I'd say the CGI plugin is better than something like this too: <html:text property="user"/> b/c the attributes match up better; property? "What HTML attribute is that?" one might ask. Here's the CGI TT2 for it.

[% USE CGI # goes anywhere %]
[% CGI.textfield( name => 'user' ) %]
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Another advantage being you can embed all the attr you want.

[% CGI.textfield( name => 'user',
                  onmouseover => 'this.focus()',
                  style => 'width:12em;',
                  default => user_obj.user || CGI.param('user') )
  %]
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Also, check out how to do WRAPPERs, INCLUDEs, and define your own FILTERs. TT2 is *extremely* powerful for what it will let you do in those regards. In fact this got me a bit excited to spark up more sharing of this stuff. I'll try to post a handful of the TT2 snippets/wrappers I use in a day or two.