E-Recruiting 2.00 - Themes and Layout

Question

Hi All,
I'm pretty new to BSP development and have been following the posts that deal with customising the look / layout of BSPs with interest as I have a customer with similar requirements.
In my particular case I have a customer who would like to customise the look/feel and layout of their E-Recruiting 2.00 system to meet their corporate marketing standards.
The E-Recruiting 2.00 system runs on a WAS6.20 (without a portal) and makes use of Design2002.
Steps taken to customise the look/feel:
1. Copied the standard SAP MIME objects and stylesheets for HTMLB, XHTML and Design2002 to my own MIME folder.
2. Customised the stylesheets for IE6 (the browser I am using) to change the colour of the standard button.
3. Tested the changes to the stylesheet by using the following test program:
<%@page language="abap"%>
<%@extension name="htmlb" prefix="htmlb"%>
<htmlb:content design="design2002"             themeRoot="/sap/bc/bsp/sap/public/stdbank">
  <htmlb:page title = "start ">
    <htmlb:form>
      <htmlb:button text = "Press Me"                   onClick  "myClickHandler" />
    </htmlb:form>
  </htmlb:page>
</htmlb:content>
5. The test worked successfully.
6. Removed the themeroot parameter from the program listed above and tried to use the following URL instead: http://was.customer.com:8000/sap(bD1lbiZjPTA2MA==)/bc/bsp/sap/ztest2/start.htm?sap-themeRoot=/sap/bc/bsp/sap/public/stdbank
7. Using the URL parameter had no effect on the layout of the test program and the standard design2002 button was displayed.
If anyone has any ideas / suggestions as to what I might be doing wrong would be most appreciated.
Related to this requirement is the need to have a standard header appear at the top of each SAP standard e-recruiting BSP. I have seen many posts here about how to do this using page fragments / new extensions, but my concern is the upgrade process. I am assuming that any changes made to include such a header would need to be re-applied after an upgrade / patch. Any suggestions on the best way to manage this problem in the BSP environment?
Any comments / suggestions from the forum would be most appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Brent van Rooyen.

Answer 1

Hi Brent,
the reason that the parameter sap-themeRoot doesn't work in this example is because of the URL has already been mangled, and the sap-themeRoot is included in a mangled URL. If you test your application and call it with the sap-themeRoot parameter at the very first call, you will notice that it works, and that the mangled URL will be somewhat longer.
For more information on this read these weblogs:
<a href="/people/brian.mckellar/blog/2003/09/30/bsp-in-depth-url-mangling">BSP In-Depth: URL Mangling</a>
<a href="/people/dj.adams/blog/2003/10/17/bsp-mangled-url-decoder">BSP: Mangled URL Decoder</a>
Also this help topic should be useful:
<a href="http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/4e/7feef553415e4fb357e80f7a6223b1/frameset.htm">http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw04/helpdata/en/4e/7feef553415e4fb357e80f7a6223b1/frameset.htm</a>
Alternatively, if you want to make sure that the themeRoot changes just when you want it, use a custom page attribute which you set according to your GET or POST parameters.
<htmlb:content themeRoot = "<%= my_theme %>">
This way not the URL-mangled themeRoot is used, but as this parameter is supplied explicitly to the <htmlb:content> extension, it will be used all the time.
About your concerns when upgrading/patching - I'm not sure I can share these with you ...
What exactly do you mean with <i>'I am assuming that any changes made to include such a header would need to be re-applied after an upgrade / patch'</i>.
Imo I don't see any necessary changes for including a header when you upgrade your system. Maybe you can describe your situation more detailed, what you think you might have to do ...