Web Design Workshop
Glossary
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
Action Script
Action Script is a programming language used for controlling Adobe (Macromedia) Flash Movies and applications. Action Script deals with movie-clips, text fields and sounds.
Alternative Description
The alt tag in an image is meant as alternative text, primarily for use when the image is not being displayed. Also used by screen readers, so the text needs to be appropriate to the image.
ASP
ASP in the web developer context stands for Active Server Pages which is a server side scripting language which allows web pages to be dynamically created on a Microsoft web server. Developed by Microsoft.
Attributes
Common HTML attributes are applicable to many or most HTML elements. These HTML attributes allow additional setting of style or other characteristics to the element.
Browser
A sofware programme that allows us to view and interact with resources on the www. Examples are Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera.
CGI
Stands for Common Gateway Interface and is a standard way for data to be passed between web applications eg passing data from an online HTML form to a script on the server.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets are a way to separate content of web pages from the style.
Deprecated Tag
A deprecated element or attribute is one that has been outdated by newer constructs. Deprecated elements may become obsolete in future versions of HTML.
DHTML
(Dynamic HTML) A collective term for a combination of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags and options, style sheets, and programming that will let you create Web pages more animated and more responsive to user interaction than previous versions of HTML. Dynamic HTML can allow Web documents to look and act like desktop applications or multimedia productions.
DTD - Document Type Definition
A DTD states what tags and attributes are used to describe content in an SGML, XML or HTML document, where each tag is allowed, and which tags can appear within other tags. For example, in a DTD one could say that LIST tags can contain ITEM tags, but ITEM tags cannot contain LIST tags. In some editors, when authors are inputting information, they can place tags only where the DTD allows. This ensures that all the documentation is formatted the same way. Applications will use a document's DTD to properly read and display a document's contents. Changes in the format of the document can be easily made by modifying the DTD.
Electronic Mail
E-mail is very similar to normal/traditional mail where a message can be sent to a particular address. Anyone with a connection to the Internet can get an E-mail address.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
This is a way of transferring files to computers. File sharing systems (e.g. Napster) are normally based around FTP. Web pages are normally uploaded (transferred to a 'bigger' computer) to a server using FTP. Normally you will require a separate client (similar to browser software) to use FTP. You have the facility to FTP straight from Dreamweaver.
GIF
Graphic Interchange Format especially suitable for images containing large areas of the same color and line drawings. Widely used on the web for logos and simple graphics as the format can be compressed to a small size and allows transparency.
Hexadecimal
Hexadecimal describes a base-16 number system. That is, it describes a numbering system containing 16 sequential numbers as base units (including 0) before adding a new position for the next number. The hexadecimal numbers are 0-9 and then use the letters A-F.
HTML
Hyper Text Markup Language; the coding syntax used to write www documents, which are read by browsers.Hyperlink
A link in a document to information within that document or another document.Internet
The Internet is a worldwide communications network originally developed by the US Department of Defense as a distributed system with no single point of failure. The Internet has seen an explosion in commercial use since the development of easy-to-use software for accessing the Internet. The www being only a small part of the Internet as a whole.
Internet Relay Chat (IRC)
IRC allows users to talk to each other in real-time over the internet normally using text to communicate, although more recently using sound & video as well, again this will require a separate client of some sort.
Java
Java is an object-oriented programming language developed initially by Sun Microsystems. Java can be used to program applications and applets. Java should not be confused with JavaScript (see below).
JavaScript
JavaScript is a script language created by Netscape, that can be embedded into the HTML of a web page to add functionality. For example to respond to user actions such as button clicks or to run processes locally or validate data.
JPEG/JPG
Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEG is a standards committee that designed an image compression format. The compression format they designed is known as a lossy compression, in that it deletes information from an image that it considers unnecessary. JPEG files can range from small amounts of lossless compression to large amounts of lossy compression. This is a common standard on the www, but the data loss generated in its compression make it undesirable for printing purposes.
Perl
Practical Extraction and Reporting Language, is a programming language often used for creating CGI programs.
PHP
The PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is a programming language that allows web developers to create dynamic content that interacts with databases. PHP is basically used for developing web based software applications.
PNG
Portable Network Graphics; a standard file format approved by the World Wide Web consortium to replace the GIF file format. PNG is patent and license-free.
Server
A computer always connected to the Internet that holds information (eg, Web sites) and reponds to requests for information from it (eg, links to another Web page).
SHTML
Pages with a shtml extension are Server Side Includes or SSI. SSI is an easy server-side scripting language used almost exclusively for the web. As its name implies, its primary use is including the contents of a file into another, via a Web Server.
SSI is primarily used to "paste" the contents of one or more files into another.
SQL
SQL (commonly expanded to Structured Query Language) is the most popular computer language used to create, modify, retrieve and manipulate data from relational database management systems.
Syntax
Refers to the spelling and grammar of a programming language. Computers are inflexible machines that understand what you type only if you type it in the exact form that the computer expects. The expected form is called the syntax.
tag
Tags contain elements which provide instructions for how information will be processed or displayed. There are both starter tags <tag> and end tags </tag> in most cases, although a tag can close in a single tag
Such as in a line break <br />
a horizontal rule <hr />
or an image tag <img src="../images/logos/glossary.gif" />
These tags are particulary important in the latest web standards.
Unix User Network (USENET)
USENET is a bulletin board system that allows you to post messages in subject/user groups. Still in wide use, but the www is becoming more popular for doing this.
URL
An acronym for "Uniform Resource Locator," this is the address of a resource on the Internet. World Wide Web URLs begin with http://
WAI
Web Accessibility Initiative. The WAI is the international portion of the W3C with the goal of making the web usable by all persons.
Web Accessibility Guidelines - WCAG
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Checklists and descriptions of how to make a website accessible, provided by the WAI.
WCAG Priority Levels
Priority Level 1 (A) - The minimum accessibility requirements your website should reach
Priority Level 2 (AA) - The level your website should pass on.
Priority Level 3 (AAA) - The level your website ought to achieve.
World Wide Web
The 'front-end' of the Internet, accessed through a web browser, collections of web-sites and pages linked together. The part of the Internet most users see, and the most widely used. Pages are stored on a server. Web pages can have a mixture of text, graphics and multimedia, that can be searched to find what you want.
Protocol used: HTTP (Hyper text transfer protocol) (Hypertext refers to the linking of documents.)
World Wide Web Consortium - W3C
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential as a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.
Link to the W3C website
WYSIWYG
An acronym for What You See Is What You Get. WYSIWYG is used to describe applications that let you see how a finished HTML document will look whilst still letting you edit it. Dreamweaver and FrontPage are two WYSIWYG HTML editors.
XHTML
XHTML is the next generation of HTML and is a hybrid between HTML and XML. XML was designed to describe data. HTML was designed to display data. XHTML is much stricter than HTML. Not all browers support XML so XHTML provides an intermediary soluton and can be interpreted by XML and HTML browsers.
XML
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a W3C initiative that allows information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that computers and humans can understand. XML is great for information exchange, and can easily be extended to include user-specified and industry-specified tags.
