I am looking for a common, collective word that describes major parts of the interface of a web-app which are seen on many different pages/screens, as opposed to parts of the interface specific to a single page/screen. Stuff like:
- global navigation buttons (top-level menus, footer)
- indicators common to most pages and showing “global” state (like the logged in/anonymous state)
- buttons that influence the presentation in some global way (like that Google Analytics control that changes time period—it shows up on most of the pages and influences every diagram and table; or a site-wide toggle that changes font size/accessibility features)
- widgets that allow a certain feature to be used from every page (like a popup feedback dialog)
as opposed to:
- content-specific link on a single page that just happens to link to another specific page (like a link in an email, or a link to show related content),
- an indicator showing status of a specific piece of the content (like: this email is unread)
- a button to hide/show a specific subtree of comments on a discussion page.