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Former Member

As a request from some folks at SAP, we (the IBM Lab for SAP Solutions) decided to consolidate some tips that we have picked up along the way while working with Lumira. Some of these are really Chrome Developer Tools tips but they are helpful when building Lumira extensions.

1) Debug mode:

Add this line to the SAPLumira.ini file in your lumira installation directory (\SAP Lumira\Desktop\SAPLumira.ini):

-Dhilo.cef.frame.debug=true

This will allow you to right click --> dev tools to see the classic Chrome Developer window and view your DOM elements, script, etc. etc.

Good news: In SP15, the chrome developer window can actually be closed by clicking the red x on the top of the window. In all previous versions, clicking the red x was more of a suggestion than a command and you would have to kill the program to get it to close. You can still get the dreaded "Detatched from target: Websocket closed" error if you open multiple DevTools windows. Don't panic, just close out and alt tab over to the one that is connected to your Lumira session.

2) Backup your extensions folder. So far every Lumira update will blow away all your extensions. Now I am cautious enough to keep a backup version of my extensions in a separate folder. I was not a happy camper the first time around though.

3) Inspect Element: Many of you may be upset that the right click context menu in Lumira does not have the Inspect Element option we all know and love from Chrome browser. Don't worry, you can still easily find your desired DOM element by clicking the magnifying glass in the dev tools window and hovering over your Lumira window. Don't spend time manually perusing the Elements tab or searching for classes or ids.

4) Are you having trouble even finding out where your custom extension is in order to set a breakpoint? The Lumira dev team seems to change this location around pretty often between versions (the latest location is sap/bi/bundles). Hit ctrl-shift-f within your chrome browser to do a global search of all your scripts. Just remember one of your variable names or comments or something to navigate to your custom code with a couple of keystrokes.

5) Cuirious to see if the Lumira dev team is following standards when developing Lumira? Go to the Audits tab and click run audit. Some of Chrome's recommendations for the Lumira team include:

    • Combine External CSS
    • Combine External Javascript
    • Enable GZIP compression (for large files) - this could be the low hanging fruit --Compressing the following resources with gzip could reduce their transfer size by about two thirds (~8.9 MB)
    • Leverage browser caching - not sure if this applies in Chromium powered desktop apps
    • Optimize the order of styles and scripts

I plan on writing a part two for this with some more detailed technical tips. Let us know if you'd like to see more similar posts.


Enjoy!

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