Can we have a POLL for UI element Enhancements proposal as in WDJ Forum

[abhimanyu_lagishetti7]

Dear Moderator

Can we have a POLL where we can suggest UI element/Functionality enhancements in WDA like the one we have in Web Dynpro Java Forum.

This can be useful for next releases of Web Dynpro ABAP.

Thanks

Abhimanyu

[faebulicious]

At the moment, I'm missing two very simple things:

1. onComplete Event for ACF Execution controll similar to the AcfUpDownload Control

The reason is very simple. We're execution a local, which is communication with SAP using webservices. We need a trigger, to get another roundtrip. Currently we're doing this using a Timer, which causes a latency of 1 second

2. Drag'n'Drop with tag-Binding

We're using alot of Drag'n'Drop within our SAP Gui Applications. Many of our trees and column trees are displaying nodes of a different "type" and have therefore different flavours in SAP Gui. In WD it is not possible to define the drag/drop tags on a node-based level, but only static on the tree/table. Would be gread, if the tags are bindable to the elements content.

Thanks and cheers

Fabian

[Former Member]

I'd like to be able to use an enhancement view/window in an FPM dialog box. As of now, this is not possible, since you cannot define an enhancement window as an interface.... which is needed in order to access it externally. You can use enhancement windows freely as "normal" UIBB's in your application configuration, just not in any dialog boxes.

A possible workaround is to create your own specific standalone WDC with the view/window, then, in the main FPM component configuration, define this WDC/window as a UIBB in the dialog box, but this seems like a tedious workaround.

Cheers,

Trond

[Former Member]

Dear Thomos,

Greetings !!.

According to my Knoweldge avaialabilty of multi line headers( coloumn Groupings like table ) in ALV is not avaliable, so inclusion would be great .

correct me if I am wrong !!

Regards,

Kranthikumar Palle.

[Former Member]

I have a small suggestion regarding the creation of assistance classes in WD4A.

Assistance classes created via forward navigation from the WD4A component editor u2013 i.e. typing a new class name in the pertaining input field and answering the following u201DCreate class?u201D popup with u201DYesu201D u2013 creates a new class without the Fixedpoint-arithmetic flag checked.

This can easily be missed and is different from the according function in the Repository Browser, i.e. creating a new class via context menu->create (wich sets the flag)!

As this affects calculations in the coding considerably (a hard to find bug/feature ) I would like to suggest that both class creation behaviors get aligned.

Regards,

Sebastian Kamp

[ChrisPaine]

Functionality for automatic translation of images

Very often images contain text - given that it is not possible to overlay an image element with a translatable text element, it would be nice to have some sort of standard support for "translatable" images. The image element could be marked as "translatable" and it could automatically append the system language to the name of the bound image source, but use the bound source if the language specific element could not be found.

eg. in source of image ui - my_image.jpg is specified. I tick the "translatable" option.

When I log on in English the framework looks for my_image_en.jpg , and if it finds it displays that in preference to the my_image.jpg . If I log on in Spanish, the framework looks for my_image_es.jpg , if it can't find it it displays my_image.jpg .

[Former Member]

As there is no automatic F4 help for data element TIMS, see [SAP Help|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70ehp2/helpdata/en/47/9f724642314aabe10000000a42189b/frameset.htm] but we can create our own Freely Programmed Value Help for time however as suggested by Thomas Jung in this [Document|http://code.google.com/p/abap-sdn-examples-tpj/downloads/detail?name=ChapterX%20-%20User%20Programmed%20Value%20Help.pdf&can=2&q=].

But in Normal ABAP programming (Such as Reporting etc..), the automatic F4 help on TIMS domain (Determined Input help: CLOCK) is there.

Is there any possibility to have the same standard F4 help in the WDA as well?

[ChrisPaine]

Removed: - functionality already exists!

Edited by: Chris Paine on Apr 6, 2010 10:52 AM

[Former Member]

Hi,

It will be great to have the functionality of melting groups be enhanced. Label for the melting group should take care of all accessibility issues. And we should be able to add as many UI elements as required.

Another type of visibility should be provided, wherein, if a field is 'Invisible', the following field should occupy its position (i.e. field with this visibility type be removed from the view completely).

A small method be provided in the UI element specific classes (e.g., cl_wd_input_field) for fetching the index of UI element in its parent container. This will be useful in dynamic programming situations. As of now it can be achieved but a standard method will be useful.

Best regards,

Abir

[ChrisPaine]

I'd like the ability to have a custom value help that allows you to show a text in a field, but actually search for the underlying value. Like a dropdown by key - but for a popup search help. So the user chooses - say cost center and has all the associated search helps - but doesn't see the code on the returned cell, but instead sees the text - or a concatenation of the code and the text. More importantly - they can't enter a code value but can only choose using the search help. (yes I know this is restricting the user's input, but it is asked for time and time again, as it also restricts the errors that the user make in inputting the values!

You used to be able to do this by attaching a custom value help to a text UI element, and updating the text and a hidden value attribute, but recently have found that custom value helps won't fire off read only fields anymore.

Also - I'd like hierarchical/tree views that have more flexibility in formatting the output - Cell variants for master columns please!

How about an alternate interface to either hierarchical tables (master columns) or the tree UI element so that they use the same logic? one has indicators - is this a leaf node - one has indicator - does this cell have children. So we could have a little consistency and potential reuse in the code that could be used to support the two display methods. At the same time we could enhance the tree view so that more than one text/image could be displayed in each node - perhaps allowing a "row" container into which could be inserted various different editors?

some thoughts for now.

Cheers,

Chris

[alejiandro_sensejl]

Are there any plans to provide an implementation of an ALV tree (see )?

[anand_nidamanuru]

Hi Thomas,

Below are few suggestions from my side, to make the WD IDE more user friendly

1)Synchronize Context nodes and structures

a.Most of the times a single context node is mapped many views. Whenever the node attributes are changed, we need to do a manual refresh of mapping in each and every individual view, other components (if itu2019s a interface context).

b.To Automate this based on a confirmation or button so that WD automatically does it for us

2)Test Layout for Views.

a.Currently we need to create a window and then application to test any small changes in layout. This window and application have to be deleted once the changes are complete. Instead if we can have simple button for testing the layout alone it will be very useful to check layout changes such as alignment and lengths.

3)Search for WebDynpro (Text search like classes)

With 7.01 we have the new display for method implementations. This will help for searching with in a View. But for the overall component level, I am not sure if we have any search.

4)Modification assistant for Layout, context changes

5) The most useful I feel that is missing is, For windows, there is no default hook method or an event (that we can handle), that indicates start of Navigation.

The intention is to have a common method for all the Inbound plug handlers. This will be very useful to write common code in Plugs. Currently we have to repeat all the common code in each and every plug and it will be very difficult to track if we add new plugsu2026

I am not sure if there is any way to achieve this.

[anand_nidamanuru]

Some more.

6) Currently if we have Cell Variants, they have to be bound to context for the key values of corresponding cell editor.

If the key value doesnt match to any of the cell editor keys, application dumps saying invalid key. Instead of dumping, can there be a default editor, incase the key doesnt match?

7) ALV loosing the lead selection, when the view layout has sort order.

- I understand that this is required up on certain context changes like rebinding complete data. However most of the times, we want to re-select the previous lead selection before ALV Refresh had reset it.

As this happens inside Modify view of ALV, unless otherwise we use explicit Refresh, there is no other option.

Is it possible for ALV to throw an event if the ALV services like Sort has lead to any context changes like Lost of Lead selection?

😎 Search helps:

This requirement came from many users. Users would like to have custom search helps with in DDIC Search Help.

This can be any popup for performing search not just another DDIC search help. I am not sure but I think this is possible with Screen programming but not in WD.

Also more control is required to handle to F4 or Simulate F4, i.e. for example, to throw the same DDIC Search help if the user hits Enter.

The major functionality that users will miss, if they other search helps like OVS or Custom Search help, is the Personal Value List (PVL). Can we have some WD interface methods, that will help to enable/disable PVL with these custom search helps

9) Mandatory attributes check:

The current WD utilities mandatory attribute check method, does not return all the mandatory attributes for that View and context.

Also it works on lead selected data. Assuming there are hundreds of elements in context (for an ALV/Table), and the detail view has some mandatory attributes, this check has to be done every time for each and every lead selection.

Also, most of the times, the child node data changes based on parent node data. In these situations we will need all the mandatory attributes upfront and required checks has to be executed.

It will help a lot if the mandatory attributesto are passed back by the WD Utilities method once it calculates.

Thanks,

Anand

Edited by: Anand Nidamanuru on Dec 11, 2009 10:10 AM

[Former Member]

Hi,

In addition to the above things, Can we expect any TAB change event in the ALV ie how to have an event that gets triggered when we move from one to other cell in ALV.

Also,

When we implement the standard aggregation functionality for ALV totals,

How to read the total being calculated by the standard functionality.

Can we expect any method to return this total calculated by the standard functionality for that field.

Regards,

Lekha.

[Former Member]

Indeed the roundtrip triggered by these events can be expensive. Nevertheless, there can be situations in applications where it would be a benefit to have these events.

For example when entering data where there are field dependencies ("When field A has value "X" field B is mandatory"). In SAP-GUI you can implement the application to handle these dependencies when the user changes the input field using cursor keys or tab. In WD you can handle these dependencies only when the user hits enter.

[thomas_jung]

> In SAP-GUI you can implement the application to handle these dependencies when the user changes the input field using cursor keys or tab.

Perhaps I am too rusty with my Classic Dynpro programming, but I don't believe that this is the case. You have the Module Pool statements AT CURSOR_SELECTION, CHAIN-INPUT, CHAIN-REQUEST, ON INPUT REQUEST, etc. However all of these statements must be placed into the PAI. They are only triggered if something occurs to trigger the PAI. The PAI can not be triggered using a tab or cursor key movement. Even the AT CURSOR_SELECTION requires an F-Key or Double Click on the Input Field to trigger the PAI processing.

[Former Member]

Well my classic dynpro knowledge is rusty as well but in the SAP-Gui ALV it is very much possible by doing this

lcl_alv->register_edit_event( lcl_alv->mc_evt_modified ). 

This forces the ALV to trigger a HANDLE_DATA_CHANGED-Event when you change the cell.

Edited by: Stephan Smola on Jul 22, 2009 6:02 PM

[thomas_jung]

You are correct. This was functionality specific to the ALV Grid Control and only works within the Enjoy Control version of the ALV object. But for this use case we do have the DATA_CHECK event of the ALV Component in WDA. But that doesn't trigger on focus change like the SAPGUI Control ALV. It only fires right now under these circumstances: when the user executes an action on a UI element (for example, activation of a checkbox or confirmation of an entry in the input field with the Return key)

I have some news on the other items you suggested:

>1. SALV_WD_TABLE: Being able to modify the context-menu during runtime to have context menus sensitive to the cell the user did the click on

We will have this in NetWeaver 7.02 There is a new event exposed by the SALV_WD_TABLE called ON_CELL_MENU_SELECT.

>3. Being able to implement your own Cell-Editor for the ALV in a similar way you'd do with ItemRenderers in FLEX.

This is also being worked on currently for a future release - at least for the base Table UI element. We want to be able to allow multiple cell editors within one table column. This is still in design so I don't know exactly how it will work or if it will be extended to the ALV component as well.

[Former Member]

These are good news on the other topics. Especially the context menu in the ALV component is something I'm missing alot at the moment. 7.02 means Enh. Pack 2 when I understood the NW roadmap correctly. When will that be available?

[thomas_jung]

Yes 7.02 means NetWeaver 7.0 Enhancement Package 2. This will ship as part of ERP 6.0 Enhancement Package 5, SRM 7.0 Enhancement Package 1 and CRM 7.0 Enhancement Package 1 - basically the Business Suite release that is comming in 2010. I'm afraid that we don't have any firmer release dates that we can share right now. However you can expect 7.02 to be the focus of many TechEd sessions this year in the ABAP related tracks.

[Former Member]

Regarding the context menu in WD ALV I had opened an OSS message prior to my writing here in this thread, 'cause it's a feature we'd really need for our development and I couldn't understand the decision not to offer the context menu in the WD ALV. After you mentioned the availabilty of this feature in 7.02 I asked the SAP Basis developer I was in contact with through OSS if he could confirm that. Unfortunately he denied the availabilty of WD ALV context menus in 7.02 and said the event you mentioned will be for a different purpose.

Honestly, I'm confused

[thomas_jung]

Well we are talking about functionatlity that isn't released yet - so we have to be cautious here. I had some information that this event woudl do as described, but this is all discussion and not based upon testing or documentation. This is a developer working with the solution, he or she might very well have better information.

We take all the suggestions in this forum apply them to the porfolio planning discussions. If it turns out that this feature doens't quite meet the suggestion that it will be discussed as a new suggestion again.

[Former Member]

Functionality I recently required was to have fields and their associated labels invisible when the field contents were blank. I had hoped there would be a simple binding I could do to the visible property of the elements to achieve this, but found I needed a number of single character flag fields in the context to bind to and that I then had to set / reset these in code.

It would be useful if in the "Bind to the property of the selected attribute" dropdown of the "Define Context Binding" dialog there was an additional option of "Is Blank", or perhaps "Is Initial" that could be chosen.

Andrew

[Former Member]

I have several suggestions:

1. SALV_WD_TABLE: Being able to modify the context-menu during runtime to have context menus sensitive to the cell the user did the click on

2. FOCUS_IN/FOCUS_OUT events!

3. Being able to implement your own Cell-Editor for the ALV in a similar way you'd do with ItemRenderers in FLEX.

Regards

Stephan

[thomas_jung]

Question for you on the FOCUS_IN/FOCUS_OUT events. What kind of activities did you have in mind for these events? Remember that Web Dynpro Events are server side and most of them fire the entire WD Phase Model. We have avoided such focus based events in the past because of the detrimental impact they have on performance.

[Former Member]

Hi,

Here is my request: Ability to add own custom buttons to the wave bar area of dialog boxes.

Currently, you only are able to add stardard delivered buttons.

As per this thread: https://forums.sdn.sap.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1285315&tstart=0

Cheers,

Vic

[Former Member]

Hi Folks,

I saw lot of simple stuff is missing in ABAP web dynpro components.

Users are particular about some things here when they saw it from Portal.

A) SIZE.

B) FONTS

C) COLORS.

They asked simple questions can you make big button with big fonts.

We need the fonts of different sizes, BOLD, ITALIC and UNDERLINE for TEXTS.

1) BUTTONS OF BIG SIZES.

2) EMBEDDING GUI ICONS AND IMAGES IN BUTTONS of e.g: ROAD MAPS AND PHASE INDICATORS.

Thanks & regards,

Srinivas.

[abhimanyu_lagishetti7]

I can understand the security threat involved in enabling the field history.

However, I feel that the framework should provide this functionality through config or application parameters.( Application specific )

so that some internal applications can use this functionality

Thanks

Abhi

[Former Member]

Needed at first:

1. keyboard key remapping

2. cursor position fix

3. behind of input field more action controls (when pushed via mose once, double clik etc.)

4. voice/sound handling (because SAP do not support iframe in future)

5. real html support to run own html in page (as in iframe)

6. enhancement to manipulate generated html

7. button size control (height and width)

8. more and better quality icons (not want to use always own icons)

KK

[Former Member]

Ability to define a calculation type as percentage on a column level, final aggregation level and group level aggregation based on the sort criteria defined in ABAP List viewer.

For e.g.. Sum value of attribute A is 5000 and Sum value of Attribute is 2000. Requirement is to display the result of 2000/5000 = 40%.

Most of the time standard aggregation functionality is used to display total values. With the use of manual calculation standard aggregation can not be used. As a result flexibility to regroup / Resort the report on the fly using sort functionality is no available. The report becomes static.

Regards

Rohit Chowdhary

[Former Member]

The world is moving towards device less operation of the computers/mobiles using touch screen. Touch screen capabilities will allow for creation of systems to be used by public in general area like Railway stations, Metro, Airport, Shop Floor.

Touch screen like functionality will allow users to design SCADA like applications.

Regards

Rohit Chowdhary

[thomas_jung]

>

> The world is moving towards device less operation of the computers/mobiles using touch screen. Touch screen capabilities will allow for creation of systems to be used by public in general area like Railway stations, Metro, Airport, Shop Floor. 
> 
> Touch screen like functionality will allow users to design SCADA like applications. 
> 
> Regards
> Rohit Chowdhary

First of all in all Enhancement suggestions it is important to remember that Web Dynpro is not intended as a general purpose Web development framework. It is a specialized framework for creating stateful business transactions. In general would not be the scope or purpose of Web Dynpro to be used for public access applications as you described. The one exception to your list might be Shop Floor (or Warehouse). So in limited scope I can see some aspects of Touch Screen being interesting.

I will give you that we could use the large Icon support for Button or put an onAction on the Image - however I'm not sure what else you are looking for from Touch Screen Capabilities. Personally I've developed Shop Floor Touch Screen applicatoins in the past and the application framework has to do very little to support this. Generally the hardward emulates mouse movements and clicks based upon the touch interaction. The application doesn't have to be coded any differently to accept these touch screen interactions becuase it sees them all as mouse interactions. Now that we have Drag and Drop in 7.01 I could imagine some pretty interesting Shop Floor Touch Screen WDA applications already. I'm more interesting in what you feel is still missing for supporting Touch Screen.

[Former Member]

Thanks for quick reply. I agree that for touch screen capabilities we don't need to code the application differently from what we do at present.

It's interesting time for developers like us with the integration of FLASH and DRAG and DROP to develop some really nice business applications using WDA.

For a touch screen application graphics in overall application needs to be standard. This is where as a developer I feel WDA lacks: To me the import pieces of missing functionality

1. Lack of control on the size of images for elements like toggle selection for tables and menu etc.

2. Unable to control the width and height of Popup windows.

3. Multiline Tooltips with images

Regards

Rohit Chowdhary

[Former Member]

Hi Thomas,

Please refer to below communication from SAP about issues with the size of buttons.

-

---

Hello,

with SP14 some alignment issues were fixed in Firefox and IE. Therefore the enlarging buttons with large images had to be disabled, as this was not a supported feature.

There is a workaround for your problem. You can change the font size for buttons in the theme editor (and then you have to adapt the padding to have a centered font). You can either change it for all users (and all buttons) by changing the standard theme, or you can create a new theme with only these changes that is connected to certain users or a webdynpro application.

Best regards

Heiko

-

---

Please advise is there any other way other then change in themes to support large icons for buttons?

Regards

Rohit Chowdhary

[thomas_jung]

>Please advise is there any other way other then change in themes to support large icons for buttons?

No there isn't. This is a forum thread to discuss possible future enhancements to Web Dynpro ABAP and we were discussing that exact thing - that it would be nice to either have large icon support for buttons or to add an onAction to the Image so that you could simulate such a thing.

[Former Member]

Hi,

I suggest more control over menu UI element.

for now you are able to add it to several UI Elements like TextView, linkToAction, Image and so on. Unfortunately the control of the menu itself is not very comfortable.

I miss:

visiblity of both menu item, as well as menu (most important)

textview menu item, for text with design

tooltip, why not?

onExpand working on menu itself

property imageFirst as you can use images

I can also imagine a menu bound to a node like a drop down by index. expanding it would show all elements of node with bound text for information or selection like radio button or check bos.

regards

Stefan

[Former Member]

To be able to edit some of the theme features like size of the button, text size, image etc would really be nice.

Such enhancements will allow developers to be able to show there creativity and companies will be able to do branding of there applications with lot of ease without having worry about having a PORTAL to edit the themes or depend upon someone who has specalized in unsupported theme editor ( which may or may not be available for SP level someone is looking for).

Most of the developers, the once who are from ABAP background may find it difficult to change the themes using unsupported Theme Editor.

Regards

Rohit Chowdhary

[thomas_jung]

I don't see any harm in doing this. I have made this forum thread sticky. My only note: SAP is not obligated to actually implement anything proposed in this forum. We have a formal process for approving and specifying new UI elements internally. However we are always welcome to hear suggestions from customers.

I might suggest that we discuss not only new UI elements, but extensions or new properties/features you would like to see on existing UI elements. Also keep in mind that Web Dynpro ABAP and Java share the same Unified Renderering framework. So most UI elements are shared between the two environments. Also keep in mind that any UI elements have to neutral enough that they can be implemented in the HTML/JavaScript client, the Flex Client, and the NetWeaver Business Client Smart Client Rendering Canvas.

[Former Member]

When can we have Calendar Control in WebDynpro ABAP which is available in SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment 7.1?

[abhimanyu_lagishetti7]

Hi

When i use configuration controller in web dynpro application, there is a huge difference in performance of the application.

if i reset the custom controller to normal cusotm controller then the application's performanace is good.

I think there is a need to improve the performance of the standard functionalities of web dynpro.

This behaviour is seen in 7.01 Ehp1, as we recently upgraded the system from 7.0 SP13.

Abhi

[thomas_jung]

In general configuration controller shouldn't have a huge impact on performance. However if you are having a problem, have you tried switching the configuration interface from context to table based? From the Web Dynpro Component in the editor choose Edit->Configuration Data. Then in the dialog under Component Defined Personalization choose Permitted, data transfer via table.

This will cause the configuration data to be loaded via the Table Reader interface. This reduces the memory consumption and provides generally faster read access to the configuration. Particularly if you have a large amount of configuration data, this can improve performance.

[ChrisPaine]

Remove suffix "_CP" from UI Layout copy/paste to new view

It would be nice if, when copying layout from one view to another - using the copy/insert element options - that it did not suffix all the element names with "_CP" - there is no need in the second view as the elements do not exist in that view. the suffix should only be added when the element to be pasted already exists.

Not exactly UI element enhancement - but close enough that I thought it worth mentioning here.

[ChrisPaine]

Be able to send "Events" to islands

rather than relying on island to interpret changes in bound contexts it would be really nice to be able to send a specific event to an island - possibly with parameters - in very much the same way that the island is allowed to event back to WDA.

[Former Member]

I hope Moderator will take it forward. It'll be very great to have this kind of Forum for WebDynpro for ABAP also.