Alan Gutierrez wrote:
The Revised Taxonomy
The Form, The Grid, The Document, & The Canvas.
I think that trying to work out the taxonomy of user interfaces is the wrong way to go. In general, it is not clear how these break down. For example, an application will usually have a main interface frame, such as the web browser. In this case the taxonomy is the Document to use your terminology. The application may also provide a set of options that the user can configure, which is The Form. Also, consider an e-mail manager like Thunderbird. It is a mixed taxonomy application. It has a left pane consisting of the available folders (a tree component), a list of the messages in the folder (a Grid) and the contents of the message (a Document). Then what about games? Media players like WinAMP? These do not fit into one of the above Taxonomy items. The above fit into specialized frame types (the Form), components (the Grid) and content renderers (the Document and Canvas). Regards, Reece