SAP-UI5 offers a rich set of predefined themes designed to deliver a consistent and professional look across enterprise applications. However, business needs often require tailoring the UI appearance to align with corporate branding, improve usability, or differentiate applications visually. Customizing UI5 themes enables developers and designers to modify colors, fonts, icons, and styles while preserving the framework’s responsiveness and functionality.
This article explores the approaches and best practices for customizing UI5 themes in SAP-UI5 applications.
A UI5 theme defines the visual style of UI controls, including colors, fonts, padding, margins, backgrounds, and icons. SAP ships with several standard themes like:
Themes are based on CSS, LESS, and SAP’s theming infrastructure, which allows for extendable and maintainable styling.
UI5 themes rely on a comprehensive set of theme parameters (CSS variables). The recommended way to customize a theme is to override these parameters rather than modifying CSS directly.
Advantages:
The UI Theme Designer is a web-based tool accessible via SAP systems or SAP Cloud Platform.
Steps:
For specific cases, you can add custom CSS files to override styles:
custom.css).manifest.json under sap.ui5/resources or load dynamically."sap.ui5": {
"resources": {
"css": [
{
"uri": "css/custom.css"
}
]
}
}
Use this approach cautiously to avoid style conflicts and maintainability issues.
In UI Theme Designer or via parameter overrides, change the primary color parameter, for example:
@sapUiBaseColor: #0a6ed1; // default primary blue
@sapUiPrimaryColor: #FF5733; // new corporate orange
After exporting and deploying the theme, your UI5 app will reflect this new color scheme.
Customizing UI5 themes allows SAP-UI5 developers to create applications that align perfectly with corporate identity while leveraging SAP’s robust and adaptive UI framework. By using SAP’s UI Theme Designer and following best practices, you ensure maintainability, upgrade safety, and superior user experiences.
Theme customization is not just about aesthetics but also about reinforcing brand identity and improving usability across the SAP landscape.