Update (29th of June 2022): There are no more free slots for participating in the 8.00 Beta Program. With this, the registration for the Beta Program is closed. A big “thank you” to all interested parties.

Hello Community,

as mentioned in SAP Note 147519 we are planning to ship the next SAP GUI for Windows release, which will be called SAP GUI for Windows 8.00, in Q1/2023. The increase of the major version already says it all: There is a very important new feature that we are going to deliver with the new release… a true 64bit version of SAP GUI for Windows in addition to the 32bit version that we will continue to ship.

I have already announced this a couple of weeks back in another blog:
https://blogs.sap.com/2022/02/22/sap-gui-for-windows-8.00-64bit-version-coming-in-addition-to-the-32bit-version/

We are certain there will be a lot of interest in the 64bit version and have therefore once more decided to run a beta program for our new release.

64bit support is clearly our focus area, but beyond this very important feature we have additional features that you might be interested in:

• Modernized rendering in Quartz Themes: The rendering engine used for displaying the Quartz Themes has been completely reworked which leads to a more harmonized appearance of Quartz (for example the rounded corners look much better). Additionally, this paves the way for further innovations beyond release 8.00 (potentially for adding custom theming support).
• Full Browser Window when detaching URLs in the WebView2 Control (Edge as Browser Control): In SAP GUI for Windows 7.70 the HTML Control based on WebView2 was introduced. Since this is a completely new control based on a new Microsoft component, until today several restrictions apply (see also SAP Note 2901278). One of the most important restrictions is when SAP GUI opens an external browser window through the HTML Control based on WebView2 only a browser tab appears (missing navigation, menu and the options for grouping tabs). Thanks to a new browser extension for Microsoft Edge this limitation no longer applies as of SAP GUI for Windows 8.00.
• Scrolling Indicator in Tree Controls: In SAP GUI for Windows 7.70 we added the scrolling indicator to the Table Control and the ALV Grid Control. Now this is also available for the Tree Control:
• Usability improvements: The dialog box containers now offer a much better keyboard support, combobox controls support displaying keys and sorting by keys (like the regular combobox also does), in ALV the copying of blocks with gaps (individual cell selection) was improved and more.
• Changes in SAP Logon: The sorting and ordering of columns is now persisted correctly which allows users to customize their view and administrators to roll-out a default view. Furthermore, you can decide to make SNC without SSO the default configuration (for example if you are using SAP SNC Client Encryption which does not offer SSO features).
• Improved font selection: The font selection via the SAP GUI options dialog caused a lot of confusion in the past, because SAP GUI internally works with a scaling factor, and not with the concrete font size as specified in the dialog. Therefore, it could happen that a font you selected needed to be adjusted by SAP GUI so that your selected setting was changed. Now the dialog works with a scaling factor and it also allows the maintenance of font settings per character set if you are working in SAP systems with different languages. This makes the font settings much more convenient and avoids errors.

We also changed defaults:

• The browser control based on WebView2 (Edge) is now the default browser control.
• When loading a SAP UI landscape file from a central HTTP server, certificate errors are now displayed in all cases (this is configurable)
• The UAC virtualization is no longer used. This is a feature from the distant past that caused a lot of trouble when SAP GUI tried to access protected resources for some reason.

You will probably like to hear that we did not remove any of the themes that were also present in SAP GUI for Windows 7.70. However, this does not mean that all themes are technically on the same level. Modern themes starting with Blue Crystal have many advantages over old themes (most importantly better scaling and as of Belize also Multi Monitor Scaling). Therefore, our recommendation is to move to new themes.

What you can expect from the beta program

As soon as the program starts (this is expected early in July), you will get:

• Access to the most current version of SAP GUI for Windows 8.00 for test purposes
• A document with additional information on the new features
• A contact within the SAP GUI development team that you can use to provide feedback to us or ask questions you may have

How to join

If you are interested in participating in the beta program you can apply for registration by creating a support incident within the next couple of days. The incident must be created on component BC-FES-GUI with the title “8.00 beta program” and you should provide:

• A contact person for the beta program with name, email address and S-User ID
• An information about which of the areas mentioned above you are interested in

This data will exclusively be used for organizing the beta program.

Please note that the number of participants is limited and thus only customers who can and will actively participate in the program and are going to use one of the features above should register.

Once you are chosen, you will need to sign an online test and evaluation agreement before getting access to download the beta version of SAP GUI for Windows 8.00 in July. The program will last until end of September 2022, so regardless of the holiday season you will have enough time to take a good look at what is coming.

Beta program for SAP Business Client 8.00

Together with our SAP GUI for Windows 8.00 beta program, a beta program for SAP Business Client 8.00 is being conducted. You can find more information in this blog post:
https://blogs.sap.com/2022/05/02/call-for-beta-testing-the-sap-business-client-8.00/

We are looking forward to working with you in our SAP GUI for Windows 8.00 Beta Program!

Kind regards,

Frank Krause
Product Owner SAP GUI for Windows
SAP Development