Tuesday, 20 May 2014


Website Terms Glossary

Cookies: Cookies are small files which are stored on a user's computer. They are designed to hold a modest amount of data specific to a particular client and website, and can be accessed either by the web server or the client computer. This allows the server to deliver a page tailored to a particular user, or the page itself can contain some script which is aware of the data in the cookie and so is able to carry information from one visit to the website (or related site) to the next.

Java: Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacentres, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet.

JavaScript: JavaScript is a programming language used to make web pages interactive. It runs on your visitor's computer and doesn't require constant downloads from your website. JavaScript is often used to create polls and quizzes.

Perl: Perl is a programming language which can be used for a large variety of tasks. A typical simple use of Perl would be for extracting information from a text file and printing out a report or for converting a text file into another form. But Perl provides a large number of tools for quite complicated problems, including systems programming. Programs written in Perl are called Perl scripts, whereas the term the Perl program refers to the system program named Perl for executing Perl scripts.

ASP (Active Server Page): ASP is also an abbreviation for application service provider. An Active Server Page (ASP) is an HTML page that includes one or more scripts (small embedded programs) that are processed on a Microsoft Web server before the page is sent to the user. An ASP is somewhat similar to a server-side include or a common gateway interface (CGI) application in that all involve programs that run on the server, usually tailoring a page for the user.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): CSS is an abbreviation for cascading style sheets; it is used as a way to define the format and look/feel of the website. This is important because you can separate the data from the way the data looks, making the website easier to maintain, it also makes the webpage easier to interpret for the web browsers by using XML technology. The style sheets are called cascading as they are separated into sections that can cascade or lay on top of each other.

HTML: HyperText Markup Language is the main markup language for creating web pages and other information that can be displayed in a web browser. HTML is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags enclosed in angle brackets (like <html>), within the web page content. HTML tags most commonly come in pairs like <h1> and </h1>, although some tags represent empty elements and so are unpaired, for example <img>. The first tag in a pair is the start tag, and the second tag is the end tag (they are also called opening tags and closing tags). In between these tags web designers can add text, further tags, comments and other types of text-based content.

The purpose of a web browser is to read HTML documents and compose them into visible or audible web pages. The browser does not display the HTML tags, but uses the tags to interpret the content of the page.HTML elements form the building blocks of all websites. HTML allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms.

XHTML: Extensible HyperText Markup Language is a family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely used Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the language in which web pages are written. While HTML (prior to HTML5) was defined as an application of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a very flexible markup language framework, XHTML is an application of XML, a more restrictive subset of SGML. Because XHTML documents need to be well-formed, they can be parsed using standard XML parsers—unlike HTML, which requires a lenient HTML-specific parser.

Dynamic HTML: DHTML is an umbrella term for a collection of technologies used together to create interactive and animated web sites by using a combination of a static markup language (such as HTML), a client-side scripting language (such as JavaScript), a presentation definition language (such as CSS), and the Document Object Model. DHTML allows scripting languages to change variables in a web page's definition language, which in turn affects the look and function of otherwise "static" HTML page content, after the page has been fully loaded and during the viewing process. Thus the dynamic characteristic of DHTML is the way it functions while a page is viewed, not in its ability to generate a unique page with each page load.

Uniform Resource Locator ( URL ): A uniform resource locator, abbreviated as URL, also known as web address, particularly when used with HTTP. A URL is a specific character string that constitutes a reference to a resource. In most web browsers, the URL of a web page is displayed on the top inside an address bar. It cannot have spaces or certain other characters and uses forward slashes to denote different directories. Some examples of URLs are http://www.cnet.com/, http://web.mit.edu/, and ftp://info.apple.com/. As you can see, not all URLs begin with "http". The first part of a URL indicates what kind of resource it is addressing. Here is a list of the different resource prefixes.

Voice Over internet Protocol ( VOIP ): A voice over internet protocol, abbreviated as VOIP, is a technology that allows telephone calls to be made over computer networks like the Internet. VoIP converts analogy voice signals into digital data packets and supports real-time, two-way transmission of conversations using Internet Protocol (IP).

Voice over internet protocols calls can be made on the Internet using a VoIP service provider and standard computer audio systems. Alternatively, some service providers support VoIP through ordinary telephones that use special adapters to connect to a home computer network. Many VoIP implementations are based on the H.323 technology standard.

VoIP offers a substantial cost savings over traditional long distance telephone calls. The main disadvantage of VoIP is a greater potential for dropped calls and degraded voice quality when the underlying network links are under heavy load.


File Transfer Protocol (FTP): FTP is a standard network protocol used to transfer files from one host to another host over a TCP based network, such as the internet.

Flash: Adobe Flash is a multimedia and software platform used for authoring of vector graphics, animation, games and rich internet applications (RIAs) that can be viewed, played and executed in Adobe Flash Player.

FLV : Flash Video (FLV) is a container file format used to deliver video over the internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer.

SWF: An Adobe Flash file used for multimedia, vector graphics and Action Script.

HCI: Human computer Interaction (HCI) involves the study, planning, design and uses of the interaction between users and computers. It is often regarded as the intersection of computer science behaviour sciences, design and several other fields of study.

Platforms: A computing platform is, in the most general sense, whatever pre-existing environment a piece of software is designed to run within, obeying its constraints, and making use of its facilities. Typical platforms include a hardware architecture, an operating system and runtime libraries.

SWF PLAYER: Swiff Player is a Free stand-alone player that enables Web Designers and Flash Users to easily play their Flash movies. Swiff Player offers a variety of playback capabilities including full-screen mode.

Shockwave Player: Shockwave Player is the web standard for powerful multimedia playback. The Shockwave Player allows you to view interactive web content like games, business presentations, entertainment, and advertisements from your web browser.

Audio Player: a media player which can only play audio files. JPEG: "Joint Photographic Experts Group" or "Image file format" GIF: Graphics Interchange Format; GIFs are image files that are compressed to reduce transfer time.

Animated GIF: A type of GIF image that can be animated by combining several images into a single GIF file PNG: Image file format Advanced Content: used to provide interactive menus and "special features" such as additional bonus/extras content and games for HD DVD (one of the high-definition video formats). The Advanced Content runtime engine is responsible for responding to user navigation input e.g. JavaScript, Shockwave, image maps, slices, SWF, audio, videos, Database; Conventions

World Wide Web ; W3C: is an international community where Member Organization, a full-time staff and the public work together to develop Web Standards, led by Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee. The UK and Ireland Regional Office is hosted by Nominet.

WCAG: covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, learning disabilities, cognitive limitations, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity and combinations of these. Following these guidelines will also often make your Web content more usable to users in general.

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