How to Use SAP’s Theming Parameters with Modern CSS to Build Beautifully Branded, Fully Themable UIs

In today’s digital landscape, creating an engaging and consistent user interface (UI) that reflects your brand identity is more important than ever. SAP’s theming parameters offer a powerful way to customize the look and feel of your applications while maintaining a flexible and scalable design system. By leveraging modern CSS techniques alongside SAP’s theming capabilities, developers and designers can build beautifully branded, fully themable user interfaces that adapt seamlessly to different contexts and user preferences.

What Are SAP Theming Parameters?

SAP Theming Parameters are a set of predefined variables that control the styling aspects of SAP UI5 applications. These parameters include colors, fonts, spacing, and other visual elements that define the overall theme of the UI. Instead of hardcoding styles, SAP UI5 uses these theming parameters to ensure consistency and enable dynamic theming — meaning your app’s look can be changed easily without rewriting CSS rules.

For example, rather than specifying a color directly in CSS, you use a theming parameter like sapUiBaseText or sapUiButtonBackground. When the theme changes, these parameters update automatically, and your UI adjusts accordingly.

Why Use Theming Parameters with Modern CSS?

Traditional theming methods often involve duplicating styles or managing multiple CSS files, which can quickly become unmanageable. By combining SAP’s theming parameters with modern CSS features such as CSS variables (custom properties), CSS Grid, and Flexbox, you can create flexible, maintainable, and scalable styles that align perfectly with your branding needs.

• Maintainability: Change your brand colors or fonts in one place and have the entire UI update automatically.
• Scalability: Easily support multiple themes (e.g., light, dark, high contrast) without extensive CSS rewriting.
• Performance: Modern CSS reduces rendering overhead and improves UI responsiveness.

Getting Started: Accessing and Using SAP Theming Parameters

To utilize SAP theming parameters in your application, you typically reference them within your CSS or LESS files. For SAP UI5, these parameters are exposed through the :root selector as CSS custom properties, which makes integrating with modern CSS straightforward.

Here is an example of how you might reference a theming parameter in your CSS:

button {
  background-color: var(--sapUiButtonBackground);
  color: var(--sapUiButtonText);
  border-radius: var(--sapUiButtonBorderRadius);
}

In this snippet:

• --sapUiButtonBackground controls the button background color.
• --sapUiButtonText sets the button text color.
• --sapUiButtonBorderRadius defines the button’s corner rounding.

You can inspect these variables in the browser’s developer tools when running an SAP UI5 app, making it easy to identify and customize them.

Building a Fully Themable UI with CSS Variables

Modern CSS variables empower you to create flexible themes that can switch dynamically at runtime. By mapping SAP’s theming parameters to CSS variables, you provide a foundation for your UI to adapt instantly to theme changes without reloading or recompiling stylesheets.

Here’s a recommended approach:

1. Define CSS variable fallbacks: In your custom CSS, provide fallback values for SAP theming parameters to support non-SAP environments or initial loading.
2. Use CSS variables consistently: Reference variables in all your style rules instead of hard-coded values.
3. Support theme switching: Implement JavaScript logic to toggle CSS variable values or load different SAP themes dynamically.

For example, your CSS could look like this:

:root {
  --primary-color: var(--sapUiBaseColor, #0a6ed1);
  --font-family: var(--sapUiFontFamily, "72", Arial, sans-serif);
}

h1 {
  color: var(--primary-color);
  font-family: var(--font-family);
}

Here, --sapUiBaseColor and --sapUiFontFamily are SAP’s theming parameters. If they’re not available, the CSS falls back to default values ensuring your UI looks consistent.

Tips for Beautifully Branded SAP UIs

1. Align with Your Brand Guidelines: Customize SAP theming parameters to reflect your brand’s color palette, typography, and spacing. This can be done via the SAP Theme Designer or programmatically.

2. Use Responsive Layouts: Combine theming with CSS Grid and Flexbox to ensure your UI looks great across devices.

3. Leverage SAP Theme Designer: SAP provides a visual tool called SAP Theme Designer that lets you customize themes easily without deep CSS knowledge.

4. Test Across Themes: Ensure your UI works well with multiple themes, including SAP’s standard themes (e.g., SAP Belize, Quartz) and your custom themes.

5. Keep Accessibility in Mind: Use theming parameters to support high-contrast modes and ensure your UI is accessible to all users.

Useful Resources

• SAP Fiori Design: Theming — Official SAP theming guidelines and best practices.
• SAP UI5 Theming Documentation — Detailed technical instructions on using theming parameters.
• SAP Theme Designer — Visual tool for creating and customizing SAP UI themes.

Conclusion

Mastering SAP’s theming parameters in combination with modern CSS empowers you to build fully themable, beautifully branded user interfaces that adapt effortlessly to different business requirements and user preferences. By embracing CSS variables, responsive design techniques, and SAP’s powerful theming infrastructure, you can deliver UIs that not only look stunning but also provide a consistent and accessible experience across platforms.

Ready to take your SAP UI development to the next level? Start exploring SAP theming parameters today and unlock the full potential of themable, modern web applications.