SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5" • Hacker News Board

Re: SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5"

#41

Post by smrtinsert » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 3:03 PM UTC

CSDude wrote: post #19

I liked the UI because it is compact. I know they are not the only alternative, but I hate default padding and margin values of Bootstrap. Not everyone has retina or 4K displays. It is more suitable for desktop application where you need many components to be displayed, and you have a mouse to navigate. Bootstrap is good in the other way around.

Yeah bootstrap doesn't really have an enterprise look to it. Arguably the enterprise look is uncool though, so that's not surprising. wrapbootstrap has stuff that almost bridges the gap, erring on the cool side of things though. I doubt most enterprises want something that sleek looking.

In short, make your enterprise software look like the Microsoft suite of the day and you should be ok. I think Extjs fails in that regard, it used to look fresh though.

Re: SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5"

#42

Post by vanni » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 3:06 PM UTC

vanni wrote: post #35

Nice set of font icons included (licensed as Apache License 2.0 too I think, so you can use them standalone elsewhere): Icon Explorer: https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test-resources/sap/m/demok... Uncategorized icons: https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/test-resources/sap/ui/core... Class sap.ui.core.Icon reference: https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#docs/api/symbols/sap.ui.c...

You can find the SAP-icons.ttf and SAP-icons.eot files into the following folders inside the UI5 Runtime zip file: resources/sap/ui/core/themes/*/fonts/

But I still think that the Apache License 2.0 applies here too.

Re: SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5"

#43

Post by mrich » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 3:16 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #14

SAP Hana is actually a pretty interesting technology for developing data analysis website. It's a DB integrated with a web server and it automatically builds web services that let you query the data. It also provides a html/js framework to easily display and drill down (i think SAPUI5 is tied to that framework, or even is that framework). They even got an amazon AMI to start developping quickly without paying the lic…

As an example, the NBA.com stats website is running on HANA:

http://stats.nba.com/

Re: SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5"

#44

Post by jeswin » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 3:16 PM UTC

watty wrote: post #39

Lots of negative comments on HN, surprise surprise. Seems like an enormous amount of code, we should be happy it's now open source for others to use and learn from.

Most of the criticism is valid though, in this case. This is a genuinely poor UI framework.

1. This is extjs, like someone else was mentioning below.

2. Why would you supplant native HTML/CSS capabilities with shit like new sap.ui.commons.TextView({ layoutData : new sap.ui.layout.GridData({ span : "L4 M6 S12"...

3. The problem is that the entire approach is outdated, and fairly slow and bloated on my machine. Coding with this is going to be as interesting as legacy Java and .Net "thick client" apps.

Re: SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5"

#45

Post by brd » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 3:22 PM UTC

jeswin wrote: post #44

watty wrote: post #39

Lots of negative comments on HN, surprise surprise. Seems like an enormous amount of code, we should be happy it's now open source for others to use and learn from.

Most of the criticism is valid though, in this case. This is a genuinely poor UI framework. 1. This is extjs, like someone else was mentioning below. 2. Why would you supplant native HTML/CSS capabilities with shit like new sap.ui.commons.TextView({ layoutData : new sap.ui.layout.GridData({ span : "L4 M6 S12"... 3. The problem is that the entire approach is outdated, and fairly slow and bloated on my machine. Coding…

I think SAP deserves some praise for open sourcing some real work. Beyond that I agree with your critique, this framework is not going to make inroads in the larger web community.

However, keep in mind that this is an SAP tool geared towards the SAP ecosystem and it will ultimately be a pretty big deal within that space.

As an SAP developer I am happy to see any progress towards more modern practices and better technologies and SAPUI5 is, without a doubt, progress.

Re: SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5"

#46

Post by leokun » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 3:26 PM UTC

watty wrote: post #40

leokun wrote: post #38

It's very cool and immensely impressive, but the web moves fast and it's interesting to note how quickly previous everything and the kitchen sink and or ui libraries become dated. Just look to dojo, jquery ui, ext.js, jquery mobile, even Cappuccino looks dated (take a look at http://www.cappuccino-project.org/learn/demos/LightsOff/ for example). Big libraries can't move fast, and can't adapt to all the latest things…

And the web will continue moving fast and soon enough "flat" ui will look dated. This is why it can be themed: https://openui5.hana.ondemand.com/#docs/guide/ThemingFAQ.htm...

jQuery UI can be themed, there's a flat theme, few people use it. Those who do were already using jQuery UI and searched for it.

Re: SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5"

#47

Post by gwu78 » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 3:32 PM UTC

bobx11 wrote: post #29

Having worked with SAP via ABAP and Java back in the day (and hating it) I can still feel the soul of SAP through these web apps. They still feel incredibly slow and bloated for what they do. Their market dominance is driven by the FUD of other technologies unfortunately, so they need to create their own front-end javascript framework to keep the mystique going about how computer systems are complicated without SAP.…

"Java... web apps... incredibly slow... bloated... market dominance... FUD... front-end javascript framework... keep the mystique going..."

"completely out of business"

The end.

Re: SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5"

#48

Post by dschiptsov » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 3:34 PM UTC

X4 wrote: post #30

dschiptsov wrote: post #15

Oh my, that "Delphi mentality" in 2013..) ExtJS, if I remember correctly, is 5 or 6 years old already?) But we, no doubt, will read about ground-breaking innovations from their PR machine.) Is there any info which "startup" they have acquired or in what third-world country it was outsourced?)

Usually I wouldn't agree with this kind of comments, but this is the exception. We shouldn't forget that there is a multi-million dollar company behind this and it's clearly not just open-sourced for beneficiary reasons. Whatever the intent is, the result "look" meager. Maybe a focus on the novelty of their framework instead of the richness in UI-Controls could remedy that effect. It's either that, or hate, or both t…

Multi-billion company which got caught in all deceptive and misleading marketing techniques imaginable, and which maintain Herbalife-like Ponzi scheme for incompetent c"partners" and inflated "certified specialists". The inferior quality of its ERP software is least problem.)

Re: SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5"

#49

Post by gaius » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 3:38 PM UTC

dschiptsov wrote: post #20

dserban wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "Delphi mentality" mean? I'm genuinely curious, not having been exposed to that ecosystem at all.

Well, Delphi was very interesting phenomena. I fought (and lost) a great fight trying to convince coworkers that it is a dead end and that no one will support future development or adapt it to modern versions of Windows, because no one would pay to this huge effort which must be done right on time. In other words, it was a naive blind faith in so-called desktop apps (built on top of a wired third-party toolkit), whil…

The browser is for hypertext documents. It's not at all obvious that it's the right thing for, well, anything else. Why do you suppose apps are preferred on tablets and phones, rather than websites?

Re: SAP open sources UI development toolkit "SAPUI5"

#50

Post by skriticos2 » Wed, Dec 11, 2013, 3:50 PM UTC

bobx11 wrote: post #29

Having worked with SAP via ABAP and Java back in the day (and hating it) I can still feel the soul of SAP through these web apps. They still feel incredibly slow and bloated for what they do. Their market dominance is driven by the FUD of other technologies unfortunately, so they need to create their own front-end javascript framework to keep the mystique going about how computer systems are complicated without SAP.…

The company I contract for is currently rolling out a big SAP installation. Yes it's a big company, yes it's all the enterprise nightmares you heard about and no, SAP won't go out of business any time soon.

Not even COBOL is completely phased out here and most stuff is Java developed at some offshore location. Enterprise is a very, very weird place. And yes, IBM won't starve any time soon either.