Widgets and Widget Types
So far in this manual, we have often used the word
widget to mean widget type
(it's difficult to avoid doing so), but it is important to clearly
understand the difference between the concepts
widget and widget type. If you
click on File > New >
(Core/Community/Mobile) Widgets in Content Studio, then what
you see in the displayed menu is a list of widget
types. If you click on one of the listed types - let's say
you click on Menu Widget - then this results in
the creation of an actual widget, an instance of
the widget type menu
. One of the things you are
required to do when you create any kind of widget, is to name the
instance you have created by setting it's Name
property. The following illustration shows the property list for a
newly-created menu widget: the Title label is
displayed in red, indicating that this property is required.
Naming the widgets you create is important, because you can create
many widgets of the same type. You might, for example, call your
menu
widget Header Menu
, and
set it to the header area. But if you also want
your publication to include a footer menu, then you can
create another menu
widget called Footer
Menu
and set it up accordingly. A typical content template
will usually contain several instances of the story
content
widget type, each set up to display a different
content item field: a Title
widget displaying the
title
field, a Byline
widget
displaying the byline
field and a
Body
widget displaying the body
field, for example.