Hi All,
In last 2 development projects I had a chance to use Floor Plan Manager in creating efficient layouts for my webdynpro application, and to tell you the ease of use of FPM and resulting UI's have made me a big fan of FPM.
Following are the main benefits which I can easily imagine -
a) Ease of Usage - FPM has undoubtedly made the task of developers much easier and less time consuming. Also it has reduced the programming complexity; like earlier navigation between different views has to be taken care of using navigation plugs, but now with FPM configurations that part is handled automatically. All you have to do is just create UIBB's and arrange them in right order using Floor Plan Configuration Tool.
b) Another noteworthy feature of FPM is ensuring strict MVC pattern of programming. Very often we are tempted to write some programming logic inside views methods and then doing navigation based on results, Now with FPM, all the processing logic of UI's can sit inside Process_Event( ) method of component controller thus ensuring that view takes care of only rendering related logic, and controller holds all the data and operations\ validations on them; All you have to worry about is calling the right user methods for right events and views in Process_Event.
c) Consistency and Familiarity of UI's - If FPM is used by following guidelines related to its usage ( like when to use GAF, where to use OIF etc ) then all resulting applications will have a consistent and familiar UI, thus leading to less learning efforts on part of end user, as they will be familiar with UI of applications coming out.
Advantages of using FPM are unlimited and I'm sure that usage of FPM will only increase with time...
There is a lot of development happening in FPM from SAP and we can see some more innovative features in coming times.....
Cheers...
Manas
