Re: GWT ui:style how big of a bad idea (or not) is it to use it?

To start with CSSResource is awesome and I highly recommend using it. It forces you to program better. Should you really be trying to pull elements out of the page depending on their CSS names? Seems like a bad day if you ever want to rebrand or dress up your UI. If CSS is the graphical dressing of the site, separate those concerns from the functional aspects. Further, using those CSSResource interfaces keeps you from ever using string literals in your Java code or UiBinders, which is a best practice.

Additionally, with UI Automation tests our testers are tempted to use ugly selectors based on class names. This is a poor idea because then a class name changes a year later and 400 tests fail, even though functionally the site works just as well as before.

The real question here is what you want to do with your CSS. If you want to apply rules the site over, then don't use <ui:style>, but rather a CSSResource interface. This way that interface can be used by many widgets' UiBinders. However bespoke, small CSS tweaks do fit nicely into <ui:style> and you can always move them out to a CSSResource interface in the future if you want to use them multiple places. Note, from my experience you cannot well handle CSS inheritance/overriding between widgets with <ui:style>, but you can with standalone CSSResource interfaces.

Sincerely,

Joseph

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