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Web Terminology from 56K Modem to XLM Web Terminology

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56K

The 56K in a modems name refers to the amount of data measured in kilobytes that can be handled in 1 second. These slow speed modems are now almost redundant and replaced by faster systems such as broadband

.

 

../

The code to move up one directory. See Relative reference

 

<body></body>

An element tag, consists of the open delimiter: < or </ , the identifier: BODY in this case, and close delimiter: >

See Tutorial 2 <body>
2 HTML Element Tags

A

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Absolute reference

A reference to a file or web page that contains the full address. E.G. The home page is:
http://www.tutorials4u.com/html/index.htm
See Relative reference

See Tutorial 7

ADSL

Asymmetric digital subscriber line. Converts a phone line into a fast 'broadband' net connection, approximately 10 times faster than a 56K modem. Residential ADSL services usually download at 512kbps and upload at 256kbps

 

analogue

Anchor

Named anchors let you set markers in a document and are often placed at a specific topic or at the top of a document. You can then create links to these named anchors, which quickly take your visitor to the specified position. Also known as a target.

See Tutorial Tutorial 7-Linking to an Anchor

Anti-aliasing

The pixels that make up lines on a computer are square shaped, and display horizontal and vertical lines perfectly. A jagged step effect occurs when curved or angled lines are displayed.

Anti-aliasing is a method for smoothing out these these steps. Additional pixels of an interim neutral colour are inserted along the steps. The effect is to blur the line thus helping to disguise the jagged edge.

 

Applet

Applet is a very small application, ranging from very simple, single function programs to larger ones such as Windows calculator or Notepad.

Attachment

An attachment is a computer file such as a picture, sound, word processor document, that can be attached to an e-mail and sent to another computer.

B

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Bandwidth

Bandwidth is measured in Mbs, Megabits per second. or Kbs, Kilobits per second. The amount of data that can travel along an internet connection in a second. A typical modern modem has a bandwidth of 56kbps, that's 57344 bits of data per second in theory, in actual usage many factors prevent this speed being achieved.

 

Binary digit

See bit

 

Bit

A bit is short for binary digit, that can only have 2 states, usually represented by either 0 or 1. In electrical terms these values can represent the state of on or off. There are normally 8 bits in a byte.

 

Bookmark

See Favourites

Boolean logic

You can use Boolean logic in search engine queries to try to pin down the search results to what you are looking for. This is achieved by the use of OR, AND or NOT

Broadband

A high bandwidth interconnection faster than 128kbps such as ADSL and cable.

Browse

The process of looking at (browsing) web page using a Web Browser, usually shortened to browser. There are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte

Browser

See Web Browser

Byte

A byte is normally consists of 8 bits, depending on the computer system. A byte is a unit of memory bytes that can hold a single letter or digit or a character such as , . / ; etc.

There are 1024 bytes in a kilobyte. 212

There are 1,048,576 bytes in a megabyte. 220

C

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Cable

Residential cable services are an alternative method of connecting to the internet. Download speeds from the internet are usually 512kbps and upload speeds at 256kbps. Check with you cable service for details

Cascading Style Sheets

See CSS

CGI

Common Gateway Interface. A CGI file is a script that facilitates the passing of data from a server to an application via the Net.

Client

A client computer is a computer that send requests to a server computer that can processes that request. On the web your computer's browser requests a server to download a web page.

Close delimiter

An element tag, consists of the open delimiter: <, the identifier: BODY in this case, and close delimiter: >

See Tutorial 2 HTML Element Tags

Common Gateway Interface

See CGI

Cookie

A small text filed saved on your hard disk by websites, they can be used to say store your password for a particular site, or remember your name, the number of times you have visited that site. They can also store information about you and your surfing habits, and along with a network system can obtain a fair amount of information about you. You can disable cookies in your browser, but many sites will then not work. You can also delete cookies via the control panel, including automatic deletion. There are programs available to manage cookies.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets allow you to globally define text styles for a web site. They act like templates that tell the Browser how to interpret the HTML code. It is a very easy way to coordinate the look of some or all off your pages so that by changing the style sheet all your pages can be changed accordingly. See also Style Sheets

See Tutorial An introduction to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) & Index to CSS lessons

Cybersquatter

A person who registers an internet domain name, hoping to sell it at a profit.

D

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Data Transfer

Data Transfer is the total data that is transmitted from a server to the rest of the internet and is measured in MB, Megabytes

Delimiter

A delimiter are the markers for the start and end of element tags such as <body></body> which consists of the open delimiter: < or </ , the identifier: BODY in this case, and close delimiter: >

See Tutorial 2 HTML Element Tags

Denial of Service

Swamping a website's host (the sites server) with thousands of requests for pages beyond the ability of the server and thus crashing it.

digital

 

Directory

1). A directory is very similar to a Search engine. Entries are categorised under various sections and sub sections.

2). A Directory can be part of the structure of your web site. Has the same meaning to Windows folders. E.g. html and graphics are both directories in the following URL
http://tutorials4u.com/html/graphics/some.gif

See Tutorial List of Search Engines and Directories

Download

Downloading is a process of transferring files from another computer onto your own computer via the internet. You are automatically downloading web pages when you "surf" the net with a browser.

E

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E-mail

 

End-tag

</html> is an example of a end-tag. The / denotes an end-tag from a start-tag. See <body> , Start-tag , Delimiter

See Tutorial 2 HTML Element Tags

F

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Favourite

A web page that you visit frequently can be Bookmarked, this saves the pages address 7 description in the browsers favourite folder.

Firewall

A firewall prevents unauthorised access to your computer from the internet or network. A firewall can be hardware, usually used by businesses, or software used by home users. A popular software firewall is Zone Alarm

See Firewalls

Forms

 

Frame

See Frameset.

Frameset

Framesets define each frame of a frame based website. For each frame, they define its location on the page, its size, if re sizing or scrolling is permitted, and what the default page will be.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol:used for file uploads and downloads. It is faster than using http and a browser

G

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GHz

A Gigahertz is a thousand megahertz. A measurement of how fast the processor is in a PC.

gif

One of the graphic file formats used on the web. gif files can be still or animated, and can contain a transparent colour. Other formats: JPG JPEG and PNG

6 Graphics

H

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Hacking

A term used by the media and the general public to describe illegal access to computer systems by unauthorised users. The correct terminology for this is "cracker"

Hierarchy

How things are arranged in successive subordinate levels or classes

Home page

A web page that acts as an entry point to your web site. Usually the home page has one of the special file names that open automatically if a file name is not quoted. Index.html is one of these special file names.

Host, Hosting

See Web Host

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language, is the language that is used to create a web pagedescribes the Structure of a Page, by the use of HTML you can change the appearance of that page. Easily recognised by the tags such as <p> that it uses.

Originally this Markup had to be hand written using a simple text editor such as Windows Notepad or Macs TextEdit. Now modern HTML editors and authoring tools, do the hard work for you.

It is always useful to know how to code by hand. Web browsers can display other types of files but HTML is the most popular.

<HTML> tag

. See

HTTP

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol used for viewing web pages. One of the protocols used for Web connections. URLs that use this <A href="#Protocol">protocol</A> start with http:/
E.g. http://tutorials4u.com

Hyperlink

Hyperlinks often shortened to links, are part of a website, e-mail or document that when clicked directs you to the the relevant Web page, or to an anchor marking a specified position on a page, or in a document. By default the text of a link is in blue and underlined. When you have visited a page the links then change colour, by default a dark red. These defaults can be changed by the Web master.

Hyperlinks contain HTML code references, that point to other Web pages or anchors.

I

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Image map

An image that has sections of the image that are links to other pages or anchors

Internet

A global network of computers and servers.

IP address

A computers address

ISP

An Internet Service Provider provides you with connection to the internet. ISP examples are AOL, Sky. More information- Tutorial 01

J

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Java

 

Java applet

 

JPEG JPG

One of the graphic file formats used on the web. JPEG or JPG files can't be animated, and can't contain a transparent colour. Other formats: gif and PNG

See Tutorial 6 Graphics

K

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Kbps

Kilobits per second. A measurement of data transfer or modem speed. Modern modems are 56Kbps

 

Keywords

Keywords such as tutorial and T171 are used with a META tag as follows:
<META name="keywords" content="tutorial,T171"
These keyword help to promote your site with search engines.

Keywords is also a term given to the words or phases that you enter into a search engine in order to search for some information.

kilobytes

A kilobyte is 1024 bytes.

L

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Link

See Hyperlink.

 

M

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Meta tags

Are placed in the HEAD section of a Web page.

  • The ones that should be used are:
    • charset e.g., <meta charset="UTF-8">
    • description e.g., <meta name="description" content="Description of the page">
    • viewport e.g., <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  • Common ones are Keywords, author, robots & a lot more.

Modem

You require a modem, a device that uses the phone line to connect you to an ISP and then on to the internet.

N

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Named anchors

See Anchor

Navigation

Navigation is a method of moving (navigating, using links and to other positions on the current page or different pages. Or from navigating to different pages or sites.

 

O

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open delimiter

An element tag, consists of the open delimiter: <, the identifier: such as BODY , and close delimiter: > See <body>

2 HTML Element Tags

P Q

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Perl

Ping

Packet Internet Groper
A ping is a message sent out from a sender to a specific destination. On receipt of the ping, the destination bounces back an acknowledgment, letting the sender know that the recipient is there. A ping time for the journey is measured in milliseconds. Besides the legitimate use of pings, a ping is used by a 'hacker' to find if a computer is online. Firewalls can prevent the return of the acknowledge signal thus helping to defeat the hacker.

PNG

Portable Network Graphics. A file format that combines many of the benefits of other graphic formats,GIF and JPEG. PNG supports many levels of transparency and more than 256 colours, and additional support for image brightness.

Pop-up navigation

Pop-up Window

Protocol

R

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Relative reference

This reference does the same job as an absolute reference, but misses out most of the address. The file is found based on the location current of the current file
../ is used to move up (towards the root directory) one directory. The Home page reference is
index.htm
See ../ , absolute reference

7

Resolution

The amount of detail shown in an image.

Resolution- Monitors

The resolution for monitors is the number of pixels that it can display. The popular resolutions are 800x600, 1024x768, 640x480.

S

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Search engine

Search Engines are sites that that offer a service to help you find information. These sites index the names, addresses and wording in web sites and place this data into a database. When you type in your search criteria such as HTML tags body into the input box of the search engine the engine searches its database for these words or phrases, and returns a list of sites that match the criteria. You will be taught how, as a webmaster you can improve your site in an attempt to raise the position you turn up in this list of sites.

A search engine archives the contents of web sites into a searchable database. By entering a suitable keyword, keywords or phrase into the search engine, you can obtain a list of pages that contain the entered word(s)

Search engines

Server

A shared, central computer that is either directly or indirectly linked, and accessible to other remote computers. The internet consists of many thousands of servers. Web pages are stored on servers.

Spy Ware

A program that is placed on your computer, often without your knowledge, that spies on you browsing habits and reports its findings back to its masters via the web.

Spyware is dangerous and looks for financial information & passwords

Spyware can often be stopped or removed by anti virus programs.

Start-tag

<html> is an example of a start-tag. See <body> , End tag , Delimiter

2 HTML Tags

Style Sheets

HTML 4 document allows the referencing of a separate external file, which defines the exact appearance of elements and document characteristics. A uniform site look can be given to all pages that reference (link to) this external style sheet. See also CSS

CSS Style Sheets

T

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Tag

Defines information to Web browsers. e.g., the <p> tag defines a paragraph

 

transparent GIF

A transparent GIF allows the background to show through selected parts of an image. The GIF designers nominates one colour, usually the background colour, to be transparent.

Most modern . Web Browsers that don't support transparent GIFs display images as normal GIFs.

U

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URL

Uniform Resource Locator, is the current meaning but originally it was Universal Resource Locator.
The URL is the websites full address. In most browsers you can see the URL of the page you are looking at in the Location: window. The URL for this page is
http://www.tutorials4u.com/html/tutorial-99-web-terminology.htm

http:/

Hypertext Transfer Protocol

www.tutorials4u.com

the domain or server

/html/

the folder, you may have more than 1 folder

tutorial-99-web-terminology.htm

the file, an HTML web page in this example

Upload

Uploading is the opposite to downloading. a webmaster will upload a new or amended web page to a server so that the page can be downloaded and viewed by a person surfing the web and selecting the URL for that page

V

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vector graphics

Vector graphics are a method of drawing where the lines of the graphic are stored as mathematical information called vectors. This allows for the drawing to be scaled up or down without loss of detail

 

W

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Web Browser

Web Browser is a program that lets you view internet web pages directly from the internet, or web page files stored on a drive on your compute. The most widely used now is easily chrome followed by Safari Firefox Chrome.

 

Web Host

A Web host is a company that stores its customers web pages for on their Web Servers. The customer is given a password so that the web pages either, new or amended, for that customer can be uploaded. The web Host's computer is called a Web Server

See Hosting

Webmaster

The webmaster is the title given to anyone in charge of managing a Web site.

 

Web site

All of the pages, files and graphic images on the web server make up your site. You will also have all these files on your own computer this is known as a local site. The local site make maintenance easier. You can update the local site, then upload changed files.

 

WWW

The World Wide Web is an Interactive Dynamic Cross-Platform Graphical and Easy to Navigate Hypertext Information System. Think of the WWW as part of the Internet where graphical and textual Web pages live. You can view these pages using a Web Browser.

The World Wide Web is a network of information resources, and uses URLs, a Uniform naming scheme, protocols (e.g. HTTP) for access to the resources, and Hypertext (e.g. HTML) for navigation

 

X Y Z

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XML

Extensible Markup Language, is a language used to define and create other specialized markup languages.