The UI5 community and SAP’s UI5 team is really a perfect symbiosis. It has formed over the last couple of years. Everything started with the pull in the SAP community in 2013 to open-source the core of SAPUI5. This was the birth of OpenUI5. Since then, the UI5 community is growing and is actively supporting the UI5 team on their journey of the evolution of the framework, the tooling and its ecosystem to cohesive development experience.
But also the UI5 team is working hard to make progress with the transformation into the layered architecture by modularizing the core, innovating rendering, and the controls, modernizing the programming model, and improving the development experience with an open and extensible tooling.
I know, these topics are long lasting, but due to the demand being an enterprise framework running applications for years we need to ensure compatibility which is slowing down the transformation process. Especially in the heart of the framework the transformation into being minimalistic, modular, asynchronous, and getting rid of legacy open-source libraries this is a challenging endeavor. But the UI5 team accepted the challenge and is working hard on it.
Now, let's take a look into the latest development in and around UI5.
One big milestone in the area of the Modular Core is the strict Content-Security-Policy (CSP) compliance available since UI5 1.96. By making the framework more and more asynchronous (APIs and bootstrapping), it is now possible to host your UI5 application with strict CSP enabled. This is a real big achievement and allows us to close a long running issue which is been there since 2015. But still there are some restrictions related to the usage of deprecated and special controls which are listed in the Demo Kit. Next stop is to focus on the bootstrapping performance to transform the UI5 bootstrap into a grow-as-you-go bootstrap rather than loading unnecessary resources. During this journey we are also working on further removal of jQuery – at least from the core of UI5.
In the Rendering & Controls layer we finally released the UI5 Web Components 1.0.0 at SAP TechEd last year. Meanwhile they are available in version 1.4.0 after incorporating your feedback and providing many new components. The UI5 Web Components are mature and ready to be used in productive scenarios. Both, the UI5 Controls and the UI5 Web Components now come with a new visual theme called Horizon to keep track with the evolution of the SAP Design System. Since OpenUI5 1.92.0, the UI5 Web Components have been integrated and can be used via UI5 Control wrappers: UI5 Web Components enablement. We asked for feedback and are about to release the UI5 Web Components as part of SAPUI5 soon. The UI5 Web Components have the benefit that they are more lightweight than the UI5 Controls as they have a more atomic design rather than the library coupling of UI5 Controls due to their CSS.
There is a huge demand for TypeScript and we notice the pull from the UI5 community. Many developers highly appreciate the TypeScript support of UI5. For the UI5 team this allows to renovate the Programming Model towards modern ES features since the code base is being transpiled. Developers can now use imports, classes and other modern ES and browser APIs – something which is being long awaited. During the last year, we improved the TypeScript support step-by-step by fixing our JSDoc, improving the type definition generation, adding support to develop UI5 Controls in TypeScript, and simplifying the consumption of 3rd party libraries. Everything has been put into a comprehensive tutorial in which you can learn how to develop UI5 with TypeScript.
In the area of the Tooling we are currently doing our homework by replacing our legacy build tooling with the node-based UI5 Tooling. The UI5 Tooling and its ecosystem is also the foundation for the SAP Fiori tools and Open UX Tools which also creates proper demand. This all is described in the roadmap to version 3.0. After the 3.0 release the extensibility may return as a topic to create a bigger foundation for the ecosystem.
The UI5 community growing and a there are a lot of projects started by or from the UI5 community - be it the UI5Lab, the UI5 Ecosystem Showcase, or Easy UI5 3.0 including the community generators, to just mention a few of them of them. Many members are actively involved in shaping the future of a modern development experience for UI5. The best thing is that we are collaborating with each other, grasping ideas, discussing solutions, challenging us, and even hacking together. It finally doesn’t matter whether you are a member of the UI5 team or the UI5 community. I just can say: UI5 Community & SAP – It’s a perfect symbiosis! Together, so many extensions for the UI5 tooling, so many templates for Easy-UI5, so many new concepts and ideas e.g., about modules providing controls, using 3rd party modules, … have been created over the last couple of months and even years. There is so much content provided by community that we need a platform to lookup these extensions, templates, libraries, modules easily. That was the birth of BestOfUI5 – inspired by BestOfJS – to be able to lookup those assets easily and use them for your projects.
In the cradle of BestOfUI5 some new ideas are born making the development experience even better. Curios? Yes, then join us at one of our next UI5ers live – our monthly webinar – or at UI5con – our annual conference!
The UI5con HYBRID 2022 is coming closer. On July 7th and 8th some of the mentioned results will be shown by the UI5 team or members of the UI5 community.
Check out the agenda, I’m quite sure there are plenty of interesting talks or hands-on sessions going on…
Thanks to the SAP community to make SAPUI5 the spotlight topic of June 2022. This allows me to put the spotlight on all the hardworking developers in the UI5 community and in the UI5 team at SAP. You all are doing an awesome job! Yes, UI5 is evolving! And yes, with the chains of compatibility things are taking a bit longer. But I am quite sure that all the developers using UI5 will appreciate it to work with a great long-living framework which provides many UI elements with a modern visual theme, an awesome tooling with a great ecosystem around.
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.
But also the UI5 team is working hard to make progress with the transformation into the layered architecture by modularizing the core, innovating rendering, and the controls, modernizing the programming model, and improving the development experience with an open and extensible tooling.
I know, these topics are long lasting, but due to the demand being an enterprise framework running applications for years we need to ensure compatibility which is slowing down the transformation process. Especially in the heart of the framework the transformation into being minimalistic, modular, asynchronous, and getting rid of legacy open-source libraries this is a challenging endeavor. But the UI5 team accepted the challenge and is working hard on it.
Now, let's take a look into the latest development in and around UI5.
Latest Developments in UI5
One big milestone in the area of the Modular Core is the strict Content-Security-Policy (CSP) compliance available since UI5 1.96. By making the framework more and more asynchronous (APIs and bootstrapping), it is now possible to host your UI5 application with strict CSP enabled. This is a real big achievement and allows us to close a long running issue which is been there since 2015. But still there are some restrictions related to the usage of deprecated and special controls which are listed in the Demo Kit. Next stop is to focus on the bootstrapping performance to transform the UI5 bootstrap into a grow-as-you-go bootstrap rather than loading unnecessary resources. During this journey we are also working on further removal of jQuery – at least from the core of UI5.
In the Rendering & Controls layer we finally released the UI5 Web Components 1.0.0 at SAP TechEd last year. Meanwhile they are available in version 1.4.0 after incorporating your feedback and providing many new components. The UI5 Web Components are mature and ready to be used in productive scenarios. Both, the UI5 Controls and the UI5 Web Components now come with a new visual theme called Horizon to keep track with the evolution of the SAP Design System. Since OpenUI5 1.92.0, the UI5 Web Components have been integrated and can be used via UI5 Control wrappers: UI5 Web Components enablement. We asked for feedback and are about to release the UI5 Web Components as part of SAPUI5 soon. The UI5 Web Components have the benefit that they are more lightweight than the UI5 Controls as they have a more atomic design rather than the library coupling of UI5 Controls due to their CSS.
There is a huge demand for TypeScript and we notice the pull from the UI5 community. Many developers highly appreciate the TypeScript support of UI5. For the UI5 team this allows to renovate the Programming Model towards modern ES features since the code base is being transpiled. Developers can now use imports, classes and other modern ES and browser APIs – something which is being long awaited. During the last year, we improved the TypeScript support step-by-step by fixing our JSDoc, improving the type definition generation, adding support to develop UI5 Controls in TypeScript, and simplifying the consumption of 3rd party libraries. Everything has been put into a comprehensive tutorial in which you can learn how to develop UI5 with TypeScript.
In the area of the Tooling we are currently doing our homework by replacing our legacy build tooling with the node-based UI5 Tooling. The UI5 Tooling and its ecosystem is also the foundation for the SAP Fiori tools and Open UX Tools which also creates proper demand. This all is described in the roadmap to version 3.0. After the 3.0 release the extensibility may return as a topic to create a bigger foundation for the ecosystem.
Latest Developments around UI5
The UI5 community growing and a there are a lot of projects started by or from the UI5 community - be it the UI5Lab, the UI5 Ecosystem Showcase, or Easy UI5 3.0 including the community generators, to just mention a few of them of them. Many members are actively involved in shaping the future of a modern development experience for UI5. The best thing is that we are collaborating with each other, grasping ideas, discussing solutions, challenging us, and even hacking together. It finally doesn’t matter whether you are a member of the UI5 team or the UI5 community. I just can say: UI5 Community & SAP – It’s a perfect symbiosis! Together, so many extensions for the UI5 tooling, so many templates for Easy-UI5, so many new concepts and ideas e.g., about modules providing controls, using 3rd party modules, … have been created over the last couple of months and even years. There is so much content provided by community that we need a platform to lookup these extensions, templates, libraries, modules easily. That was the birth of BestOfUI5 – inspired by BestOfJS – to be able to lookup those assets easily and use them for your projects.
In the cradle of BestOfUI5 some new ideas are born making the development experience even better. Curios? Yes, then join us at one of our next UI5ers live – our monthly webinar – or at UI5con – our annual conference!
UI5con HYBRID
The UI5con HYBRID 2022 is coming closer. On July 7th and 8th some of the mentioned results will be shown by the UI5 team or members of the UI5 community.
Check out the agenda, I’m quite sure there are plenty of interesting talks or hands-on sessions going on…
Wrap-up
Thanks to the SAP community to make SAPUI5 the spotlight topic of June 2022. This allows me to put the spotlight on all the hardworking developers in the UI5 community and in the UI5 team at SAP. You all are doing an awesome job! Yes, UI5 is evolving! And yes, with the chains of compatibility things are taking a bit longer. But I am quite sure that all the developers using UI5 will appreciate it to work with a great long-living framework which provides many UI elements with a modern visual theme, an awesome tooling with a great ecosystem around.
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.
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