See this post for a description of our terminology: http://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2014/10/14/introducing-react-elements.html http://facebook.github.io/r

See this post for a description of our terminology: http://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2014/10/14/introducing-react-elements.html http://facebook.github.io/react/blog/2014/10/14/introducing-... If I write var C = React.createClass(...); var e = <C />; var c = React.render(e, document.body); then C is a class, e is an element (previously "descriptor"), and c is the actual mounted component. Components are generally accessible only through "this", refs, and the return value of React.render.