Web Terms Glossary
In this section you will find my collection of web terms used throughout this site and many other sites.
Web Terms Glossary A - E
A ∘ B ∘ C ∘ D ∘ E ∘ F ∘ G ∘ H ∘ I ∘ J ∘ K ∘ L ∘ M ∘ N
O ∘ P ∘ R ∘ S ∘ T ∘ U ∘ W ∘ X
- Accessibility
- Accessibility in the context of the Web means building a Web that everyone is able to access, regardless of their level of physical or mental ability.
- Accessibility Laws
- Many countries around the world have laws that guarantee access to disabled people and some of those laws apply to Web sites. In some countries general human rights law covers all instances of access including Web sites, and some countries have laws that are specifically related to accessibility and the Web.
- AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML)
- A web development technique for creating interactive web applications using a combination of JavaScript, HTML (or XHTML), XML and Cascading Style Sheets for presenting information.
- Apache Web Server
- Apache HTTP Server is an open source HTTP web server for Unix platforms (BSD, GNU/Linux, and UNIX systems), Microsoft Windows, and other platforms. The Apache HTTP Server is developed and maintained by an open community of developers under the auspices of the Apache Software Foundation.
- ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange)
- The world-wide standard for the code numbers used by computers to represent all the upper and lower-case Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, etc.
- ASP (Active Server Pages)
- Microsoft's server-side technology for dynamically-generated web pages that is marketed as an adjunct to Internet Information Server (IIS).
- Attributes
- When placed in a tag, they specify an element. Think of it as you would a persons physical attributes, hair color, eye color and physical appearance.
- Authoring
- Authoring is a term often used to describe making or writing a document using a mark-up language. This differs from the term programming as many people consider computer programming to be a different process involving different skills.
- Authoring Tools
- Software programs used to help Webnasters code Web pages. For example, FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Home Site and BBEdit are all authoring tools.
- Bandwidth
- The amount of data that is transferred through a connection in a given time period.
- Blog
- A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger".
- Browser
- Browsers are software programs that allow a user to view images and read hypertext documents (i.e. Web pages). For example Mozilla, Netscape, Internet Explorer, and Safari are all browsers.
- CGI (Common Gateway Interface)
- A set of rules that describe how a Web Server communicates with another piece of software on the same machine, and how the other piece of software talks to the web server.
- Client
- A software program that is used to contact and obtain data from a Server software program on another computer. A Web Browser is an example of a client.
- Code or Coding
- A term used to describe making or writing a document using a mark-up language. It can also be used to describe programming.
- Commerce
- Commerce is the exchange of something of value between two entities. In terms of the World Wide Web, commerce is achieved electronically, in a process called e-commerce.
- Content
- Used to describe material displayed on a web page. It can include text, audio files, images, flash presentations and other files. The term content is often used to mean the material a viewer sees and not the coding that marks up the web page.
- Cookie/s
- Parcels of text sent by a server to a web browser. Used for authenticating, tracking, and maintaining specific information about users, such as site preferences or the contents of their electronic shopping cart.
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
- Cascading Style Sheets are declarations that describe how a document should be presented on the Web. CSS can be written for different media, can be part of an HTML document, or can be a separate file that is applied to multiple HTML documents.
- Database
- A systematically arranged collection of computer data, structured so that it can be automatically retrieved or manipulated
- Device
- Device, used in the context of discussions around the Web and Web standards, means some type of machine that is connected to the internet. Usually this means a personal computer, but a device could be a cell phone, personal digital assistant, screen reader or other adaptive technology for the disabled, or maybe one of those fancy internet fridges!
- DHTML
- Dynamic HTML is 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.
- DOM (Document Object Model)
- The Document Object Model is a platform- and language-neutral interface that will allow programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure and style of HTML, XML and related formats. DOM is the way JavaScript sees the containing HTML page and browser state.
- Domain Name
- Also called hostname. Identifies a computer or computers on the Internet. These names appear as a component of a Web site's URL, e.g. validwebdesigns.com
- Domain Name System (DNS)
- A method of translating Internet addresses so that computers connected in the Internet can find each other. A DNS server translates a numerical address assigned to a computer (such as 198.00.215.11) into a sequence of words, and vice versa.
- Domain Name Registrar
- An independent organization or individual who is responsible for domain name registrations and routing of Internet domain names.
- Domain Name Suffix
- Also called a top level domain, the suffix is the part of the domain name that follows the domain name, .com, .net, .org, .us, and others descriptive of country-specific codes.
- DTD (Document Type Definition)
- A DTD outlines the rules of a particular document structure. It lists the elements, attributes, and entities in a document and it defines the relationships between the different elements and attributes.
- Dynamic
- Refers to the way a web page is created. A dynamic web site is one that is built utilizing a database. The database serves web site content dynamically as it is requested, instead of being hard coded into the HTML that describes the web page.
- E-Commerce
- Short for Electronic Commerce. The buying, selling, marketing, and servicing of products or services over computer networks. It is an electronic business application aimed at commercial transactions.
- Extensible
- Capable of being extended. A program or system that can be added to and modified in the future.