Glossary » Widgets

typeahead

a feature for allowing users to continue typing without waiting for the computer to catch up. For instance, a word processor may not display every keystroke as it’s entered because of difficult screen formatting, but will catch up as soon…

typography

the design of letterforms, and the selective use of appropriate type (in appropriate fonts) for the display of text. Typographers often specialize in the design of fonts and of logos, but typography plays a role in any context in which…

unfold button

a control that expands a window to reveal more information or more controls.

unicode

a digital format for representing text within any of the major writing systems of the world, replacing standards such as ASCII (which can represent fewer than 256 unique symbols) with a 2-byte format that can handle any of over 65,000…

unistroke text input

pen-based input of alphanumeric characters based on an alphabet of gestures that can all be written with a single pen stroke. For instance, uppercase H usually requires at least 3 strokes (two vertical bars and a crossbar), while lowercase h…

utility window

a window used for application options, controls, or tools, rather than for documents and other user content. Similar types of utility views include floating palettes, adornments, and toolbars.

valuator

a general way of referring to any input device or input method for specifying continuous values (as opposed to selecting among a finite set of choices). Typical devices include control dials and levers.

warning

a message to a user that lets a user know of potential dangers, such as the possibility of data loss if they continue an operation; a type of alert box that provides such a message. A typical example is the…

well

a location for dropping objects, from which those objects can later be retrieved or selected. For instance, a color well can have a “color chip” dropped into it, which then can be dragged out or just selected to color an…

widget

any of a variety of interactive objects in a graphical user interface. Widgets are generally meant to metaphorically suggest real-world controls. A widget can be a button, a menu, a scrollbar. It can refer to a more complex object like…

WIMP interface

windows-icons-menus-pointer. A style of graphical user interface that uses these common widgets. A paradigm for human-computer interaction.

window

an area of a computer screen, used for representing an application or document or for any other set of related interface elements. Graphics drawn to a window are clipped to its frame.

“Overlapping windows” are the most common in GUIs.…

window dressing

all of the components of a window around the central document, especially the border, title bar, resize box, resize borders, close box, collapse and zoom boxes, and minimize and maximize buttons.

window manager

the portion of an operating system that gives the programmer an interface for displaying within a window without concern for where on the screen the user has moved it or resized it and without concern for when or how windows…

window title bar

the top region of a window that displays the window’s title and can be dragged to move the window. The title bar contains window controls such as the close box, minimize and maximize controls, zoom box, and collapse box.

wordwrap

the feature that moves entire words to the next line when the end of a line is reached (during typing, or whenever text is displayed), rather than chopping off the line or splitting words in half.

zoom box

a control in a window’s title bar (in Mac OS) that allows a user to toggle the size of a window between a user-defined size and the maximum size necessary to display the entire contents of the document (up to…