GUI widget

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Various widgets.

In computer programming, a widget (or control) is an interface element that a computer user interacts with, such as a window or a text box. Widgets are sometimes qualified as virtual to distinguish them from their physical counterparts, e.g. virtual buttons that can be clicked with a mouse cursor, vs. physical buttons that can be pressed with a finger. Widgets are often packaged together in widget toolkits. Programmers use widgets to build graphical user interfaces (GUIs).

[edit] Etymology

The term was first applied to user interface elements during Project Athena in the 1980s. The word was chosen because "all other common terms were overloaded with inappropriate connotations" and – since the project's Intrinsics toolkit associated each widget with a window of the underlying X Window System – because of the common prefix with the word window. ^[1]

[edit] Various widgets

• Selection
  • Button
    • Toggle button
    • Check box
    • Radio button
  • Slider
  • List box
  • Spinner
  • Drop-down list
  • Menu
    • Context menu
    • Pie menu
  • Toolbar
  • Ribbon
  • Combo box (text box with attached menu or List box)
  • Icon
  • Tree view
  • Grid view

• Navigation
  • Tab
  • Scrollbar

• Text input
  • Text box (edit field)
  • Combo box (text box with attached menu)

• Output
  • Label
  • Tooltip
  • Balloon help
  • Status bar
  • Progress bar
  • Infobar

• Window
  • Modal window
  • Dialog box
  • Palette window, also known as "Utility window"
    • Inspector window
    • Drawer
    • Heads-up display, similar to HUD (computer gaming)

[edit] Layout

• systematic
  • tiles (frames)
  • docking
  • grid
• free
  • windows (on a form or on the desktop)

• by
  • programmer and then fixed at compilation
  • user

[edit] See also

• Widget toolkit for the implementations of widget programming interfaces
• Widget engine for mostly unrelated, physically inspired "widgets"
• Elements of graphical user interfaces

[edit] References

1. ^ Ralph R. Swick, Mark S. Ackerman (1988). "The X Toolkit: More Bricks for Building User-Interfaces, or, Widgets for Hire". USENIX Winter: 221–228. Retrieved on 2007-01-03.