Thanks for this interesting post.

Some remarks from me:

>>These files must have the same name and must reside in the same location ... there is probably a work around for this

You can indeed easily tweak this to your liking. Whether the default behavior is 'quirky' is debatable:

http://cwiki.apache.org/WICKET/control-where-html-files-are-loaded-from.html

>>Wicket relies very heavily on a web application's session

This is just the same as every Struts application with a session scoped form bean. So no need for medicine to cure your bellyache ;).

One tip gratis:
If you override one method in your ListView:

protected IModel getListItemModel(IModel model, int index) {
return new CompoundPropertyModel(super.getListItemModel(model, index));
}

... you can create your labels without a model (as you're doing it on the AddContact page) e.g.:

listItem.add(new Label("state"));

Sven