Question Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals in Technology Q&A

POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 13:52:01 GMT

Dear Web Dynpro developers,

please use this thread exclusively to give your input on the following questions:

- Which UI elements are you missing most in NW 04?

- Which functionality on the NW 04 UI elements are you missing most?

- Which UI elements do you find (too) difficult to use?

(Please keep in mind, that Web Dynpro is not a HTML-only framework, but tries to abstract from concrete client implementations)

Your input is highly appreciated!

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 15:26:19 GMT

Hi Armin

Its really good to start this thread, so that all are aware of the best usages and limitations of the UI elements.

I want to focus on the most used UI Element - Table.

The following are some of my main concerns which I have brought to the attention of the forum. Most of the below points are easily available from the HTML framework

1. Single Column having two elements in the same row or merging of two column headers

2. Column heading in two rows – wrapping the caption and showing them in two lines.

3. Column sub headings. grouping of some 3-5 columns and showing under one same heading

I will keep updating this thread with more inputs in the following weeks.

Thanks

Sathya

Sathyanarayanan Ganesan

Ad 1: Different editors in the same column are possible ("table cell variant").

Ad 2: Wrapping of table column headers is supported.

Ad 3: Supported, see IWDTableColumnGroup.

Edited by: Armin Reichert on Dec 23, 2008 12:09 PM

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 16:00:29 GMT

> - Which UI elements are you missing most in NW 04?

- Context Menus (right click popups)

- Shortcuts / Accelerator Keys

- A Time Picker

> - Which functionality on the NW 04 UI elements are

> you missing most?

- Tables where you can just click into to enter new values (without a need to first create a new element)

- Custom Value Selectors ( see for more)

- The ability to add longer text to a message manager's message (for example more detailed error description which does not fit in one line could popup on click)

- "Scrollable" Tabstrips (not displaying all tabs, but as many as fit on the screen)

I might have other ideas but that's what comes to my mind right now

Thanks

bruno

Ad 1: Context menus are supported in NW 7.1 (design-time editor and runtime API).

Ad 2: Hot-keys and access-keys are supported in NW 7.1. (design-time and API).

Ad 3: Time pickers are supported via CCTS data types and InputFields.

Ad 4: In NW 7.1. there exists the possibility to add tabler rows automatically (TableRowCreator UI element)

Ad 5: No idea.

Ad 6: No idea.

Ad 7: Automatically provided by the rendering framework.

Edited by: Armin Reichert on Dec 23, 2008 12:14 PM

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 18:51:16 GMT

Hi Armin,

"Which UI elements are you missing most in NW 04?"

Context-menus, definitely. But as you already stated there are already improvements on their way.

"Which functionality on the NW 04 UI elements are you missing most?"

In general, give more freedom to application developers, who want (or have to) use the framework in a manner, which could never have been forseen by the WD development team. This includes:

1. Fully generic cells in tables and trees. Let the developer fill a TransparentContainer dynamically. Such a container is available for all target clients, smart or not. Don't be too restrictive. If the application performs poorly because of "overloaded" tables or trees, the developer will (hopefully) notice this by him- or herself.

2. A more generic approach to value help functionality, at least for the EVS and OVS levels (simple value services are ok). It would be great to have the flexibility to use arbitrary components for search facilities inside the popup. Something like providing an "onValueHelpRequest" event, defining the usage of a component interface inside the search view area, creating an implementing component on the event and destroying it on closing the popup window.

Best regards, Stefan

Ad 1: Context menus are supported in NW 7.1 (design-time editor and runtime API)

Edited by: Armin Reichert on Dec 23, 2008 12:19 PM

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 21:56:10 GMT

I'd like to see a FormattedTextView element. It would work like a TextView, but would offer the ability to display formatted text using bold, italics, etc.

For those who are familiar with Java Swing, I'm thinking about something similar to using the StyledDocument interface with JTextPane objects.

(See http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/components/text.html)

In the Swing model, developers can read in a fully-formatted source HTML or RTF documents for display. They also have the option of programmatically applying styles to the content of a StyledDocument.

FormattedTextView exists in NW 7.1 and will be downported to NW 7.0.

Edited by: Armin Reichert on Dec 23, 2008 12:21 PM

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Fri, 04 Feb 2005 23:51:06 GMT

Hi Armin

Thanks for the initiative.

This is my list

->Need row span and col spanning in Tables

->Ability to colorize a individual table cell border (usually to denote invalid data or valid data)

->Ability for a column to have more than one UI element

->Need to somehow switch of row select in a table, though restricting this would require developers to take somethings into consideration

->Tables somehow automatically adjust to accomodate the size of entered data , need to keep the length of Table Fixed

->Context sensitive menus

->An EVS in a non restrictive mode ,allowing one to enter data which is not part of the enumeration

->Key board short cuts to initate defined actions

->More events for controls, onFocus, onDeFocus etc etc

->Custom UI controls

->New line detection on Text Views

->Stop reload of IFRAMES

->Provide OVS as a pattern

Regards

Pran

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 14:21:48 GMT

Another great feature would be drag&drop.

But: All these features are not worth it if the performance will go down further. I think besides missing features the main drawback of WebDynrpo is the response time... which should be improved as much as possible.

Drag-and-drop support exists in NW 7.1. Performance improvements have been achieved in 7.1 too.

Edited by: Armin Reichert on Dec 23, 2008 12:22 PM

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 09:57:23 GMT

Hi Armin,

as already mentioned above a n-ary menu would be nice.

Maybe you could ease the handling of tree-controls.

Another enhancement proposal is for the IDE:

It would be nice to have (grid) lines in the layout editor of a view. But this is only for the development process.

So if I choose the grid layout or the matrix layout for a container element I can see where the cells of the layout are.

And I can move the lines so that the width of the columns or the height of the rows is changed.

(like in other IDEs - e.g. JBuilder - when I create swing based apps).

KR,

Ralph

N-ary menu? See comments about context menus support.

Grid lines in View Designer are a good idea but not yet supported.

Edited by: Armin Reichert on Dec 23, 2008 12:23 PM

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Tue, 10 May 2005 11:02:11 GMT

- Custom UI Elements (ActiveX or JavaApplets) would be great

- As well as embedded custom HTML

I understand that the idea is to keep Web Dynpro somewhat client independent, but sometimes special purposes require special functionalities and the developer should have the possibility to limit client independence in favor of more functionality on one special client. My opinion

Thanks for this thread!

NW 7.1 offers support for embedding JSF components, Flash islands and WebWidgets.

Edited by: Armin Reichert on Dec 23, 2008 12:24 PM

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Tue, 10 May 2005 11:59:05 GMT

Hi everyone,

I would like to see a Menubar element. Menubar is somewhat similar to windows application.

If we need to show so many options or links on same view and if we have space problem on view, then menubar is quite helpful.

One more thing.

As we have already tray, which is currently in horizontal position. If webdynpro incudes tray for vertical position then it would be great.

Regards,

Bhavik

MenuBar UI element exists since NW 7.0. Vertical trays are not supported.

Edited by: Armin Reichert on Dec 23, 2008 12:25 PM

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Tue, 10 May 2005 14:24:23 GMT

Hi,

I agree with Jan, I understand that Web Dynpro is not a HTML only framework but in the majority of the cases we need to have some controls that JavaScript and HTML provides like:

OnKeyUp

OnKeyDown

OnBlur

OnKeyPress

OnKeyUp

I think that may have an option when create project that you will choose if the Web Dynpro will run in internet browsers or other devices and able/disable this controls.

Other thing that I think that limit the customizing is the difficult to change themes, colors, fonts, background colors, etc… and to do this dynamically too.

The Re-import of WebServices is the other thing that is missing in NW04.

When you have a visibility simple data type and import the project into DS, you get an error that this simple type does not exists but if you change the type to the same type (visibility) the error disappear.

Now I’m developing an application that will have more than 4,000 users and I need an “Auto Tab” function and I don’t know how to do that because there is just OnEnter event in input fields.

Thanks,

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Tue, 10 May 2005 19:18:09 GMT

I feel the following functionality inclusions will be of great help.

1, Column Resizing of Tables at runtime.

2, Wrapping of Column Caption

3, Default sorting of Table Columns

4, Keyboard Events

5, Table alternating color even if the Table is not read-only.

6, Remove the selection (checkbox) column from the table with table selection mode.

7, Ability to move, minimize & close pop-up windows

8, Ability to set the window title at run-time

9, WebDynpro API for getting the Servlet Request, Response and Session objects.

10, Changing the tab order of the UI elements.

11, More event handlers (onFocus, onMouseOver, etc)

12, Get the message area in each window (for pop-up)

13, More flexible properties like setFont, setFontSize, etc for messageArea UI element.

Regards,

Ravi

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Tue, 10 May 2005 20:39:31 GMT

Hi,

I would like to add the following

1. Format the data at dictionary data type level (for eg. formatting a date requires some coding)

2. "Download to XL" facility as a part of table UI element.

3. "Print" functionality of the webdynpro iview.

4. Applying theme at webdynpro application level (can provide this as a property for WebDynPro Application)

5. Facility to change the JCo reference for the exiting project/model object.

6. FlowLayout with align Right, Left & Center options. (not just the paddings)

7. Formatting the table column caption. (Bold, color change without using the theme)

I may add few more

Regards,

Santhosh.C

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Mon, 16 May 2005 21:34:29 GMT

Hi Armin,

I would like the following:

1. iView personalization properties just like the PDK.

2. A property in the table UI element on how you would like the multiselection to behave (with no custom coding). That is, like the older version (pre-SP6) or the new one wherein the user need to press Ctrl/Shift keys. This becomes a problem when you mix a Web Dynpro and PDK iViews in a page. The interfaces are different.

3. Portal Eventing functions should match the Portal's EPCF. The fourth parameter (source id) in the EPCM.raiseEvent is not available in the fire() method.

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Tue, 17 May 2005 04:38:23 GMT

Hello Armin,

If NWDS will include drag-drop fucntinality upto some extent then it would be greate. This functionality should be somewhat similar to SAP R/3, where we can drag-drop Sales document from tree structure into some container.

It would be very much user friendly.

Regards,

Bhavik

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 13:57:52 GMT

Hi Armin,

Another feature that I would like to be added is the flexibility on the StyleSheet usage. Developers should be able to enter a custom StyleSheet class in the UI Elements' properties. Right now all the designs are limited to whatever is in the dropdown. It would be nice if developers can type in the custom StyleSheet class because sometimes some requirements need more classes than what is provided.

Thanks,

Erwin

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Fri, 29 Jul 2005 06:04:49 GMT

Hi Armin,

Its really a very Good Initiative!!!

I suggest the print functionality for TEXTEDIT UI element should be added and all the other things are already mentioned in our seniors replies -:)

Regards,

Sirisha.R.S.

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 07:46:14 GMT

Hi Armin,

here are my suggestions (most of them already mentioned):

New UIElements:

- Menubars (like in Windows Apps)

- Toolbar as stand-alone, not only in superordinate containers

- Contextmenus

- Element for "selfmade" text, like <pre>-Tags in HTML

- Element for displaying HTML (without iFrame) for example to display code-snippets with syntax-highlighting

other suggestions:

- user-defined designs for UIElements. The predefined designs are far too few. Let the developer define his own stylesheet classes.

- show user defined themes in NWDS View Designer. Maybe also add an option to switch between themes during design-time quickly.

- improve the theme-editor!

- show a warning before NWDS moves code which was accidentally typed outside //@@begin to /dev/null...

- if it's somehow possible, let the developer write his own UIElements...

regards,

Markus

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

Former Member — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 09:17:15 GMT

Hi,

There is no List box available

Regards,

There exists the ItemListBox UI element.

Edited by: Armin Reichert on Dec 23, 2008 12:27 PM

Re: POLL: Web Dynpro UI elements - enhancement proposals

guru_subramanian — Mon, 08 Aug 2005 09:21:05 GMT

Hi Armin,

Good initiative form you.

1)HTML editor UI element is missing from Webdynpro.

2)Javascript has to be supported atleast from next release so tht we can have a good client side validation from the way we have now.

3)Support to .css files has to be made inorder to have a good look and feel.

Regards,

Guru