I don’t know about you but it is an everyday battle with designers, developers and clients on what the proper terminology for a box that holds content on the website is called. As a designer I know it as a module, for developers it is known as a widget and for clients it is known as the whatchamacallit/box/thing.
How can one simple box have so many different names for it? Why can’t the world wide web use one name instead of a range of names? You don’t see the same problem with buttons. A button is a button or should we change the rule of physics and start calling it a knob?
There was a recent poll on Polldaddy.com that asked the question: What do you call these draggable, expandable boxes in WP? For example, “The Publish ___________.” The choices were postbox, metabox, module, widget, area, container, box or other. The results were interesting and didn’t answer as much as the comments below the poll. The top three choices were: box (25% of the votes), widget (18% of the votes) and metabox (17% of the votes). One user posted “Module because it’s the most international word (at least in French, you can say module).” Interesting – I now know French!
A “widget” is described as the basic building block/interface for a desktop operating system.
A “box” describes the rectangular boxes that are generated for elements on a web page.
A “module” is a term that personalized web pages like iGoogle refer to the multiple components of their pages.
Basically all three definitions are saying the same thing. “(Blank)” is an element on a web page.
In conclusion… well there really isn’t one! Designers will still insist on their modules and developers will rally around widgets. I suppose the best we can hope for is a gentleman’s truce and a unified front when presenting to any befuddled clients!
What do you like to call these containers of content?
Tags: definition, designer, developer, module, terminology, widget
Nice post Renee! I know I get mixed up sometimes with all of the different references- and have seen many a client get turned around- thinking functionality may differ depending on the term being used… Perhaps a company should write a set of guidelines to terminology so that sales people, contract writers, project managers, developers, and designers can operate on common terms- especially as clients go through the mill!
Don’t forget Blocks (in Drupal, that’s what they’re called)! It’s always good to have a consistent language on staff and to educate the client on that language early on so everyone’s on board.
Hey, I am checking this site from my iPhone and it looks kinda weird. Thought you’d want to know. It’s a great post though, didn’t mess that up
Thanks Nicole
Oh- and sorry for your comment getting withheld- it got marked as spam – I got it all fixed up though 