Ajax Framework Page in IE standards mode

[Former Member]

Intro

My name is Matan Mizrahi, and I'm a software developer in the SAP Enterprise Portal group.

In the past few months we have worked really hard to adjust the Ajax Framework Page (let's just call it AFP) to run on Internet Explorer in standards mode.

I am happy to announce that it's now available in NW7.31 SP14 and 7.4 SP9 (released on November 24th).

Some details

For those of you who don't know what "standards mode" is, I will try to make it as simple as possible. However, if you want to know more, I strongly recommend reading this blog , written by my colleague maya.amit.

Let's get started.

Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE or just IE) was the dominant web browser (alongside Netscape Navigator) in the early days of the internet as we know it. Web pages were built in such a way that IE could render them in its own way, without following the standards rules for the HTML web language.

Later on, when other standards-rendering browsers (like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox) came into the market, Microsoft began to understand the need to support standards mode rendering. Therefore , in March 2009, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8, which adhered to the rules of the standards rendering, alongside the "old" rendering mode, called quirks.

So far some history and useful information.

Up until now, AFP could only run in quirks rendering  mode. And - as you can see on Maya's blog , SAP introduced UI5 based apps, which cannot run on quirks rendering mode, therefore we had to find a solution for those apps, which was a standalone portal page (AKA navMode 10, or "Display In separate headerless portal window(standards mode) - read more about it here, and more about other navigation modes in note 2054208).

The problem was, that when you wanted to open a SAPUI5 application, you couldn't open it in your portal, which is probably the most convenient way.

Now , after a lot of work, we've managed to fit AFP to render properly in standards mode. Now you can navigate through your portal without having to open new windows,and enjoy all benefits of SAPUI5 applications, integrated in your portal.

AFP in standards mode is supported in IE starting from IE9.

How do I use it?

It's very simple. You now get a new framework page, dedicated to AFP in standards mode:

All you need to do is enable this framework page in the Master Rule Collection:

1.First of all, go to System Administration->System Configuration->Portal Display->URL Alias Manager.

There you'll see that we've added a new URL alias, called standards. You can use it for the configuration of the new framework page,and of course you can create one of your own.

2.Go to Desktop & Display Rules->Portal Administrators -> Super Administrators->Master Rule Collection,

and add the rule you like. You can add it to a specific user, alias,group ,role and so on.

Here's one example, but you can read more about the Master Rule Collection here and here

You can find it in Portal users->Standard Portal Users-> Ajax Standards Mode Framework Content -> Ajax Standards Mode Portal Desktop.

Then search for "Location" :

That's it! You're all set and ready to use the AFP in IE standards mode.

Notice that you might see some slight differences between the same themes used in AFP quirks mode and standards mode.

Feel free to ask questions, comment or send any feedback.

Important note

Notice that if you are using this feature, your page will be rendered in standards mode, which means that content that runs in quirks mode(HTMLB for example) won't be able to run in the content area. To resolve this, you can use nav mode 3 (I mentioned earlier a reference to nav modes).

For more information see note 2001910 - AFP Standards mode support.

Run Simple,

Matan