Is it possible to clean up SAP's HTML and JavaScript? (NW05SR3_DEV)

[Former Member]

Hi. I'm trying out SAP for first time and getting a feel for how it works.

The first things I immediately noticed were that the HTML it generates, aside from being a horrible nested mess of tables, has no doctype with DTD, forcing all browsers into quirks mode, making cross-browser styling far more trouble than it should have to be.

Additionally, much of the interface JavaScript fails in most browsers (Safari, Firefox, Chrome etc - which these days are around 30-45% of the general browser market or more, depending on the local network) due to IE specific assumptions, or simple sloppiness (like assuming firstChild is a specific node without either searching, using an ID, or ensuring the HTML does not have empty space that could cause text nodes to appear).

My question for the forum is:

1) Is it possible for me to fix this sloppiness on my local instance, and if so, where would I look to do it in a generic fashion (specifically, adding a doctype and dtd, fixing bad styles, fixing bad javascript).

2) Is there a way to file bug fixes to SAP itself?

3) If I wanted to rewrite the overall horribly clunky HTML itself, is that possible in a reasonable fashion?

Thanks!

Addendum. It appears the version I'm using is a little behind the curve. Perhaps this has been fixed up a bit in later versions of SAP. It'd still be useful to have an idea of where I could go to fix CSS/JS/HTML errors though.

Also, it'd be nice if I could find an up to date version of SAP for linux to test.

Edited by: Derek Pomery on Jan 23, 2009 8:36 PM

[former_member192152]

Supported...

Congratulations for the post!

[Former Member]

Well, terms like "horrible" etc won't make you popular with the developers!

Anyway, the generated code is part of the basics of the way the SAP portal works. It sounds like you need to almost build a new application to replace them.

Which bit of the current functionality appeals?

[Former Member]

At least in the version I was using it was, quite literally. Horrible.

Invalid, unsemantic, not cross-browser, and subject to quirks mode rendering.

That isn't necessarily a comment on the developers of the system as a whole. Just those who created the HTML and JS. And, who knows, perhaps was improved in later versions.

From my experience with other CMS systems, though, there is sufficient abstraction to fix much of this, if the templates for the HTML and JS can be located.

I'm hoping that SAP is the same, that there are places to look for the HTML that creates major UI components.

This seems useful anyway, since customising is more effective if the templates themselves can be changed at that level.

This also carries over to the IDE - where the sample apps that could be created also generated invalid or unsemantic HTML and JavaScript in my tests. (setting aside my killing my server in my first test of field submission just by pasting a few kilobytes of text in the field )

Anyway, certainly front-end is not a comment on system as a whole, but lightweight and valid HTML makes styling much easier, so if I could figure out how to fix that, it'd be lovely.

P.S. - this forum itself uses "color: windowText" for text areas without setting background-color: window.

Kind of sloppy, easily fixed on my side (where I use a dark UI theme) by overriding the site style.

[Former Member]

So. One more try.

Does SAP have a templating system that would allow accessing the (X)HTML, CSS and JavaScript used to render it? In a similar fashion to, for example, Drupal?