Glossary

Here is an alphabetical list of common web terms you will run across in the course of your reading and work. You may request the addition of a term definition below.

Browser - Short for Web Browser; it's the tool (program) that allows you to surf the web. You probably used your Web Browser to locate this page. The most popular Web Browsers right now are Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.

CGI script (Common Gateway Interface script) - A small
program written in a language such as Perl or C that functions as the glue between HTML pages and other programs on the Web server. For example, a CGI script would allow search data entered on a Web page to be sent to a database. It would also return the results of that search to the user as an HTML page. The CGI script resides in the server.

Download - The transfer of information from the Internet to your computer. Every time you check your mail, you are downloading your mail to your computer. You may also download other kinds of files to your computer.

Frames - A web browser feature that enables a web page to be displayed in a separate scrollable part of a browser window. Some framed site designs are almost invisible to the user; others display noticeable frame separators. Older browsers do not support the frames feature, and many web sites have a frames and non-frames version of the site to accommodate them.

FTP - An acronym for File Transfer Protocol. It's how you transfer files through the Internet from one computer to another. For example, you would use FTP to upload your web page from where you built it (e.g., computer at work) to a web host (e.g. an Athena locker) so that other people can look at it.
Other terms used with FTP:

FTP client - the software you use to transfer files through the internet. An example of a Mac FTP client is Fetch; one PC FTP client is WS_FTP.
Remote Host - the web server on which your pages are "hosted" for viewing on the web. In the above example, the Athena locker is the remote host to which you upload your pages from your local host.
Local host - the place from where you upload pages to a remote host. This is where you would do all your creating and editing work before you upload your pages to the remote host. In the above example, your computer at work is the local host.

GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) - A common format for image files, especially suitable for images containing large areas of the same color. GIF format files of simple images are often smaller than the same file would be if stored in JPEG format, but GIF format does not store photographic images as well as JPEG.

HTML - Hypertext Mark-up Language. HTML is not really a programming language, but a way to format text by placing marks around the text. For example HTML allows you to make a word bold or underline it. HTML is the foundation for most web pages.
Other terms related to HTML:

Tag - HTML marks documents using tags. A tag is simply typed text surrounded by the less than and greater than signs, for example: <header>. An end tag has a slash in front of the tag name, e.g., </header>.
Element - The basic unit of an HTML document. HTML documents use start and stop (or "end") tags to define structural elements in the document. These elements are arranged hierarchically, to define the overall document structure. The Header would be an example of an element.
Attribute - A quantity that defines a special property of an HTML element. Attributes are specified within an element start tag. For example, <IMG SRC="image.gif"> means that the element IMG has an attribute SRC, which is assigned the indicated value.
ALT - one example of an attribute for a HTML element. The ALT attribute is used to display a text message in place of a graphic which does not get loaded when you page displays in a browser. Example: <img src="ceciliaonthebeach.jpg" alt="Cecilia sunning herself on the beach">

HTTPS - HyperText Transport Protocol Secure. This is the protocol for accessing a secure web server. Using HTTPS in the URL instead of HTTP directs the message to a secure port number rather than the default web port number of 80. The session is then managed by a security protocol such as SSL.

Host - The computer on which a web site is physically located.

JPG or JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) - JPEG is most commonly mentioned as a format for image files. JPEG format is preferred to the GIF format for photographic images as opposed to line art or simple logo art.

Rollover - A graphic element in an application or on a Web page that changes its color or shape when the pointer is moved (rolled) over it.

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) - A protocol designed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet. SSL used mostly (but not exclusively) in communications between web browsers and web servers. URL's that begin with "https" indicate that an SSL connection will be used.

In an SSL connection each side of the connection must have a Security Certificate, which each side's software sends to the other. Each side then encrypts what it sends using information from both its own and the other side's Certificate, ensuring that only the intended recipient can de-crypt it, and that the other side can be sure the data came from the place it claims to have come from, and that the message has not been tampered with.

Server Side Include (SSI) - An HTML command used to place data into a Web page before sending it to the user. For example, it can be used to retrieve the current date. HTML pages that contain server-side includes often use the .shtml file extension. The Include command inserts the contents of another document at the tag location.

Style Sheet - A master page layout used in document creation systems such as word processing, desktop publishing and the Web. The style sheet is a file that is used to store margins, tabs, fonts, headers, footers and other layout settings for a particular category of document. When a style sheet is selected, its format settings are applied to all the documents created under it, saving the page designer or programmer from redefining the same settings over and over again for each page.
Related Term:

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) - A style sheet format for HTML documents endorsed by the World Wide Web Consortium. CSS1 (Version 1.0) provides hundreds of layout settings that can be applied to all the subsequent HTML pages that are downloaded.

Upload - The process of transferring information from your computer to another computer through the Internet. Every time you send e-mail to someone you are uploading it.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) - The standard way to give the address of any resource on the Internet that is part of the World Wide Web (WWW). A URL looks like this: http://www.matisse.net/seminars.html

WYSIWYG - "what you see is what you get". Used to describe software such as HTML editors where the document displays almost as it will appear in a browser. Such software does the work of coding HTML for you. Dreamweaver is a WYSIWYG editor.

For these and other definitions, here are some sites that offer web glossaries:
http://www.techweb.com/encyclopedia/
http://www.utoronto.ca/ian/books/xhtml1/gloss/gloss.html
http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html

Don't see the term you're looking for? Request a new term to be added to the glossary: