Do I need a FormElementBorder component?

[Andy Pahne <ap...@der-die-das.org>]

Sorry for this long text, but I did not know, how to make it shorter.

I am currently developing an application that mainly consists of a lot 
of forms (and background database activity). Pretty standard I would say.

The overall design  (look and feel!) of the application is not defined 
yet and will be defined and applied, after a working application is 
available. That's no problem for me, because I think this kind of 
situation can be handled with the Tapestry framework very well. (With 
apropriate use of a border component it's easy to change the 
applications overall look and feel very quickly and without hassles).

But I can't see yet, how all these forms' and all those form elements's 
look and feel can be adjusted easily afterwards.

For me, a for element consist of these parts:
  - display name (short, mandatory)
  - description (a bit longer, optional, always visible, when defined)
  - tooltip indicatior (small icon, optional)
  - tooltip (sort of help text, optional, only visible when mouse is over
    the tooltip indicator)
  - the form element itself (e.g. <input jwcid="@Text" .../>

I thought that having a FormElementBorder component that behaves for 
form element much like the Border component for the page does, would be 
fine, because I then could define my form elements like this:

<span jwcid="@FormElementBorder"
     displayName="DOB"
     description="ognl:components.DOBDescriptionBlock"
     tooltip="ognl:components.DOBTooltip"
 >
   <!-- component renders it's body, which consists only of the form
        element itself -->
   <input jwcid="@text" ... />
</span>

<!-- and the optional additional information blocks: -->
<span jwcid="DOBDescriptionBlock@Block">
   Date of Birth
</span>
<span jwcid="@Block">
   Please enter your date of birth here.
   The requested format is YYYY/MM/DD.
</span>


I have two questions, before I start on my component:

Do you think such a component is useful, or do you have ideas to achieve 
  the same functionality in an easier way?

I have no idea yet, how to do this tooltip thing with layers that show 
and hide and maybe dynamic javascript as well. Some suggestions on that 
particular issue?

Thanks in advance,
Andy Pahne






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