Page: Naming may be hard, but...

It is true naming is the hardest thing to do in, er… programming? How about in everything? I wouldn’t hesitate to admit. Yeah? But can it be any easier? What if we had a dictionary of possibles? Let me propose some…

Dictionary entries of possibles

bubble zoom, bullhorn, business brief, callout, colophon, countdown, elevator pitch, entrance, entry, fallback, footnotes,front-door, gallery, gatekeeper, guiding lights, montage, offerings, piece, rack and pinion, rubric, showcase, signpost, shots, slideshow, slow reveal, snapshot, tagline, thumbnail box, topfold, tracker, wrapper

Kabolobari Benakole Global Good Design Consultant

Where could dictionary be handy?

I was just about to type “programming” then realized that, of course, that draws on design — naming components. You got to be able to name something something that makes sense, first to you, and then to others who might encounter (or use) your design, your code, even to peers who may pick up after or collaborate with you. Even to future you (when you might revisit what you designed sometime).

Qualities of a good component name? Of a dictionary entry

1. Meaningful, but not (too) specific.

   While it should make sense to you (and anyone looking in), it shouldn’t be too specific to what it is describing, too literal. Should be kind of blank, and so it can travel from application to application. It should rather describe the action of the thing, the behavior of, than the thing itself. Yet again, not too blank.

   “Carousel” seems too literal for what designers/developers tend to use it to name. And yet, “slider” is way too blank, and almost meaningless for that kind of thing. “Slideshow” (or “gallery”) may be more appropriate for that. Hey, how about “showcase”? Yep, you got it!

2. More purpose, less literality

   See how I discounted “slider” as not a suitable name for that kind of thing? But if you look at the dictionary you’ll find “bubble zoom” (Kevin Powell). Huh? Isn’t that equally as specific, being just as literal? Yes, it is.

   For reason of such dichotomy, let me introduce a concept I should call “zoom out first, then in”. In first zooming out, you got to look at the broad picture of what the thing is, what it is about, and then rather (as best as you can) generically name it.

   For example, it makes sense to be called a montage of the company’s team members, so montage it is. Then when you zoom in, looking at the inner nitty-gritties of the composite/component, you could then name a block in there, bubble-zoom, specifically describing the behavior of individual or collective elements in the big-picture thing. Make sense?

3. Elevator pitch, not “hero section”

   This point is exactly as the preceding one, but it had to be its own item as I really needed it to stand out, given how popular (in the web design world) the term “hero” is used to describe what is arguably the most important section of a website — the front-door or I propose we call it the elevator pitch.

   What is “hero”?

   Exactly!

   Blank. Meaningless. Nothing.

   And it’d be such a stretch if you were to go tie the weight of importance of this section of a homepage’s above the fold metaphorically to some connotation of “hero”.

   Hero is really an empty component name or descriptor whose time (should never have come but) is done.

4. More obvious, less clever, and the least ambiguous

   

   What would you call the final lines, as a composite, what is usually “legal notices” of a website? Well, duh! “Legal Notices”, “Footnotes”, “Disclaimers”, “Credits”… Because these lines, sometimes just one — copyright info — are usually these things, any one of these keywords (sure, we can suggest more) can be a suitable name for such a component.

   But “colophon” couldn’t be more obvious… look at the quote:

   traditionally an inscription placed at the end of a book or manuscript, usually with facts that relate to its production

   ~ Source: Merriam-Webster

   So apt it’s tough to give it up for another. No ambiguity or clever idea (like “hero”), just to the point, nifty. Well, a website is a “book” after all. O, o… I’m opening a pandora’s box of book parts as suitable component names? We’ll see! To that effect, This book parts page is such a great study.

5. Mostly evocative, palpable, hardly abstract

A possibility with dictionary

No, I’m not sitting down at once, not any time necessarily to come up with these possibles. But as I work, study, or just at random, one pops and I drop it here.

At some point, I see myself transforming this dictionary into actually defining how I imagine some of these words may be used, what sort of components might they be suitable for, yes, possibilities.

References

1. “Homepage Design: 5 Fundamental Principles”, NN Group. Accessed Mar. 19, 2024.
2. “Bullhorn”, Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Accessed Mar. 20, 2024.
3. “Web Carousel Design 101: Ideas, Examples, Best Practices”, Jeff Cardello, Vev. Accessed Mar 20, 2024
4. “Create a cool bubble zoom effect with CSS”, Kevin Powell, YouTube. Accessed Mar. 20, 2024.
5. “Callout”, Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Accessed Mar. 21, 2024.
6. “Rack and pinion”, Wikipedia. Accessed Mar 23, 2024
7. “The Hero Section: A Powerful Force in Web Design”, Engenius Web Design. Accessed Mar. 23, 2024.
8. “Colophon”, Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Accessed Mar. 28, 2024.
9. “The term ‘all rights reserved’ explained”, LegalZoom. Accessed Mar. 28, 2024.
10. “Parts of a Book: Quire, Colophon, and More”, Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Accessed Mar. 28, 2024
11. “The Graphic Design Process”, Baseline Education Ltd. Accessed Apr. 08, 2024.
12. “rubric”, Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Accessed Jun. 12, 2024
13. A Lesson on Top Tasks from Hurricane Beryl, Evan Sunwall, NN Group. Accessed Jul. 23, 2024.