Introduction
Since SDN has a link up to the WebDynpro Client (available with SAPGui 640 SP14), I thought I would give it a try against a NetWeaver04S system and ABAP WebDypnpro. In this weblog I will show you real quick how you can setup a link in the SAPGui to a ABAP WebDypnpro application. And I will share some screen shots of what the new WebDynpro client looks like (for those of you who might not have a system to run it against).This weblog does assume that you have already completed the steps from the linked article in SDN that changes your registry entry and that you have the correct version of the SAPGui installed.
Looking up the ABAP WebDynpro URL
Before we can create a WebDypro item in our SAPGui, we need to lookup the URL for our WebDynpro application. We are just going to test initially with a simple demo application (demo_table).Since this is WebDynpro ABAP we will naturally turn to SE80. We will pull up the WebDynpro Component DEMO_TABLE. We can then see that there is an application node also called DEMO_TABLE.
If you select the application from the navigation window, the details will open on the right side of the screen. In the administration Data section of the Application Details window you will find the complete URL. This is address that we will need for the SAPGui part of the setup.
Creating the link in the SAP Logon
If you have followed the steps to setup the beta WebDynpro Client, when you launch the SAP Logon you should have a new tab called Web Dynpro Applications. We will select the New Item to create a link to our Demo application.
A new window now launches that allows us to input the URL we got from SE80.
Launching the WebDynpro Application
We are now ready to run our WebDynpro Application. First though I thought I should run it from the browser. I wanted to make sure that I had picked a good application that actually runs. I also wanted to be able to compare the look and feel of the two applications.
It worked fine. Now I am ready to double click on my new item in the SAP Logon window. The screen that it brings up looks very much like the system logon that you see when running a WebDynpro (or ITS/BSP) application from the browser.
Alread you can see that there are some interesting menu options at the top of the WebDynpro Client window (we will at them a little closer in a minute).
Once we authenticate, we are in and looking at basically the same WebDynpro screen as the browswer. The colors seem a little difficult read (hey this is a beta afterall). But the table control scrolls nicely like you would expect from a rich client.
Next I thought I would give the new client a real workout. I would use the WDR_TEST_UI_ELEMENTS application. This is very similar to the BSPEXT_*HTMLB programs in the BSP world. Basically this application lets you try out all the possible UI elements and all their options (just great for this kind of testing - plus a great learning tool). You can see from this screen shot how the two client's compare (browser on top and new beta WebDynpro Client on the bottom).
WebDynpro Client Options
There appear to be many interesting options on the menu bar of the new WebDynpro Client. First we have the ability to view the source code of the page we are looking at. Of course this isn't HTML/JavaScript coding. It is the XML that is sent and then consumed by the WebDynpro Client for processing as native windows controls.
Next up we have the themes section. In addition to the normal WebDynpro Themes we also have the older SAPGui Enjoy themes. I wonder how this is going to work out with Mime objects? The UI elements do seem to take on the Theme settings in the client. I also wonder what impact this might have on using custom themes?
Finally under the Tools menu there appears to be lots of settings that can be tweaked. We obviously have many options for better visual effects than you can easily produce in a browser based application.
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