How to Define the Theme Used by a Web DynproJava Application

Web Dynpro applications provide the possibility of defining customer-specific themes. If the Web Dynpro application and the portal are running on different systems with different releases, there could be problems with incompatible style sheets defining the used theme. If the portal system is "older" than the system running the Web Dynpro application, this could cause errors in the behavior of some UI elements of the Web Dynpro application (because these UI elements also depend on the used themes/style sheets).
Therefore, it is possible to configure the Web Dynpro runtime to use not the portal theme, but the defined Web Dynpro theme. This would mean that the Web Dynpro application is rendered in a different theme than the portal, but the Web Dynpro application works fine without problems (because the incompatible portal theme is not used).
To prevent the Web Dynpro runtime from using the portal theme, you have to use the Visual Admin. Choose: Configuration Adapter service and browse to:
webdynpro -> sap.com -> tc~wd~dispwda -> Propertysheet default.

You have to open this default property sheet and change one property value called: sap.useWebDynproStyleSheet.

The possible values are:
• true
The Web Dynpro application does not use the portal theme but the theme defined by the Web Dynpro runtime. This should only be used if there are compatibility problems between the themes provided by the portal system and the system running the Web Dynpro application.
• false
The Web Dynpro application uses the theme defined by the portal. This is the default for SAP NetWeaver ’04 Stack 09.

Note: This article describes the scenario when your WD application is hosted in Netweavwer Portal.