Glossary Notes

Watch this space for more definitions, this is just a start.

Last update: 5-feb-05

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

A

Actionscript

A variant of the ECMAScript/Javascript language used in Macromedia Flash movies.

ASP (1)

Active Server Pages , a scripting language used in Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS). Active Server Pages allow a user to embed Visual Basic or JScript routines inside web pages stored on the server. When an ASP page is accessed, the Visual Basic or JScript code is executed, and the results written out to the HTML document. Used commonly for accessing stored information like database records.

ASP (2)

Application Services Provider, a company which is providing a service or program over the Web rather than as a packaged piece of software. These companies charge for the usage of their software, which is maintained on their servers, with all data stored on their servers as well.

One example of an Application Services Provider would be TurboTax for the Web, provided by Intuit.

B

C

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

A language for controlling the look of HTML pages. Cascading Style Sheets can override the normal way the web browser displays specific tags, either individually, or site-wide via a set of rules. CSS rules can control fonts, alignment, page placement, spacing, and other attributes to a greater degree than standard HTML, and the CSS conventions for cascading make it possible to control all the pages in an entire site, while still enabling overrides for special cases.

CSS is a Web standard, but is supported differently in different browsers. In many cases, CSS makes it easy to write pages which look the same on different browsers and platforms, but some features are still not universally supported.

D

DHTML

Dynamic HTML, a set of HTML features for more dynamic presentation of content on the Web.

E

ECMAScript

The international standard version of the Javascript language, certified by the standards body ECMA. Most versions of Javascript in use still differ in some ways from the standard, but are getting more compliant as time goes on.

F

Favicon

Short for "favorites icon," a Windows Icon format file used by web browsers, usually displayed next to the URL in the browser bar, and usually draggable to the bookmarks bar. This file is named "favicon.ico", and is stored in the same directory as the index page for a site.

Firefox

A web browser manufactured by the Mozilla Foundation. This browser uses several components designed by Mozilla to deliver a standards-compliant web browser which is both efficient and cross platform across Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Solaris, and other operating systems. Pages displayed in Firefox generally look the same as they do in Netscape, also a Mozilla product. Firefox is not only very standards-compliant, but also contains a lot of advanced features not present in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, such as popup blocking and tabbed browsing.

G

H

HTML

HyperText Markup Language, the text language which web browsers interpret in order to display web pages. HTML is written as a set of tags which contain content; the tag name explains how to draw or arrange the content on the screen. HTML is a Markup Language, which means it is a language which describes how the content is supposed to be structured and formatted.

I

IFrame

An Inline Frame, an area embedded in a web page which can include another web page, either with or without scroll bars.

J

Java

A programming language designed by Sun Microsystems. Java not only provides a modern object-oriented language for programming, but also a full environment of support for building large distributed applications for large business. Java programs are designed to be run on any machine with a Java Engine .

Java programs can be built as normal desktop applications, but can also be built as Applets, special programs which are downloaded and run inside a Web browser. While Applets can perform tasks beyond the abilities of normal HTML pages, they are restricted from doing certain things on the computer for security reasons.

Java programs can also run on a Web server as Servlets. These programs generally deliver their results into a Java Server Page as HTML that is downloaded to the web browser.

JavaScript

A browser scripting language originally developed by Netscape Communications. Javascripts are generally executed inside the browser on the Client Side, and add functionality to normal HTML pages. A common use of Javascript is to check or validate the data a user has typed into a form before submitting it to a server. Javascript can also be used to alert the user, pop up windows, and change the appearance of a page or dynamically change the page contents.

Javascript is not Java. While the syntax is similar in some ways, Javascript does not share all of the features of Java.

JScript

A Microsoft version of the Javascript language. JScript can be delivered to the browser, or can be executed on the server side as part of an Active Server Page. There are some incompatibilities between some versions of JScript and standard Javascript (also called ECMAScript).

JSP (Java Server Pages)

A server-side language which enables the web designer to present data using Java programs run on the server.

K

L

LAMP

Acronym meaning Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. This combination of free open source software packages provides everything needed to write and deploy both small and large Web sites.

Linux

An open source operating system similar to Unix. Originally developed by Linus Torvalds, this OS is both freely distributed and available from a number of commercial sources. The advantages of Linux include high performance on a wide variety of hardware, small footprint, frequent bug fixes from the community, the ability to make custom changes to the source code, and its free cost.

At present, the most popular variant of Linux is distributed by Red Hat.

M

N

O

Opera

A web browser manufactured by the Opera software company. Opera is a cross-platform browser which is designed to be more compact and faster than Internet Explorer, and also conforms better to modern HTML standards such as CSS.

P

Presentational Markup

HTML Markup which describes content by the way it is displayed rather than by its purpose in the document. A tag such as <BOLD> is presentational, while the tag <STRONG> describes the purpose of the text without specifying how it looks.

This distinction is important when using style sheets, as the designer may decide to display strong text or emphasized text (for example) in a style other than bold and italic. Using presentational markup such as <FONT> tags makes it more difficult to make changes to the pages, and makes the pages more complex. See Structural Markup.

PHP

PHP: Hypertext Processor, an open source server-side scripting language similar to ASP or JSP. PHP is often used to get data into and out of databases (usually the open source mySQL database), but is a rich programming language capable of supporting large-scale web applications. Many web portal applications are written in PHP.

Q

R

S

Safari (1)

Web Browser developed by Apple Computer for the Macintosh operating system. Safari is well-integrated with the Mac OS user interface, renders fast, and is substantially more standards-compliant than the other browser shipped with Macintoshes, the Mac OS version of Internet Explorer.

Safari (2)

An online library service operated by O'Reilly Publishing. Subscribers to Safari can access hundreds of technical books online, including most of the definitive books about Web and open source technologies.

Structural Markup

HTML Markup which describes a page by the parts of the document rather than the way it is displayed. HTML tags such as <P> (Paragraph) or <LI> (List Item) are structural tags, while tags like <BOLD> or <CENTER> describe how the text is displayed. See Presentational Markup. Structural Markup is preferred for most large websites, as it allows the user to separate the content from its appearance, which is important when the HTML is automatically generated or styled using CSS.

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z