Applet

An application that is downloaded from a web page and executed by browser software. Also, an HTML tag that defines an applet program.

Bandwidth

Literally, the frequency width of a transmission channel in Hertz, kiloHertz, megaHertz, etc. Often used as an expression of the amount of data that can be sent through a circuit. The greater the bandwidth, the greater the amount of data that can travel in a given time period. See broadband.

Broadband

When the bandwidth of a signal is large, it can simultaneously carry many channels of information. Fiber optic cable, in particular, has a very high bandwidth, and is referred to as broadband.

Bitmap

A graphic which is defined by specifying the colors of dots or pixels which make up the picture. Also known as raster graphics. Common types of bitmap graphics are GIF, JPEG, Photoshop, PCX, TIFF, Macintosh Paint, Microsoft Paint, BMP, PNG, FAX formats, and TGA. Bridge

A bridge is a combination of hardware and software that connects local area networks (LANs) of similar types together Browser

World Wide Web Consortium and recognized by the Internet Engineering Task Force.

The major browser software developers participate in these organizations, but each of them also builds in their own proprietary codes, whether or not approved by the organizations. These differences in browsers create a challenge for web page developers. The principle browsers are Netscape, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, Mosaic, and the text-only Lynx.

Bus

An electronic pathway. In networks, a configuration (topology) with a single linear cable, terminated at each end, to which computers and devices are connected. There are no loops or branches in the cable. Also called a daisy chain.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

Cascading Style Sheets is a technique built into version 4.0 and later browsers that support styles for pages. For example, you can set up styles for fonts and page layouts that will apply automatically to pages developed under a particular style you develop.
This technique is useful, but the present version browsers from Netscape andMicrosoft are quite different in their implementation,and what works with one is not likely to work for the others. For compatibility, care has to be taken to use common elements.

Client-server

Two computer systems linked by a network or modem connection where the client computer uses resources by sending requests to the server computer.

Client-server architecture

In client-server architecture, the computing load is distributed among the many clients (individual computers) in a network, drawing information from central servers of the information. On the Internet, a web browser is a client that runs software locally that processes information received from central servers of the information. The opposite ofclient server architecture is the situation where a central powerful computer does all the processing, feeding the results to dumb terminals which do little more than communicate requests and feed back the results processed centrally.

Copyright

The legal protection against copying and the specific
rights allowing copying given to original works, which may be in printed or photographically or electronically stored words, music, visual arts, and performing arts. The purpose of copyright is not just to protect the rights, but to establish the rules under which copies or portions may be made to make a work more widely available.

Copyright extends to electronic representations of these forms, too, although the laws governing new electronic copies in such forms as search engine indexes and browser caches needs better definition. Copyright exists on all original works from the moment they are published, whether formally registered or not and whether or not copyright markings appear on the works.

Copyrights probably apply to public postings in e-mail, message bases, and newsgroups, but the law is not well tested in these areas. Copyrights are observed by most countries in the world.

Database

A collection of information stored oftentimes in a computerized format. Examples: library catalogs, search engines, financial data, etc.

Dial-up service

A common method of connecting to the Internet. A user's modem dials up to a service provider, through which an Internet connection is established.

Domain Name System (DNS)

Domain Name System. DNS servers are located at many strategic places on the nets to resolve the routing of e-mail and Internet connections. There are thirteen major, top-level DNS servers, which are updated daily, and these in turn feed the updated DNS information to smaller subordinate DNS servers, which hold more detailed information on their specific areas of coverage. No single DNS server has all the address information of the Internet, and successful routing may require routing through several levels of servers.

Domain name

Domain name addresses, together with IP addresses, are the two forms of Internet addresses in common use. Domain name addresses all end with a correct top-level domain.
The top-level domains may be any of these:

• com
• edu
• gov
• int
• mil
• net
• org
• a two-letter country code, such as us, uk, or mx.

Download

The transfer a file or files from a remote computer to the user's computer.

DNS

Abbreviation for Domain Name System. A distributed
client-server database system which links domain names with their numerical IP adresses.

Dynamic HTML (DHTML)

A more powerful model for HTML that allows absolute
control of positioning of elements on a page and more
powerful control of events. It is supported by MSIE 4.0 and partially by Netscape 4.0.

E-mail

Abbreviation for electronic mail. A letter or memo sent to a person or group electronically on the Internet.

E-mail address
A user's electronic mailbox name or address, needed for
linking the sender of e-mail and the recipient.

Ethernet

A LAN protocol developed by DEC, Intel, and Xerox as an outgrowth of Harvard graduate student Bob Metcalfe's dissertation on packet networks. Computers using TCP/IP often connect to the Internet via ethernet LANs. Ethernet typically uses a bus (daisy chain) topology.
Firewall

Firewall refers to the concept of a security interface or gateway between a closed system or network and the outside Internet that blocks or manages communications in and out of the system. The security may be provided by passwords, authentication techniques, software, and hardware.

Frames

Frames are a technique used in web pages to divide the page into multiple windows, where each window is called a frame and can contain its own separate page.

The advantage of frames is that one window can be scrolled or changed while other windows remain fixed for such purposes as keeping a menu in view all the time. The disadvantage is that not all browsers support them.

Freeware

Software that is offered for free download

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

An Internet tool/software utility which allows you to transfer files between two computers that are connected to the Internet. Anonymous FTP allows you to connect to remote computers and to transfer publicly available computer files or programs.

Gateway

A computer system that connects two incompatible services such as a commercial online service and the Internet.

GIF

Graphical Interchange Format is a commonly used graphics file format for image files on the Internet.

GUI

Graphical User Interface. Pronounced "gooey". An operating system interace between the user and the computer based on graphics. GUIs typically use a mouse or other tracking device and icons.

First developed by XEROX as an easier to learn interface than text-based ones, it was adopted by Apple for the Macintosh, Microsoft for Windows, and even for unix systems as XWindows.

GUID

Globally Unique Identifier. A controversial 16-byte number generated by Microsoft programs that uniquely identifies a network or user or computer or document. It is one of the elements of information that can be passed when you connect to an Internet site, and it may be stored in cookies.

Hex, Hexadecimal

Base 16 arithmetic. Conventionally, the 16 digits are represented by the digits 0 through 9 and the letters A through F. The letter A, for example, represents the decimal number 10.

A byte (8 bits of data) is often represented by two hexadecimal numbers. The hexadecimal values can range from 00 to FF or from decimal 0 to 255. Hexadecimal values are often differentiated from decimal by either following them with the letter h or preceding them with an angle bracket, for example 33h or >0B.

Hexadecimal numbers have many applications in computer programming, and they are frequently used in RGB (red/green/blue) color coding for web pages.

Home page

A home page is a web page. In most familiar terms, it is a personal page for an individual. It can also be the basic main page for a more complex web site for individuals, organizations, or web communities.

On complex web sites, it is the page which a server will show when no HTML filename is listed, usually with the name index.html,home.html, or default.html or the same names with the shorter extension .htm.

Hot list

Similar to a bookmark in Gopher or Netscape, this list makes note of particular pages on the WWW that are accessed when using the Mosaic browser.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language. The coding system used to create WWW pages. A page written in HTML is a text file that includes tags in angle brackets that control the fonts and type sizes, insertion of graphics, layout of tables and frames, paragraphing, calls to short runnable programs, and hypertext links to other pages.

Files written in HTML generally use an .html or .htm extension. See the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML Page for more information.

http

HyperText Transfer Protocol. It is the main protocol used on the World Wide Web that enables linking to other websites. Addressing to other web pages begins with "http://" and is followed by the domain name or
IP address. See URL.

Hypermedia

A system for storing information using embedded references to other pages, sounds, and graphics used on the WWW.

Hypertext

A form of text which includes visible links to other pages
of text or media, accessible by clicking or selecting the links.

Internet address (a.k.a. IP address)

An assigned series of numbers unique to each computer on the Internet which is used to identify it for data exchanges.

IP address

IP addresses, together with domain addresses are the two forms of Internet addresses in common use. IP addresses consist of four numbers between 0 and 255, separated by dots.

Java

A programming language developed by Sun Microsystems based on C++. It is used with web pages to create applets that will run on different platforms.

Javascript

A scriptlanguage (with little in common with Java) developed by Netscape for writing short programs embedded in a web page. It is supported by Netscape from version 2.0on and Microsoft and AOL browsers from version 4.0 on. MSIE 3.0 partially supports some features of Javascript.

JPEG

Joint Photographic Experts Group, a graphical format that is widely used in WWW pages. It is particularly well suited to photographs and 3D or VRML images where there is a continuous range of colors or shades.

It is a lossy format that can be reduced in file size by reducing the detail in the image. JPEG files use a .jpg or less commonly, .jpeg or .jpe extension. See also GIF.

LAN

Abbreviation for Local Area Network. Used to connect computers over a short distance such as computers within the same company or office.

LISTSERV

An e-mail list server. A computer program that maintains lists of e-mail addresses in order that users can participate in an electronic discussion or conference. There are thousands of listserve on all imaginable topics.

Login

The process entering in information related to an account name and its password in order to access a time-sharing computer.

Metadata

Information about data, or more specifically, the descriptive information provided in meta tags in an HTML or XML document header about that document.

Active efforts are ongoing to propose standards for machine and human readable metadata to be used with web resources to aid in resource discovery. See also the InstructionalManagement Systems Project (IMS) meta-Data pages.

Metafile

A graphics format that combines the features of bitmap and vector graphics. Common types of metafile formats are CGM, Corel Draw CDR files, encapsulated PostscriptEPS files, Adobe Illustrator, Word Perfect Graphics WPG files, PICT, and RTF.

Meta tag

In HTML or XML, a tag used in the header of a page to
provide information about the page. There may be multiple meta tags in a header, each with different information. In current usage, each tag includes the name of the information and the content that supports that name. As an example, here is an author meta tag:

<meta name="author" content="Aus Marketing">

Other commonly used meta tag names are description, keywords, date, and copyright

MIME

Acronym for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. The standard for attaching binary files to Internet mail messages. Its usage has been extended to identifying and handling file types encountered by web servers and browsers.

Binary types include audio, video, graphics, spreadsheets, formatted word-processor documents, executable programs, etc. An email program is said to be MIME Compliant if it can both send and receive files using MIME.

When binary files are sent using the MIME standard they are converted (encoded) into text for mailing and then decoded by the receiving mailer. If the receiving mailer is not MIME compliant, the file is received in encoded form. If an encoded file is received with "Base64" in the header, it is MIME encoded. There are Base64 decoders available separately for various operating systems. For Windows, WinCode will handle decoding offline.

In mail MIME-compliant mail applications, you will see several header lines concerned with MIME. For text-only files, it will look something like this:

content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
There are many content types.
Here are some common ones:

text/plain
the usual mail message text/html
HTML text image/jpeg
a common image format image/gif
a common image format a
pplication/octet-stream
unknown type, 8-bit data audio/midi
midi music format audio/x-midi
alternate for the above

Packet

A packet is a self-contained bundle of data sent over a packet switching network. Packets are typically less than 1500 bytes in size. Longer files are broken into multiple packets for transmission and reassembled at the other end. A packet includes a header with to and from addresses, relation to other packets (sequencing), and error checking information. On the Internet, datagram is a synonym for packet.

POP

Post Office Protocol. A protocol for client-server e-mail systems. If you are using software like Eudora or Pegasus or the mail clients in Netscape or MSIE, your address to collect mail often will begin with pop. For example, Delphi e-mail accounts use an address of pop.delphiforums.com to collect mail.

PPP

Abbreviation for Point to Point Protocol. It is a protocol used for sending information via a modem which is connected to the Internet.

Protocol

The rules make possible the exchange of messages between users on the Internet, or within any given network.

Proxy server

A proxy server is a process that acts like a switchboard through a firewall to manage the various types of permitted communications with the outside world. Proxy servers may also use caching to make communications more
efficient.

RGB

RGB is short for the colors red, green, and blue often used in color coding on web pages, particularly for GIF files. 64K color values can be represented by a byte (8 bits of data) each for red, green, and blue.

These are commonly expressed in hexadecimal values from 00 too FF for each color. The color value for white in this system is FFFFFF, where each color is at maximum value.

Red is FF0000. Yellow is FFFF00. There is a smaller set of non-dithering colors where the permissible values for each color are hexadecimal 00, 33, 66, 99, CC or FF or decimal 0, 51, 102, 153, 204, and 255 and the results will look the same with different browsers, computers, and color cards.

RTF

Rich Text Format. A text format that allows a lot of specific formatting and layout. Uses the .rtf extension.

Server

A computer in a network that provides access to other computers in the network to programs, web pages, data, or other files and services, such as printer access or communications access. A server may also authenticate requests for files and services before providing them. See also proxy serve and client-server architecture.

Service provier

A company that provides dial-up or direct access to the Internet for a fee. Sometimes referred to as ISP (internet service provider).

Shareware

Software that is offered for free download in hopes that the user will decide to keep it and pay a fee for it after trying it out. See freeware.

SGML

Acronym for Standard Graphics Markup Language. It was adopted in 1986 as an international standard (ISO 8879) for the creation, management, storage, and delivery of information products. HTML and its possible successor, XML, are both subsets of SGML.

SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. The protocol used to send mail between servers and to send mail from your client to a mail server. Your address to send mail using software like Eudora, Pegasus, or the mail clients in Netscape and MSIE will often begin with smtp. For Delphi, the address to send mail through is smtp.delphiforums.com. See POP.

Spyware

Software planted on your system to capture and reveal information to someone outside your system. It can do such things as capture your keystrokes while typing passwords, read and track your e-mail, record what sites you visit, pass along credit card numbers and so on.

It can be planted by Trojan horses or viruses, installed as part of freeware or shareware programs you download and run, installed by an employer to track your computer usage, or even planted by advertising agencies to assist in feeding you targeted ads.

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics. A proposed format by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for web page graphics based on vectors, rather than bitmap formats. These files will normally be smaller than bitmap files and will scale to different size screens.

Tag

In reference to web pages, a tag is an HTML command used in laying out a web page and providing links to resources.

TCP/IP

Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. The protocols that are the basis for transmitting and routing data packets on the Internet.

The Internet Protocol is the one thing that all current Internet sites have in common. The basic TCP/IP model has five layers of interaction:

Physical or Data Transport Layer. This most basic layer moves data over cables based on the physical address of each Network Interface Card (NIC). The most common types are ethernet and token ring.

Data Link Layer. This layer frames the packets of data that are sent through the network. PPP, frame relay, and X.25 operate at this layer. Bridges connect local networks at this layer.

Network or Internet Protocol Layer. This layer puts an Internet Protocol wrapper around the data with source and destination addresses in its header. Routers, which connect networks together, operate at this layer.

Transport Layer. This layer governs the setting of suitable packet sizes, segmenting and reassembling data, detection of errors, and flow control.

Application Layer. This layer provides for standard interfaces for such functions as message handling and file transfer and remote login. It allows, for example, for different e-mail programs to be used, as long as they conform to the standard interface. This layer in TCP/IP corresponds to the session, presentation, and application layers in the OSI model.

Telnet

An Internet command that allows your computer to directly connect and interact with remote computers, often through a text-based 'terminal' environment. Often involves the need for passwords and access information.

Upload

To transfer a file from your computer system to another system via a modem over telephone or cable lines. Less precisely, it may also refer to a direct transfer from your local terminal to a server over a local area network< or an FTP transfer from your system to a remote system.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator. URLs specify the location of a resource in the Internet.You can type or paste a URL into the Location window in your browser and then connect to it. The URL shows the type of item and its basic address and path. The major types are http, gopher, ftp, telnet, newsgroups, news articles, and files, which may be programs, text, graphics, audio, video, etc.

Vector graphics In mathematics and physics, a vector is a line which has a defined starting point, a designated direction and a specified distance. Vector graphics are line-based graphics. In vector graphics, vectors determine how straight and curved lines (Beziers or splines) are shaped between specific points.

The lines and the colors of areas enclosed by the lines make up the picture. Microsoft SYLK is an example of a pure vector format. More commonly used are bitmap files and hybrids of vector and bitmap known as metafiles.

Virtual Private Network (VPN)

A private network within a public network, usually on the Internet. Privacy for the virtual network is achieved through encryption and provides a less expensive option than using dedicated lines.

VRML

Virtual Reality Modelling Language. A graphical system that creates views of 3-dimensional images that change as the viewer's angle and position changes and light sources change. It can be used to create an environment or world that appears realistic as you "move" through it. It is widely used for games and for educational applications.

The technology is very young and growing fast. It requires a fast computer and fast video support with lots of memory to be effective. For a good starting point to learn about VRML, try the W3C explanation here.

W3C

Abbreviation for the World Wide Web Consortium, the organization that develops standards for the web community.

XHTML

eXtensible HyperText Markup Language. HTML re-written as an application of the XML language. See the W3C Working Draft: Building XHTML Modules

XML

Acronym for eXtensible Markup Language. A richer subset of SGML than HTML. It is a next step in the evolution of web data formats beyond HTML. See the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML Page.