It doesn't make sense but its a standard to render all pass through attributes on the root Element.

All custom components are collection of HTML elements, so we can not decide to render pass through attributes on any specific element. That is why all the pass through attributes are being rendered on the root element. If any of the child element of the custom component requires to have some attribute, it usually defined on the component as a none pass trhough attribte (e.g.)

To set the "size" and the "style class" on the "input" element of the "inputFile" component, there are two attributes are defined on the "inputFile" component respectively the inputTextSize and the inputTextClass .

Perhaps I've missed something. What is the work-around for the maxlength attribute on the selectInputText tag? In 1.7, the maxlength attribute is rendered on the surrounding div tag, which at least in msie 6, firefox 2, and firefox 3, does not actually limit the length of the text the user can type into the input field.

The same problem exists for the tabindex-attribute: it does not make sense to set the tabindex on a div-element. The user expects to be able to enter text into an ice:inputText component after pressing the tab key.