Windows, screens, and panels

["Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Lizak Kristin (or was that Kristin Lizak?) wondered about various
standard terms:

screen = the large glass thing in front of the keyboard; thus, a
screen shot is a picture of what appears on that screen.

window = various subsets of the screen whose components act
collectively as if they were a single object (e.g., each program
occupies a window that can be moved around, no matter how much
junk is in it, as if it were a single object; each program also has
its own collection of "child" windows)

panel = one subset of a window (e.g., the "To" and "Subject" part of
an e-mail message are in one panel, and the body text is in another
(at least in Pegasus, which is what I'm using).

palette = a collection of tool icons, color choices, style choices
etc., usually displayed in its own window.

There's no shortage of style guides that list standard usage; Sun has
one that gets good reviews, and Microsoft's style guide has its fans
(I'm not one of them, but it does provide a consistent usage for
Windows applications). If you're desperate, you could check out the
Wired style guide, but the Wired folk strike me as poseurs when it
comes to communication.

<<...we have a screen that has six tabs across the top of it. Each
time you click a tab a screen appears which corresponds to the name
of that tab.>>

I'd say that you have a window or dialog box (depending) with tabs,
and that each tab calls up a new dialog box or window... or even
calls up a "tab" itself if you're using the metaphor of a three-ring
binder.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca

When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place.--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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