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| Bandwidth |
The amount of data that can be transmitted in a fixed amount of time. For digital devices, the bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second(bps) or bytes per second. For analog devices, the bandwidth is expressed in cycles per second, or Hertz (Hz). |
| Browser |
Short for Web browser, a software application used to locate and display Web pages. The two most popular browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. |
| Compatibility |
When building websites, it is important that the site is tested on multiple web browsers and platforms. |
| CSS |
Short for Cascading Style Sheets, a new feature being added to HTML that gives both website developers and users more control over how pages are displayed. With CSS, designers and users can create style sheets that define how different elements, such as headers and links, appear. |
| Database |
A collection of information organised in such a way that a computer program can quickly select desired pieces of data. You can think of a database as an electronic filing system.
Traditional databases are organised by fields, records, and files. A field is a single piece of information; a record is one complete set of fields; and a file is a collection of records. For example, a telephone book is analogous to a file. It contains a list of records, each of which consists of three fields: name, address, and telephone number. |
| DHTML |
DHTML is usually a combination of JavaScript, HTML and sometimes CSS. It is often used for pullout menus and certain types of basic animation. Can be very unreliable as different browsers interpret the code in there own way. |
| Domain Name |
Domain names are used in URL's to identify particular Web pages. For example, in the URL http://www.diamondclear.com/index.html, the domain name is diamondclear.com.
Every domain name has a suffix that indicates which top level domain (TLD) it belongs to. There are only a limited number of such domains. For example:
gov - Government agencies, edu - Educational institutions, org - Organisations (non-profit), mil - Military, com - commercial business,
net - Network organisations, ca - Canada, au - Australia. |
| Dreamweaver |
Adobe Dreamweaver is a professional HTML editor for visually designing and managing websites and pages. |
| eCommerce |
Conducting business on-line. This includes, for example, buying and selling products with digital cash and via EDI ( Electronic Data Interchange, the transfer of data between different companies using networks, such as the Internet. As more and more companies get connected to the Internet, EDI is becoming increasingly important as an easy mechanism for companies to buy, sell, and trade information. |
| Flash |
A bandwidth friendly and browser independent vector-graphic animation technology. As long as different browsers are equipped with the necessary plug-ins, Flash animations will look the same.
With Flash, users can draw their own animations or import other vector-based images.
Produced by Macromedia. |
| Frames |
A feature supported by most modern Web browsers than enables the Web author to divide the browser display area into two or more sections (frames). The contents of each frame are taken from a different Web page. Frames provide great flexibility in designing Web pages, but many designers avoid them because they are supported unevenly by current browsers. |
| GIF |
Stands for graphics interchange format, a bit-mapped graphics file format. GIF supports colour and various resolutions. It also includes data compression, but because it is limited to 256 colours, it is more effective for scanned images such as illustrations rather than colour photos. Supports a basic animation capability. |
| HTML |
Short for HyperText Markup Language, the authoring language used to create documents on the World Wide Web.
HTML defines the structure and layout of a Web document by using a variety of tags and attributes. The correct structure for an HTML document starts with <HTML><HEAD>(enter here what document is about)</HEAD><BODY> and ends with </BODY></HTML>.
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| HTTP |
Short for HyperText Transfer Protocol, the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. For example, when you enter a URL in your browser, this actually sends an HTTP command to the Web server directing it to fetch and transmit the requested Web page.
The other main standard that controls how the World Wide Web works is HTML, which covers how Web pages are formatted and displayed.
HTTP is called a stateless protocol because each command is executed independently, without any knowledge of the commands that came before it. This is the main reason that it is difficult to implement websites that react intelligently to user input. This shortcoming of HTTP is being addressed in a number of new technologies, including ActiveX, Java, JavaScript and cookies |
| Internet |
A global network connecting millions of computers. More than 100 countries are linked into exchanges of data, news and opinions.
Unlike online services, which are centrally controlled, the Internet is decentralized by design. Each Internet computer, called a host, is independent. Its operators can choose which Internet services to use and which local services to make available to the global Internet community. Remarkably, this anarchy by design works exceedingly well.
There are a variety of ways to access the Internet. Most online services, such as America Online, offer access to some Internet services. It is also possible to gain access through a commercial Internet Service Provider (ISP).
The Difference Between the Internet and the World Wide Web
Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (a.k.a. the Web) interchangeably, but in fact the two terms are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things.
The Internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.
The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the the Web to share information. The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, to access Web documents called Web pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks. Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.
The Web is just one of the ways that information can be disseminated over the Internet. The Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail, which relies on SMTP, Usenet news groups, instant messaging and FTP. So the Web is just a portion of the Internet, albeit a large portion, but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused. |
| Java |
A high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. Java was originally called OAK, and was designed for handheld devices and set-top boxes. Oak was unsuccessful so in 1995 Sun changed the name to Java and modified the language to take advantage of the burgeoning World Wide Web. |
| Java Applets |
An applet is a small Internet-based program written in Java, a programming language for the Web, which can be downloaded by any computer. The applet is also able to run in HTML. The applet is usually embedded in an HTML page on a website and can be executed from within a browser. Not very popular. |
| JPEG |
Short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, and pronounced jay-peg. JPEG is a lossy compression technique for colour images. Although it can reduce files sizes to about 5% of their normal size, some detail is lost in the compression. |
| Meta-Tags |
Meta tags are descriptions about a website that cannot be seen by users but help search engines index your site. The two most important Meta Tags are the KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION tags.
keywords: Should contain about 20 words or combinations of words that a potential visitor is most likely to type in a search engine. It is good to repeat the most important keywords a few times in various combinations.
Description : This is a small description about your site. Two to four sentences will suffice. This description is often displayed in a search engines results list. It is advised that about 150 characters are appropriate for a description tag and they should be (ideally) customised to each webpage. |
| Modem |
Short for modulator-demodulator. A modem is a device or program that enables a computer to transmit data over telephone lines. Computer information is stored digitally, whereas information transmitted over telephone lines is transmitted in the form of analog waves. A modem converts between these two forms. |
| PDF |
Short for Portable Document Format, a file format developed by Adobe Systems. PDF captures formatting information from a variety of desktop publishing applications, making it possible to send formatted documents and have them appear on the recipient's monitor or printer as they were intended. To view a file in PDF format, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free application distributed by Adobe Systems. |
| Platform |
The underlying hardware or software for a system. For example, the platform might be an Intel 80486 processor running DOS Version 6.0. The platform could also be UNIX machines on an Ethernet network.
The platform defines a standard around which a system can be developed. Once the platform has been defined, software developers can produce appropriate software and managers can purchase appropriate hardware and applications. The term is often used as a synonym of operating system.
The term cross-platform refers to applications, formats, or devices that work on different platforms. For example, a cross-platform programming environment enables a programmer to develop programs for many platforms at once. |
| Program |
An organized list of instructions that, when executed, causes the computer to behave in a predetermined manner. Without programs, computers are useless.
A program is like a recipe. It contains a list of ingredients (called variables) and a list of directions (called statements) that tell the computer what to do with the variables. The variables can represent numeric data, text, or graphical images.
There are many programming languages — C, C++, Pascal, BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, and LISP are just a few. These are all high-level languages. One can also write programs in low-level languages called assembly languages, although this is more difficult. Low-level languages are closer to the language used by a computer, while high-level languages are closer to human languages.
Eventually, every program must be translated into a machine language that the computer can understand. This translation is performed by compilers, interpreters, and assemblers.
When you buy software, you normally buy an executable version of a program. This means that the program is already in machine language — it has already been compiled and assembled and is ready to execute.
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| Search Engine |
A program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found. Although search engine is really a general class of programs, the term is often used to specifically describe systems like Alta Vista and Excite that enable users to search for documents on the World Wide Web and USENET newsgroups.
Typically, a search engine works by sending out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible. Another program, called an indexer, then reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document. Each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm to create its indices such that, ideally, only meaningful results are returned for each query. |
| Server |
A computer or device on a network that manages network resources. For example, a file server is a computer and storage device dedicated to storing files. Any user on the network can store files on the server. A print server is a computer that manages one or more printers, and a network server is a computer that manages network traffic. A database server is a computer system that processes database queries.
Servers are often dedicated, meaning that they perform no other tasks besides their server tasks. On multiprocessing operating systems, however, a single computer can execute several programs at once. A server in this case could refer to the program that is managing resources rather than the entire computer.
Web servers
allow you to serve content over the Internet using the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). The Web server accepts requests from browsers like Netscape and Internet Explorer and then returns the appropriate HTML documents. A number of server-side technologies can be used to increase the power of the server beyond its ability to deliver standard HTML pages; these include CGI scripts, server-side includes, SSL security, and Active Server Pages (ASPs). |
| Shockwave |
A technology developed by Macromedia, Inc. that enables Web pages to include multimedia objects. To create a shockwave object, you use Macromedia's multimedia authoring tool called Director, and then compress the object with a program called Afterburner. You then insert a reference to the "shocked" file in your Web page. To see a Shockwave object, you need the Shockwave plug-in, a program that integrates seamlessly with your Web browser. The plug-in is freely available from Macromedia's website as either a Netscape Navigator plug-in or an ActiveX control |
| Shopping Cart |
A shopping cart is a piece of software that acts as an online store's catalog and ordering process. Typically, a shopping cart is the interface between a company's website and its deeper infrastructure, allowing consumers to select merchandise; review what they have selected; make necessary modifications or additions; and purchase the merchandise.
Shopping carts can be sold as independent pieces of software so companies can integrate them into their own unique online solution, or they can be offered as a feature from a service that will create and host a company's e-commerce site.
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| Site Map |
A hierarchical visual model of the pages of a website. Site maps help users navigate through a website that has more than one page by showing the user a diagram of the entire site's contents. Similar to a book's table of contents, the site map makes it easier for a user to find information on a site without having to navigate through the site's many pages
Not all websites will have a site map. The less intricate a site is the less need there is for a site map to guide users.
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| SSL |
SSL has three main functions to ensure the security of your Internet connection:
1. Server authentication. The web server sends a digital certificate to your computer so that you can be sure of its identity.
2. Client authentication. Your computer in turn authenticates itself to the server by showing its digital signature.
3. Encryption connection. During the Internet connection, data is encrypted (i.e. scrambled) so that only your computer and the web server can understand the contents. This prevents other Internet users from intercepting the information sent between you and the web server |
| Streaming Media |
A technique for transferring data such that it can be processed as a steady and continuous stream. Streaming technologies are becoming increasingly important with the growth of the Internet because most users do not have fast enough access to download large multimedia files quickly. With streaming, the client browser or plug-in can start displaying the data before the entire file has been transmitted.
For streaming to work, the client side receiving the data must be able to collect the data and send it as a steady stream to the application that is processing the data and converting it to sound or pictures. This means that if the streaming client receives the data more quickly than required, it needs to save the excess data in a buffer. If the data doesn't come quickly enough, however, the presentation of the data will not be smooth.
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| TCP/IP |
Abbreviation for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, the suite of communications protocols used to connect hosts on the Internet. TCP/IP uses several protocols, the two main ones being TCP and IP.
TCP enables two hosts to establish a connection and exchange streams of data. TCP guarantees delivery of data and also guarantees that packets will be delivered in the same order in which they were sent.
IP specifies the format of packets, also called datagrams, and the addressing scheme. Most networks combine IP with a higher-level protocol called Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which establishes a virtual connection between a destination and a source.
IP by itself is something like the postal system. It allows you to address a package and drop it in the system, but there's no direct link between you and the recipient. TCP/IP, on the other hand, establishes a connection between two hosts so that they can send messages back and forth for a period of time. |
| Website |
A site (location) on the World Wide Web. Each website contains a home page, which is the first document users see when they enter the site. The site might also contain additional documents and files. Each site is owned and managed by an individual, company or organization. |
| www |
A system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a script called HTML that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web.
There are several applications called Web browsers that make it easy to access the World Wide Web; Two of the most popular being Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
See also Internet above. |
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