GWT UiBinder style primary name not working - css

Question

I'm trying to override a particular widget's style using UiBinder. What am I overlooking?
<ui:style>
/*************
* Note #1
*************/
.btnVote {
display: inline-block;
width: 50px;
height: 50px;
background: #fff;
margin: 5px;
text-align: center;
outline: none;
cursor: pointer;
}
/*************
* Note #2
*************/
.btnVote-up-hovering, .btnVote-down-hovering {
background: #ddd;
}
.btnVote-up-disabled, .btnVote-down-disabled {
border-shadow: inset 0 1px 3px #aaa;
}
.lblName {
line-height: 50px;
font-size: 40px;
padding: 5px 10px;
}
.clear {
clear: both;
overflow: auto;
}
.floatLeft {
float: left;
}
</ui:style>
<g:HTMLPanel styleName="{style.clear}">
<g:FlowPanel styleName="{style.floatLeft}">
/*************
* Note #3
*************/
<g:PushButton ui:field="btnVoteUp" stylePrimaryName="{style.btnVote}">
(+)
</g:PushButton>
<g:PushButton ui:field="btnVoteDown" stylePrimaryName="{style.btnVote}">
(-)
</g:PushButton>
</g:FlowPanel>
<g:FlowPanel styleName="{style.floatLeft}">
<g:Label ui:field="lblName" stylePrimaryName="{style.lblName}"/>
</g:FlowPanel>
</g:HTMLPanel>
Note 1: This rule is being applied and works fine
Note 2: This other rules seem to be getting ignored (they don't take effect)
Note 3: The default naming for the widget is being reset, hence Note 1 works fine. The base class is set to GOGXR1SCFI instead of gwt-PushButton
Why aren't they other rules working? When I hover the widget, the class GOGXR1SCFI-up-hovering is indeed set to the widget, but no accompanying CSS.
Thanks for your help.
Update
Something I ran into that gave me a hard time for a while: when you use the #external keyword, you must place a semi-column at the end of the #external statement, as in:
<ui:style>
#external .btnVote;
.btnVote {
...
}
</ui:style>
<g:FlowPanel styleName="{style.btnVote}"/>

Answer 1

One thing you could do is to create your CSS using ClientBundle, define all the different states there, then handle the various states manually. This way you don't need to define classes as #external, and GWT will optimize the CSS for you (shorten the names, only ship what gets used, etc.). This is especially beneficial for custom widgets and such.

Answer 2

The easiest way to deal with this is to write #external .btnVote, .btnVote-up-hovering, .btnVote-down-hovering, .btnVote-up-disabled, .btnVote-down-disabled at the top of your <style> section.
The original GWT widgets do not work well with CSS resources (like the one you have in your UiBinder). They depend on a primary style name that they append things like "up-hovering" to. This is terrible for CSS resources and UiBinders because when you type "up-hovering" it becomes things like SDLFJKS.
The button styles do NOT get obfuscated (so you can read "up-hovering"). Your UiBinder styles DO get obfuscated. You can never make them match as long as obfuscation is going on.
So, the #external keyword tells UiBinder and CssResource not to obfuscate certain styles. Now, when you use {style.btnVote-up-hovering}, that will actually come through to the final HTML, which is where these old-fashioned GWT styles will be applied.

Answer 3

I suspect you have CSS stylenames being obfuscated by GWT in your UIBinder. Reference - garbled css name when styling within UiBinder
Chose the approach you find easier to integrate in your proces. Cheers :)