technical words

A

Active Server Pages

Part of Microsoft's Server software that allows for the creation of dynamically generated web pages. The files commonly have the suffix .asp

Address

An address is a unique identifier assigned to a web page. The address is more commonly referred to as the URL (Uniformed Resource Locator).

Attachments

Multimedia files that are "attached" to an E-mail. These can be text, graphics, sound, video, spreadsheet, database, or even an entire application. Great to send, but it is not always great to have to download a 100Mb photo of your best friend's cat.

B

Bandwidth

In simplistic terms, bandwidth is the amount of information travelling through a single channel at any one moment in time. On web servers, there is usually a limited amount of bandwidth that any one particular web site can use. So if you get more "hits" on your site continually over a period of time, your ISP will probably ask you to pay for a higher bandwidth allowance.

Body

In E-mail terms, the part of the message containing the most textual content, sandwiched between the Header and the Signature.

Browser

Also called a 'Web Browser'. A browser allows the user to search the World Wide Web and other Internet facilities using a Graphical User Interface (GUI). Examples of the most common browsers are Internet Explorer, Opera and Netscape.

C

CGI

Common Gateway Interface - an interface-creation scripting program that allows you to make WWW pages on the fly based on information from fill-in forms, checkboxes, text input etc.

Cookie

A Cookie is a piece of software which records information about you. It holds this information until such time that the server requests it. For example, if you are browsing around a virtual shop, each time you place an item in your basket the information is stored by the cookie until you decide to buy and the server requests the purchase information.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets - an addition to HTML for controlling the presentation of web pages including colour, alignment of text, typography, etc. Different browsers have varying levels of support for CSS and none of them conform exactly to the latest W3C specifications.

Cybercafe

A cafe or bar allowing customers to explore the World Wide Web whilst having a drink or snack, usually charged per half-hour of usage. They are now so ubiquitous that virtually every town in the UK has one.

D

Dialup

'Dialup Access' or a 'Dialup Account' is when a modem is used to gain access to the Internet.

Domain Name

Unique address identifying each site on the Internet. The actual address consists of a series of numbers. But, fortunately for our memories, these addresses are in the form of www.anydomainname.co.uk.

Domain Name Server

Computers connected to the Internet whose job it is to keep track of the IP Addresses and Domain Names of other machines. When called upon, they take the ASCII Domain Name and convert it to the relevant numeric IP Address.

Domain Name System

Allows users to relate to computers on the Internet by using textual addresses (e.g. www.ziskadesigns.co.uk) for ease of use, rather than the IP Address system.

DOS

Disk Operating System - the original, simple operating system developed by Microsoft.

Download

When you transfer information off a remote machine connected to the Internet onto your local machine, you are downloading data.

E

Emoticon

A common symbol used to denote a particular emotion in an e-mail. A happy face would be :-) A sad face would be :-( (you may need to look at them sideways!). Also known as smileys".

F

Firewall

Secures a company or organisation's internal network from unauthorised external access (most commonly in the form of Internet hackers).

Forms

Certain Browsers support electronic fill-in forms. A form on a Web Page can be filled in by users all over the world, and the information sent electronically to the relevant domain site.

Freeware

Software that is allowed to be distributed free by the author, but often with certain conditions applying (i.e. the software cannot be modified etc). May require the user to register their details on a web site.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol - a protocol for moving files over the internet from one computer to another. FTP programmes are used to upload web pages to a web server.

G

GIF

Graphics Interchange Format - developed by Compuserve. GIF is a platform-independent file format, used extensively throughout the Internet for graphic files. The other main file format for graphics on the web is JPEG.

Gigabyte (GB)

A thousand Megabytes.

H

Home Page

On a web site this is usually the main page from which hyperlinks are made to other pages on the site (or other sites). Home pages usually have the name "index.html".

HTML

HyperText Markup Language - the tagging language used to format Web pages. It allows pictures and text to be combined to create Web documents. The most important feature - hypertext - makes it possible for links to be made between different documents.

Hyperlink

On web pages, hyperlinks are highlighted text (usually underlined) or images which, when selected (usually by clicking the mouse button), follow a link to another page. Hyperlinks can also be used to automatically download other files as well as sounds and video clips.

I

ISP

Internet Service Provider - a Company or Organisation, such as Freeserve or Demon, who provide businesses and home users access to the Internet.

Image Map

An image with clickable "hot spots" that work as links. This allows several hyperlinks from a single image file. For example, the image could be of a house, split into different areas, each of which could be clickable and linked to a larger view of that specific area.

J

JPEG

Joint Photographic Experts Group - a standard of image compression developed especially for use on the Internet. Most photographic images can be highly compressed using this method, without greatly diminishing image quality. JPEGs are normally used for displaying photographs on a web page.

K

Keywords

Keywords are words placed in the Meta Tags that are hidden in the section of a web page. They help a search engine to index and find particular web pages.

Kilobyte

1024 bytes, usually rounded down to a thousand bytes for simplicity.

L

LAN

A Local Area Network is a group of computers connected together to form a network.

Link

Links are the connections between web pages. Every time you click on highlighted text or an image to go to another page, you are following a link.

Lycos

A comprehensive and accurate search engine which you'll find at http://www.lycos.co.uk/

M

Modem

MODulator-DEModulator - allows the transmission of digital information over an analogue phone line. It is the piece of hardware that connects your computer to the internet.

Mosaic

Web browser developed by a group of people at NCSA. Provides a Graphical User Interface for accessing data on the World Wide Web.

MPEG

(Motion Picture Experts Group) A video compression format used for movie or animation clips on the World Wide Web.

N

Netiquette

Informal, largely undocumented set of rules designed to make the Web a polite and civilised 'society'. Sadly, netiquette seems to be losing its importance.

Netscape Communications

Creators of Netscape Navigator, one of the two most popular Web browsers in use. They did become a bit notorious after introducing several HTML "extensions" that were unsupported by other browsers. For example, the incredibly stupid and irritating tag.

O

Offline

When your computer performs an operation when it is not connected to any other computers or the internet, it is working offline.

Online

Your computer is working online when it performs an operation and is connected to other computer or the internet.

P

PDF

Portable Network Format - a file format developed by Adobe Systems and used for capturing formatted page layouts for distribution. PDF documents, when viewed with the required Adobe Acrobat Reader, will appear exactly as they were intended.

Public domain

Usually refers to software that anybody can use or modify without authorisation of the author.

Q

Actually, to be honest, we can't think of any technical word beginning with this letter - any suggestions greatly appreciated.

R

Router

Routers connect all the networks that make up the Internet together.

S

Search Engines

Used to find information on the web. With over one billion pages now in existence, finding relevant information is becoming harder and harder. Examples of search engines are Yahoo www.yahoo.com and Google www.google.com

Service Provider

The role of a Service Provider is to provide subscribers a gateway to the Internet. There are hundreds of Service Providers, two of the largest are Freeserve and Demon.

Shareware

Software distributed freely, but usually with certain conditions applying to it. Either the software is released on a trial basis only, and must be registered after a certain period of time, or in other cases no support can be offered with the software without registering it. In some cases direct payment to the author is required.

Snail mail

In the good old days before e-mail became so popular, there was another method that people used to get messages from one location to another. It went something like this - write the letter - buy a stamp - put stamp on letter - walk to the post box - post letter. Wait a day or two and hopefully it will have reached its intended destination.

Surfing

A popular metaphor used to describe a person exploring the World Wide Web.

T

Tags

The formatting codes used to create HTML documents.

U

Upload

Transfer of files off a local computer up to a specified remote computer (as opposed to download where files are pulled off a remote machine).

URL

A Uniform Resource Locater is basically the address of any resource on the Internet. You type the URL into your browser and you are whizzed off to the site.

Usenet

The huge system of discussion groups on the Net where comments are passed among many thousands of machines. The discussion areas on Usenet are called newsgroups.

V

Virus

A virus is a special type of program. Normally it has only two functions to replicate undetected and to create havoc.

W

W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium - a consortium of many companies and organisations that "exists to develop common standards for the evolution of the World Wide Web". It is run by a joint effort between the Laboratory for Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, where the WWW was first developed.

Web server

A Web server delivers Web pages to your computer.

WWW

World Wide Web - also known as the Web. This is the generic name given to all of the hypertext-based HTML documents on the Internet. These documents have links to each other and are accessible from HTTP or Web servers. The WWW has been the "killer application" which has driven the Net's popularity.

X

XML

Extensible Markup Language - a formal markup metalanguage for the design of web pages.

Y

Can't think of any ....

Z

.zip

Files that have been compressed using the PKZIP program have a filename extension of ".zip". They are decompressed using the PKUNZIP utility. Popular zip programmes include WinZip.