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Internet 101 | |
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For your convenience, we've included a list of commonly used Internet terms, each with a short description. Whether you're an expert or rookie, delve into these descriptions in search of a few things you may not know.
ASCII (American standard code for information interchange) - A binary encoding method for character data that translates symbols, letters, and numbers into digital form. Browser - A Web access program that can request HTML documents from Web servers and render such documents on a user's display device. Bugs - Bad or unexpected things that show up in software. Bugs got their name from insects found in antiquated tube-based computers of the late 1950's and early 1960's that were attracted to the glow of the filament in a tube. Case-sensitive - Means that the way computer input is typed is significant. For example, "This" doesn't mean the same thing to a computer as "this". CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) - Agency that established the High-Energy Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, now known as the birthplace of the World Wide web. CERN is commonly used as a name for the laboratory itself. Client - The end-user side of the client/server arrangement. Typically, "client" refers to a consumer (rather than a provider) of network services. A Web browser is therefore a client program that talks to Web servers. CGI (Common gateway interface) - The specification that governs how Web browsers communicate with and request services from Web servers; also the format and syntax for passing information from browsers to servers via HTML forms or document-based queries. CSS1/CSS2 (Cascading style sheets level 1/2) - A style sheet standard that lets authors attach preferred style sheets to Web documents, while allowing readers to associate their own personal styles to those same documents. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration) - A U.S. Department of Defense agency that supplied cash and some of the expertise that led to development of the Internet. DNS (Domain Name Server) - The names used on the Internet as part of a distributed database to translate computer names into physical addresses and vice versa. DOD (Department of Defense) - The folks who paid the bills for and operated the earliest versions of the Internet. Also one of the more prominent institutions to adopt SGML. DHTML (Dynamic HTML) - HTML technologies that enable a user to change Web pages on the fly without requesting a new document from the server. Ethernet - The most commonly used local-area networking technology in use today. Ethernet was developed at about the same time (and by many of the same people and institutions) involved in building the Internet. FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) - Usenet newsgroups, mailing list groups, and other affiliations of like-minded individuals on the Internet will usually designate a more senior member of their band to assemble and publish a list of frequently asked questions in an often futile effort to keep from answering them quite as frequently. Forms - In HTML, forms are built on special markup that lets browsers solicit data from users and then deliver that data to specially designated input-handling programs on a Web server. Briefly, forms provide a mechanism to let users interact with servers on the Web. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - An Internet file transfer service based on the TCP/IP protocols, FTP provides a way to copy files to and from FTP servers elsewhere on a network. GIF - An abbreviation for CompuServe's Graphic Interchange Format. .GIF is one of a set of commonly used graphics formats within Web documents because of it's compressed format and compact nature. GUI (Graphical User Interface) - Pronounced "gooey", GUI's make graphical Web browsers possible. They create a visually oriented interface that makes it easy for users to interact with computerized information of all kinds. Microsoft Windows and the Mac OS are operating systems that use GUI's. HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) - The SGML-derived markup language used to create Web pages. Not quite a programming language, HTML nevertheless provides a rich lexicon and syntax for designing and creating useful hypertext documents for the Web. HTTP (Hypertext Teleprocessing Protocol or Hypertext Transfer Protocol) - The Internet protocol used to manage communication between Web clients (browsers) and servers. Image Map - A synonym for clickable image, this refers to an overlaid collection of pixel coordinates for a graphic that can be used to locate a user's selection of a region on a graphic, in turn used to select a related hypertext link for further Web navigation. Internet - A worldwide collection of networks that began with technology and equipment funded by the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1970's. Today, it links users in nearly every country, speaking nearly every known language. ISO (International Standards Organization) - The granddaddy of standards organizations worldwide, the ISO is made up of standards bodies from countries all over the world. Most important communications and computing standards - like the telecommunications and character code standards - are the subject of ISO standards. Java - An object-oriented, platform-independent, secure, and compact programming language designed for Web application deployment. Java was created by Sun Microsystems but is supported by most system vendors. JPEG/JPG - .JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, an industry association that defined a highly compressible format for images designed for complex color still images (like photographs). .JPEG files usually take the extension .JPEG (except DOS or Windows 3.x machines, which are limited to the three-character .JPG equivalent). Today, .JPEG is one of the graphics format of choice for web use, particularly for complex images. LAN (Local-Area Network) - One of many communications technologies used to link computers together in a single location or on a campus. MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) - HTTP communications of Web information over the Internet rely on a special variant of MIME formats to convey Web documents and related files between servers and users. The same technology is used to convey attached files with email messages. Modem - An acronym for modulator/demodulator, a modem is a piece of hardware that converts between analog forms for voice and data used in the telephone system and digital forms used in computers. In other words, a modem lets your computer communicate using the telephone system. MPEG/MPG - An acronym for Motion Picture Experts Group, .MPEG is a highly compressed format designed for moving pictures or other multiframe-per-second media (like video). .MPEG not only provides high compression rations (up to 200 to 1), but also updates only elements that have changed on screen from one frame to the next, making it extraordinarily efficient. .MEG is the file extension that denotes files using the format, but .MPG is the three-letter equivalent used on DOS and Windows 3.x systems. Navigation Bar - A way of arranging a series of hypertext links on a single line of a Web page to provide a set of navigation controls for an HTML document or a set of HTML documents. NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) - A research unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana, where the original Mosaic browser was built, and where NCSA httpd code is maintained and distributed. Netiquette - A networking takeoff o the term etiquette, netiquette refers to the written and unwritten rules of behavior on the Internet. When in doubt whether an activity is permitted or not, ask first, and then act only if no one objects (check the FAQ for a given area, often it states the local rules of netiquette for a newsgroup, mailing list, and so on). Newbies - A term that describes individuals who are new to various computer environments or applications. PDF (Portable Document Format) - Adobe's rich, typographically correct document format, used to provide multiplatform document access through it's Acrobat software as a more powerful alternative to HTML. PERL - A powerful, compact programming language tha2/12/00raws from languages like C, Pascal, sed, awk, and BASIC, Perl is the language of choice for CGI programs, partly owing to it's portability and the many platforms o which it is currently supported, and partly owing to it's ability to exploit operating system services quickly and easily. RAM (Random-Access Memory) - The memory used in most computers to store ongoing work and that also provides space to store the operating system and any applications that are actually running at any given moment. When you turn off or restart your computer, any contents stored in RAM are lost. Robot - A special web-traveling program that wanders widely, following and recording URL's and related titles for future reference in search engines. ROM (Read-Only Memory) - A form of computer memory that allows values to be stored only once. After the data is initially recorded, the computer can only read the contents. ROM's are used to supply constant code elements like bootstrap loaders, network addresses, and other more or less unvarying programs or instructions. The contents of ROM remain even after the computer is switched off. Sever - A computer on a network whose job is to listen for particular service requests and t respond to those that it knows how to satisfy. SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) - An ISO standard document definition, specification, and creation mechanism that makes platform and display differences across multiple computers irrelevant to the delivery and rendering of documents. Site Maintenance - The process of regularly inspecting, testing, and updating the contents of Web pages. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) - An underlying protocol and service used for Internet based electronic mail. Syntax - Literally, the formal rules for how to speak, we use syntax to describe the rules that govern how HTML markup looks and behaves within HTML documents. The real syntax definition for HTML comes from the SGML Document Type Definition. Each programming language has it's own syntax. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) - The name for the suite of protocols and services used to manage network communications and applications over the Internet. TCP, a reliable, connection-oriented protocol, usually guarantees delivery across a network. IP is the specific networking protocol that ties the computers together over the Internet. (IP also serves as a synonym for the whole TCP/IP suite). Terminal Emulation - The process of making a full-fledged, standalone computer act like a terminal attached to another computer. Terminal emulation is the service that Telnet provides across the Internet. Thumbnail - A miniature rendering of a graphical image, used as a link to the full-size version URL (Uniform Resource Locator) - The primary naming scheme used to identify Web resources, URL's define the protocols to use, the domain name of the Web server where a resource resides, the port address to use for communication, and a directory path to access named Web files or resources. W3C - An acronym for the World Wide Web Consortium, the W3C WWW (World Wide Web) - The complete collection of all Web servers available on the Internet, which comes as close to containing the "sum of human knowledge" as anything we've ever seen. WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) - A term used to describe text editors or other layout tools (like HTML authoring tools) that attempt to show their users on-screen what final, finished documents will look like.
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