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Glossary of
HTML Terms
A
ASCII - ASCII (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange), generally pronounced /æski/ (in IPA), is a character
set and a character encoding based on the Roman alphabet. It
is unformatted text (no style or formatting rules). For this
reason, it is easily transferred over networks; and easily
understood by computers running different operating systems.
Absolute URL - When embedding
multimedia, it is necessary that you know
that absolute web path of your file. The
absolute address is the same address located in the address
bar of Internet Explorer or equivalent web browser. It
usually begins with http:// and is followed by the domain
name of your web host, directory, and filename. Below
are some examples.
http://www.webhost.com/username/music/example.mp3
http://www.webhost.com/username/files/index.htm
http://www.webhost.com/username/images/example.gif
B
Bandwidth - Bandwidth is the amount of data that can be
transferred through a digital connection in a given time period
(i.e., the connection's bit rate). In such cases, bandwidth is
usually measured in bits or bytes per second.
Bandwidth theft - Bandwidth theft is the intentional usage of
someone's bandwidth without that person's authorization. A number of
types of bandwidth theft exist. When you are working with your MySpace profile, be sure to obtain permission if you are imbedding
images, sound or video directly from another server.
BinHex - BinHex, short for "binary-to-hexadecimal", is an ASCII
armoring system that was used on the Mac OS for sending binary files
through E-mail. It was similar to uuencode, but combined both
"forks" of the Mac file system together, along with extended file
information. BinHexed files take up more space than the original
files, but are far less likely to be corrupted in transit.
Blog - A weblog, web log or simply a blog, is a web application
which contains periodic time-stamped posts on a common webpage.
These posts are often but not necessarily in reverse chronological
order. Such a website would typically be accessible to any Internet
user.
Broadband - Broadband Internet access, often shortened to
"broadband Internet" or just "broadband" is a high data-transmission
rate Internet connection. DSL and cable modem, both popular consumer
broadband technologies, are typically capable of transmitting 512
kilobits per second (kbit/s) or more, approximately nine times the
speed of a modem using a standard digital telephone line.
Browser - A web browser is a software package that enables a user
to display and interact with documents hosted by web servers.
Popular browsers available for personal computers include Microsoft
Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari. A browser is
the most commonly used kind of user agent. The largest networked
collection of linked documents is known as the World Wide Web.
C
Configure - Configure means to change or modify a software or web
application with the purpose of adjusting how the application
performs or displays.
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is used
by both the authors and readers of web pages to define colors,
fonts, layout, and other aspects of document presentation. It is
designed primarily to enable the separation of document
structure (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from
document presentation (written in CSS). This separation provides
a number of benefits, including improved content accessibility,
greater flexibility and control in the specification of
presentational characteristics, and reduced complexity of the
structural content. CSS is also capable of controlling the
document's style separately in alternative rendering methods,
such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a
speech-based browser or screen reader) and on braille-based,
tactile devices.
D
Download and Upload - Download and upload refer to the transfer
of information between computers. The person/computer sending the
information refers to the transfer as an upload, while the
person/computer receiving the information refers to it as a
download. These are the definitions used by ISPs. If the customer is
sending information, it is an upload; if they are receiving
information, it is a download. Most people use the term download
when they are receiving a file, and upload when they are sending a
file over the Internet. In either case, information is transferred
both ways to manage the download. This is often the reason people
get confused.
DHTML - Dynamic HTML or DHTML designates a technique of creating
interactive web sites by using a combination of the static markup
language HTML, a client-side scripting language (such as JavaScript)
and the style definition language Cascading Style Sheets. It may be
used to create small applications in a web browser: for example to
ease navigation, to create interactive forms or to create
interactive exercises to use in e-learning. Competing techniques
include Macromedia Flash for animation and Scalable Vector Graphics
(SVG), though SVG isn't yet well-supported by the major web
browsers. Some disadvantages of DHTML are that it is difficult to
develop and debug due to varying degrees of support among web
browsers of the aforementioned technologies and that the variety of
screen sizes means the end look can only be fine-tuned on a limited
number browser/screen-size combinations. Development for recent
browsers, such as Internet Explorer 5.0+, Netscape 6.0+, and Opera
7.0+, is aided by a shared Document Object Model.
E
External Viewer - An external viewer is a software program,
separate from the web browser, that allows you to view documents,
images, sound or video. They include: Adobe Acrobat, JPEG
Viewers, iTunes, Real Audio, and Windows Media Viewer.
External Webhost - An external webhost is a place where you can
store images, videos or sounds to display on your my space profile.
Because images, videos and sound are large files, it is expensive
for MySpace to host such files (see Bandwidth). Therefore, you
may need an external host to display multimedia files on your
profile.
F
FAQ - FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) are a series of questions
and answers all pertaining to a certain topic. "FAQ" is sometimes
pronounced as an acronym, fak, and sometimes as the initialism F.A.Q.
(Since it originated in the text medium of USENET, there is no
agreed-upon pronunciation.)
FTP - The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a software standard for
transferring computer files between machines with widely different
operating systems. It belongs to the application layer of the
Internet protocol suite.
G
Gif - GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a bitmap image format
that is widely used on the World Wide Web, both for still images and
for animations.
H
Home Page - Synonym for the website of a group or individual
Hotlists - Lists of popular documents, places or websites.
HTML - In computing, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a markup
language designed for the creation of web pages and other
information viewable in a browser. The focus of HTML is on the
presentation of information—paragraphs, fonts, italics, tables, and
so forth—rather than the semantics—what the words mean.
HTML Document - A document containing HTML coding. These
documents usually end in .html or .htm and are viewable in a web
browser.
Hypertext
- Hypertext, hyperlink, or simply a link, is a reference in a
hypertext document to another document or other resource. As such it
would be similar to a citation in literature. However, combined with
a data network and suitable access protocol, it can be used to fetch
the resource referenced. This can then be saved, viewed, or
displayed as part of the referencing document.
I
Image Hosting - An external image host is a place where you can
store images, videos or sounds to display on your my space profile.
Because images, videos and sound are large files, it is expensive
for MySpace to host such files (see Bandwidth). Therefore, you
may need an external host to display multimedia files on your
profile.
J
JPEG - In computing, JPEG is a commonly used standard method of
compressing photographic images. The file format which employs this
compression is commonly also called JPEG; the most common file
extensions for this format are .jpeg, .jfif, .jpg, .JPG, or .JPE
although .jpg is the most common on all platforms.
K
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L
Links - Hypertext, hyperlink, or simply a link, is a reference in
a hypertext document to another document or other resource. As such
it would be similar to a citation in literature. However, combined
with a data network and suitable access protocol, it can be used to
fetch the resource referenced. This can then be saved, viewed, or
displayed as part of the referencing document.
M
Malware - Malware (a portmanteau of "malicious software") is any
software developed for the purpose of doing harm to a computer
system. Malware can be classified based on how it is executed, how
it spreads, and/or what it does. The classification is not perfect,
however, in the sense that the groups often overlap and the
difference is not always obvious, giving rise to frequent flame
wars.
MPEG - The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is a small group
charged with the development of video and audio encoding standards.
Since its first meeting in 1988, MPEG has grown to include
approximately 350 members from various industries and universities.
N
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O
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P
Profile - your profile on MySpace, which includes text,
hyperlinks, images and videos.
Q
Quicktime - QuickTime is a multimedia technology developed by
Apple Computer, capable of handling various formats of digital
video, sound, text, animation, music, and immersive virtual reality
panoramic images.
R
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S
Search Engine - A search engine is a program designed to help
find files stored on a computer, for example a public server on the
World Wide Web, or one's own computer. The search engine allows one
to ask for media content meeting specific criteria (typically those
containing a given word or phrase) and retrieving a list of files
that match those criteria. A search engine often uses a previously
made, and regularly updated index to look for files after the user
has entered search criteria.
Server - A computer software application that carries out some
task on behalf of users. This is usually divided into file serving,
allowing users to store and access files on a common computer; and
application serving, where the software runs a computer program to
carry out some task for the users. This is the original meaning of
the term. Web, mail, and database servers are what most people
access when using the internet.
Shareware - Shareware is a marketing method for software, whereby
a trial version is distributed without payment ahead of time as is
common for proprietary software. Typically shareware software is
obtained free of charge by downloading, thus allowing one to try out
the program ahead of time. Shareware is also known as try before you
buy, demoware, trialware and many other names. A shareware program
is accompanied by a request for payment, and often payment is
required per the terms of the license past a set period of time
(although some consider this requirement to cause the software to be
not shareware but a demo). The term shareware was coined by Bob
Wallace to describe his word processor PC-Write in the mid-1980s.
T
Tags, or HTML elements -
Tags are elements that meets the
requirements of one or more of the HTML Document Type Definitions.
It consists of a sequence beginning with a start tag including
optional parameters called attributes, optional embedded content,
and an end tag. A minimal case is an empty element, which has no
content or end tag, although may still include attributes. [See
the beginners guide for
more information].
U
URL - A Uniform Resource Locator, URL, or Web address, is a
standardized address for some resource (such as a document or image)
on the Internet (or elsewhere). First created by Tim Berners-Lee for
use on the World Wide Web, the currently used forms are detailed by
Internet standard RFC 3986. An example of a URL is:
http://www.profilehtml.com
V
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W
Web Browser - see
browser
Web Document - see
HTML document
Webmaster - On a smaller site, the webmaster will typically be
the owner, designer, developer and programmer in addition to writing
the actual content. On larger sites the webmaster will act as a
coordinator and overseer to the activities of other people working
on the site and is usually an employee of the owner of the website,
hence Webmaster can also be listed as an occupation.
Web Page
- see HTML document
Website - A website, Web site or WWW site (often shortened to
just site) is a collection of webpages, that is, HTML/XHTML
documents accessible via HTTP on the Internet; all publicly
accessible websites in existence comprise the World Wide Web. The
pages of a website will be accessed from a common root URL, the
homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server. The URLs
of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks
between them control how the reader perceives the overall structure
and how the traffic flows between the different parts of the site.
Windows Media
- Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X Enlarge
Windows Media Player 9 for Mac OS X Windows Media Player 6 can be
found on Windows XP Enlarge Windows Media Player 6 can be found on
Windows XP Windows Media Player is a free Microsoft Windows software
media player used for playing audio and video on personal computers.
Microsoft also makes free versions for other operating systems
including Pocket PC, Mac OS, and Solaris. These tend to lag behind
the Windows versions in features, software update frequency, and the
number of file formats supported. The basic file formats are WMV
(Windows Media Video & Audio), WMA (Windows Media Audio), and ASF
(Audio Structured File).
X
XML - The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended
general-purpose markup language for creating special-purpose markup
languages. It is a simplified subset of SGML, capable of describing
many different kinds of data. Its primary purpose is to facilitate
the sharing of structured text and information across the Internet.
Languages based on XML (for example, RDF, RSS, MathML, XSIL and SVG)
are themselves described in a formal way, allowing programs to
modify and validate documents in these languages without prior
knowledge of their form.
Y
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Z
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