Glossary of domain terms. Terms are capitalized when used in their glossary sense.
- Hidden field — a field whose component is not mounted at all: it is on an
inactive WCF tab, its conditions evaluate false, or its type is
hidden. Only its hidden<input>is rendered. A Hidden field makes no API calls. - Loadable — the state in which a field is allowed to start fetching remote data. A field is Loadable when it is (1) mounted (not Hidden), (2) its sentinel element intersects the viewport extended by the Preload margin, and (3) the document is visible (browser tab/window in foreground).
- Preload margin — the distance around the viewport within which a field already counts as intersecting, so it starts loading shortly before it scrolls into actual view.
- Dwell — the short period a field must remain intersecting before it becomes Loadable. Prevents fast scrolling from activating every field passed along the way.
- Latch — once a field has become Loadable, it stays activated permanently for its lifetime; scrolling away or backgrounding the tab never disables or refetches its data. Applies to all field data loading. Exception: the Gutenberg block preview (render-block) is continuously gated instead, because it re-fires on attribute changes rather than loading once.
- Focus bypass — user interaction (focus) with a field latches it immediately, skipping both Dwell and viewport intersection. An interacted field is by definition visible and must never wait for its data.
- Placeholder reserve — the height a not-yet-rendered Gutenberg block preview reserves on screen, so the blocks below it stay outside the viewport gate instead of all counting as visible at once. Applies only before a block's first render; once real content arrives it takes over the space.
- Canonical integration — the single integration surface (Options) through which the entire field-type axis is tested. Other surfaces are tested with a small representative field set only.
- Named exception — a known field-type × integration coupling that breaks
the two-axis independence and therefore gets its own dedicated tests:
Gutenberg controlled state,
multi_*/groupnested value shapes, WooCommerce variation index-suffixed input names. - Mount-sweep — the jsdom test that mounts every field component with a minimal definition and asserts it renders without crashing.
- Smoke set — the fixed list of 8 browser E2E specs; the only tests that run in a real browser. Growth requires removing or justifying a spec, not just appending.