Why GWT ignore standard html tags ?

[Gervais.b]

Hi all,

I'm playing with GWT since some weeks and now I want to create a form
(not int Html sense); In this form I want to use the Html <label> tag
to set focus on the field referenced by the "for" attribute value.

1° <label for="fldFirstName"><g:InlineLabel text="{msg.firstName}" /></
label>
But that don't works because GWT "ui:field" don't set the Id to the
field.

2° So I have tried to give an id to my field but now GWT complaints
because we can use "id" with "ui:field".

3° I have Googled a little and found a topic who use en expression to
retrieve the field id :
<label for="{fldFirstName.getElement.getId}"><g:InlineLabel
text="{msg.firstName}" /></label>
But the "for" attribute stay empty.

4° I have decided to tell you "Why GWT ignore standard html tags ?"
and force us to write many boilerplate code for simple things ?
I think that the GWT has made an impressive work but I don't
understand why in many cases we have to ignore "Html best pratice"

[Thomas Broyer]

On Wednesday, October 26, 2011 1:54:38 PM UTC+2, Gervais.b wrote:

Hi all,

I'm playing with GWT since some weeks and now I want to create a form
(not int Html sense); In this form I want to use the Html <label> tag
to set focus on the field referenced by the "for" attribute value.

1° <label for="fldFirstName"><g:InlineLabel text="{msg.firstName}" /></
label>
But that don't works because GWT "ui:field" don't set the Id to the
field.

Yes, and there's a good reason for this (performance IIRC, and also the GWT team wanted to try other approaches than getElementById to retrieve the elements).

 

2° So I have tried to give an id to my field but now GWT complaints
because we can use "id" with "ui:field".

3° I have Googled a little and found a topic who use en expression to
retrieve the field id :
<label for="{fldFirstName.getElement.getId}"><g:InlineLabel
text="{msg.firstName}" /></label>
But the "for" attribute stay empty.

Yes, because as you said, ui:field doesn't set an ID on the element (actually, it does set one, but removes it right after use).

 

4° I have decided to tell you "Why GWT ignore standard html tags ?"
and force us to write many boilerplate code for simple things ?

There are features that, if not done correctly, would cause a lot of bugs being reported, and would effectively move resources (human resources I mean) on fixing those rather than improving the toolkit.

There are ways to do what you want without too much boilerplate: https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AQcd-Zsy2T-YZG1mZG5jNl84Z3NkMmJuZHo

And there are ways to do it without without writing any code: <label><ui:text from="{msg.firstName}" /> <g:TextBox ui:field="fldFirstName" /></label> Just Works™, because the textbox is within the <label>, so there's no need for a for="" attribute.

 

I think that the GWT has made an impressive work but I don't
understand why in many cases we have to ignore "Html best pratice"

You don't have to.