Special Features of Web Controls for Mobile Applications (SAP Library

Special Features of Web Controls for Mobile Applications

Overview

Our main aim is to enable you to develop Web applications without your having to take the properties of different devices and browser flavors into account. This means that the source code you write for a Web application for a conventional personal computer can also run without additional problems on mobile devices.

Use

Using Web controls, you can program Web applications quickly and easily. You need not worry about the different ways in which this application will be displayed. Each Web Control possesses different attributes that define the appearance of that control on the screen.

(For examples, see the User manual for HTML-Business for Java documentation).

There are mobile devices that cannot evaluate some of these attributes and thus cannot support their display on screen. When you use Mobile HTMLBusiness for Java, these attributes are ignored. The button Web control possesses the attributes design, disabled, id, text, width, and tooltip. For pocket PCs for example, the value of the design button attribute is limited to the value Standard, since you cannot display buttons highlighted on this device (among other limitations). The Emphasized and Small values are ignored and always set to the predefined value Standard.

When you use Web controls on mobile devices, the following principles generally apply:

The following Web controls are supported for Web applications on mobile devices: Button, breadCrumb, checkbox, checkboxGroup, dateNavigator, dropdownListBox, gridLayout, group, image, inputField, itemList, label, link, listBox, radioButtonGroup, tableView, tabStrip, textEdit, textView, and tray.
The tooltip and disabled attributes are ignored for all available Web controls.
All server-side events – such as onClick – are supported.

Note

Client-side events such as onClientClick are not supported for mobile devices.

Note

If you want to use the image Web control for WAP-enabled devices, you must also save the graphic in the WBMP format, supported by WAP browsers, with the same filename and in the same directory – for example src="/sap/Walldorf.jpg" and src="/sap/Walldorf.wbmp"

Background documentation

If an attribute is not supported, the application takes its default value. (For the default value of each control attribute, refer to the documentation on HTMLBusiness for Java).

The following table shows further constraints for specific Web controls when used with mobile applications. It also shows which events, attributes, and attribute values are ignored when specific Web controls are used on mobile devices, along with the effects of the attribute when the control is displayed on screen.

(Unsupported values are indicated with a cross).

Component	Attributes/events	Values	HTML	WAP
button	design disabled	STANDARD SMALL EMPHASIZED TRUE FALSE	X X X	X * X * X
form	target	_blank _self _parent _top	X X X	X X X
gridlayout	style	STRING	X	X
image	src			See note above
inputfield	design invalid visible	STANDARD SMALL FALSE TRUE TRUE FALSE	X X X	X * X X
label	design	LABEL LABELSMALL		X *
link	target	_blank _self _parent _top	X X X	X X X
tabStrip	bodyheight	Unit	X	X
textView	design	EMPHASIZED HEADER1 HEADER2 HEADER3 LABEL LABELSMALL LEGEND REFERENCE STANDARD		X *
tray	onEdit onRemove	String String	X X	X X

Note:

Support for this attribute value for WAP-enabled devices depends on the device itself. Some devices support the WML tabs <small>, <b>, and <em> while others do not. If a WAP-enabled device supports the specified WML tag, the associated values Small, Emphasized, LabelSmall, and so on are also supported.