[Feature Request]: ExpandableText — Add maxWidth For Responsive Popover And Preserve Whitespaces

[Nizamski]

Feature Request Description

The ExpandableText component’s expanded view uses a ResponsivePopover whose width cannot be constrained, which can lead to overly wide popovers on large screens and negatively affect readability. Additionally, the component does not offer a way to preserve whitespace and newline characters, causing multi-line content (such as descriptions, logs, etc.) to be rendered as a single flow of text.

Proposed Solution

Enhance ExpandableText with:

1. Support for limiting the expanded ResponsivePopover width via a dedicated property (e.g., popoverMaxWidth or maxWidth), accepting CSS size values (e.g., 480px, 40rem).
2. A property to preserve whitespace and line breaks (e.g., preserveWhitespace: boolean or whiteSpaceMode: "normal" | "pre-wrap"), applying white-space: pre-wrap in the expanded view (and optionally in the collapsed view) so that spaces and newline characters are retained.

Thank you.

Proposed Alternatives

1. Use other components (e.g., TextArea in read-only mode or a custom ResponsivePopover) to display multi-line content, but this forfeits the built-in truncation/expansion behavior of ExpandableText.
2. Attempt styling via global CSS is limited due to Shadow DOM encapsulation and does not reliably control the internal Text and ResponsivePopover.

Organization

SAP

Additional Context

Environment: UI5 Web Components 2.16.2

Typical use cases include displaying multi-line log entries, formatted descriptions where line breaks and spacing carry meaning. Controlling max width improves readability and prevents the popover from spanning too wide on large viewports.

Priority

Medium

Privacy Policy

• I’m not disclosing any internal or sensitive information.

[PetyaMarkovaBogdanova]

Hi colleagues from @UI5/ui5-team-ctr-rod ,
can you, please, take a look at this Feature request/enhancement request regarding ui5-expandable-text?
Best regards,
Petya Markova
UI5 Web Components Dispatcher

[LidiyaGeorgieva]

Hello @Nizamski ,

Please create a Inner-source feature enhancement request for the Popover. We can't make changes without a design.

For the preserve whitespace request I've created a BLI for implementation (TeamJira-3611 ). This issue will be updated once we are ready.

In future, please create separate Github issues for every single feature request. Thank you!

Regards,
Lidiya