Is there any particular reason in some contexts the term wid

Question

Is there any particular reason in some contexts the term widget is chosen over component The framework compose and Flutter for that matter seem to have made this decision and I wonder if I m missing something or if it s just general preference

jim · Answer

I especially use the word widget when I am talking to emphasize that people think of it as a noun because the word component is so fuzzy and overloaded I also use the word thing stuck out tongue The terms are largely interchangeable

sindrenm · Answer

It s slightly confusing at times that Widget is also mostly used for home screen widgets but that might just be me

jim · Answer

Computer science has run out of words

curioustechizen · Answer

I think of widget as a UI thing This is why it is confusing for me when Flutter has non UI widgets like StreamBuilder PolymerJS did it right They called it element but that was of course in the context of HTML

sindrenm · Answer

We re already running with Future Promise Deferred and probably a bunch of others as well Might as well make some new ones here as well D

curioustechizen · Answer

And yes for Compose I agree with Widget because in Compose they re only going to be UI widgets Right Right

sindrenm · Answer

No

jim · Answer

oh how I ve tried to win that battle

sindrenm · Answer

`state` isn t a UI thing for instance

curioustechizen · Answer

Hmm but then State isn t a widget either It is a Composable but I don t think of it as a widget

sindrenm · Answer

It s a thing sunglasses

Adam Powell · Answer

We ve had a long standing conflict around the word widget that dates back to a very late but pre Android 1 0 introduction of the term widget to mean home screen widget despite the existence of the `android widget` package namespace for a lot of view subclasses This name collision is so profound that even as of ~3 4 years ago when we were getting planning for a UI toolkit revamp off the ground we polled a room full of developers from the community asking if they wanted a new widget framework It polled extremely low I interrupted the room and asked how many of you thought you were voting on home screen widgets and over half the room raised their hands

Adam Powell · Answer

I m not particularly opposed to the term but that experience echoes for me slightly smiling face

Adam Powell · Answer

In at least a small body of docs I ve been trying out element to mean a composable function that emits a single root UI node and maybe a subtree as implementation detail and layout to mean an element that accepts one or more composable functions as parameters that will be called to provide the element s content which the layout will arrange

Adam Powell · Answer

But suggestions also welcome I agree that a precise set of terms is helpful here

romainguy · Answer

technically the home screen widgets are called app widgets

Leland Richardson [G] · Answer

I just say composable most of the time

Adam Powell · Answer

Right and we also have composables that are not UI elements like `Providers`

Adam Powell · Answer

< romainguy> yes and technically you and I are two out of like 9 people on the planet who care smile

sindrenm · Answer

They might technically be called app widgets but when I long press in the Pixel launcher I can choose between Home settings Widgets and Styled amp wallpapers so wink

sindrenm · Answer

Widget is also used in the naming conventions for styling views and stuff such as ` lt style name= Widget AppName CustomSlider gt ` and whatnot Man D

romainguy · Answer

Well that one makes sense because it s a style for the widgets traditionally found in android widget which we call widgets