWBC adjusts its own rendering to the rendering of the embedded application.

    For more information, see SAP Note 1956448 Information published on SAP site.

  • Web Dynpro ABAP in IFrame

    If the Web Dynpro ABAP application is started with a render mode different from the embedding page, the Web Dynpro framework tries to restart the application with another render mode. This means, if the application was first started in Standards mode, the framework tries to switch to Quirks mode and vice versa. A restart in another rendering mode will not take place if the render mode is defined with URL parameter sap-wd-htmlrendermode.

    For more information, see SAP Note 1996956 Information published on SAP site.

Select Options (Changed)

Location of Saved Searches

You can now define that the Saved Searches DropDownListBox is displayed inside the Search Criteria panel rather than above it. To allow this, parameter LOCATION_SAVED_SEARCHES was added to the structure WDR_SO_S_GENERAL_VISIBILITY.

Value Help (Changed)

Quick Help in Popup

You can now call a quick help describing the functions of value help and search criteria.

Settings Dialog

You can now call the Settings dialog box via an icon rather than a link.

New or Changed UI Elements and Features of UI Elements

GridLayout (Changed)
  • Semantic Colors

    The Legend element can now also be assigned to the GridLayout. The Legend element allows you to display a descriptive text for different colors used in an assigned UI element. This can be useful to enhance the accessibility of your applications.

    You assign the Legend to the container with GridLayout by setting the ID of the Legend element as the value of the legendID property of the container element. The color-wise assignment is done via property semanticColor of GridData.

  • Property layoutFixed

    Using the new property layoutFixed, you can define that all content that is larger than the surrounding layout cell is truncated. Just like with FormLayout, the content does not expand the cell.

DataGrid (Changed)

  • You can now export the content of DataGrid cells to an Excel spreadsheet.

  • Input help (F4 help) is now available for CInputFields, which can be used as a cell editor in the DataGrid.

  • The performance has been improved.

Chart (Changed)

The new property selectionstring is available for selection handling in Charts. To set the selection of a Chart data point at design time, you enter the respective JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) string as the value of this property. If the user selects a data point at runtime, the property selectionstring is set to the corresponding JSON string.

Timeout for ACF Controls (New)

If the required plug-ins for Active Component Framework (ACF) controls are not available, a timeout is triggered and the application navigates to an error page.

MessageArea (Changed)

The performance of the MessageArea was improved so that also a large number of messages can be processed within one round-trip.

For more information, see SAP Notes 1972438 Information published on SAP site and 1972442 Information published on SAP site.

Visualization Changes

Scroll Bar Design (Changed)

For several UI elements, you can now use themed scrollbars rather than the visualization provided by the browser. This works for Chrome and Internet Explorer.

Related Information