UI5 is evolving for efficient business users and avid developers

The only constant is change, and it’s everywhere: in web technologies, in development tools and also in expectations towards a modern user experience. UI5 is at the center, driving this evolution, both within SAP as well as in the open-source community. UI5 is evolving continuously with lots of benefits, providing stability and new innovations for existing productive SAP solutions, as well as latest development tools for efficient development and extensions.

We are excited that UI5 is the topic of this month’s SAP Community Spotlight and we can’t wait to publish brand-new content together with our community. As the Chief Product Owner of UI5, I’m kicking it off with this brief overview and a glimpse of the upcoming content.

User interfaces have a decisive influence on the perception of any software and determines the satisfaction of our customers and end users. This also means that UI frameworks like UI5 have a direct influence on how end users work in various business scenarios. However, to be able to achieve this direct influence, a UI framework also must convince developers who require an efficient development process with the respective tools. Both aspects are equally important and mutually depend on each other.

This SAP Community Spotlight month gives us the opportunity to talk about

• how UI5 evolves to directly support end users in the respective environment
• and how we focus on making developers happier and more productive

News for Business Users

The most prominent news for end users is the new Horizon theme of SAP Fiori. It offers a modern and fresh look with light & dark versions and is also targeting the latest WCAG 2.2 accessibility standard. Talking about product standards, UI5 enables important security standards like strict Content Security Policy (CSP). 

Picture 1. SAP Fiori app with the Morning Horizon theme

The evolution of SAP’s Fiori Design also leads to steadily improved usability of UI elements, building blocks and floorplans. And if an SAP standard app needs to be tailored to a specific scenario, SAPUI5 flexibility offers new capabilities for developers and key users to extend without modifications.

News for Developers

Let’s switch perspective: What’s new for developers and partners who are building apps using UI5?

• With OpenUI5 we have one of the biggest open-source projects of SAP. Many years ago, this started a thriving collaboration with the open-source community and has growing number of surprising outcomes, which we’ll share with you.
• UI5 Web Components bring UI5 qualities to all web UI technology stacks. Developers benefit from new UI5 Web Components coming with the SAP Fiori design and most UI5 qualities. Also, we enable UI5 Web Components for the OpenUI5/SAPUI5 framework to streamline technologies and improve performance.

Picture 2. UI5 Web Components home page

• We accelerate the modularization of UI5 to achieve best possible startup performance – with or without web components.
• Together with community contributors and based on their feedback we worked on the UI5 tooling and its ecosystem – both were improved and already successfully used by the community.
• In the context of SAP Fiori elements and SAP Fiori tools we have many new capabilities making the development of business apps with SAPUI5 even easier. This includes the Flexible Programming Model to mix freestyle and metadata-driven UI sections and also news on adaptation projects in SAP Business Application Studio.

Are you curious? Enjoy and share the news we’ll publish during the Community Spotlight month in June. We’re waiting to hear your thoughts, questions, and feedback. Reach out to us via the SAP Community, e.g. check the SAPUI5 community topic page.

Join us on this crazy journey.

Ah, one more thing: Mark your calendar to join the community conference UI5con on July 7^th-8^th. UI5 enthusiasts don’t want to miss this event.