We are actively moving away from GWT and towards react [https://reactjs.org/] in webadmin, so the CSS needs to be in a place where both can access it.
Sass is easy to use, and hopefully the structure makes sense.
So --
don't use <ui:style>
nor addStyleNames="{style.whatever}">
instead,
<g:FlowPanel ui:field="xyz" addStyleNames="prefix_className">
more examples here [1]
(prefix == the sass file name)
For programmatic manipulation, simply hardcode style names in Java code and don't use GWT's Style:
widget.addClassName("notif_someClassName")
etc.
Best wishes,
Greg
Sass package: