Modular Web Design: Creating Reusable Components for User Experience Design and Documentation
by Nathan Curtis
Chapter 1. Define
A component is a chunk of a page design.
A component contains generic, atomic elements (like text, links, buttons, checkboxes, and images) combined into a meaningful building block used—and reused—in the interface design of an entire page. Other common terms you may have heard to describe a page chunk include module, portlet, widget, or even molecule (a term used in Robert Fabricant’s guest contribution later in this chapter).
The word component can mean different things to different people. For example, if you want to be more precise, you could refer to the components of this book as Web page components to formally distinguish them from the broader and more technical concepts of software components that engineers think so deeply ...
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