Glossary You may also want to check out the Netscape glossary. alt-tab - A Windows shortcut. Hold down the Alt key, press the tab key. A icon menu appears in the middle of the screen representing all the running applications. Keep holding down the Alt key and press the tab key as many times a necessary to get to the application you want to see. anti-aliased - Smoothing the jaggies. An automatic feature of good graphics software. There is an example at the following Web page. Scroll down to the end of the "A" section. http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/glossary.html bookmark - An electronic bookmark. Makes the title of a Web page appear in a Bookmarks menu for quick reference so you don't have to remember a URL, or type in the URL. browse - To visit Web sites, in plain terms, to view Web pages in the Internet. Often called 'surfing'. browse - Often you start at a search engine like Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite or Netscape. You follow links, hopping from one page to another, and one site to another. Incidentally, the Internet technically is the network of computers, whereas the World Wide Web (The Web) is the collection of Web pages and other documents on those computers. browser - Program used to browse. Usually (the highly recommended) Netscape Navigator. Also Microsoft Internet Explorer. The ancient grandparents of the current generation are Lynx and Mosaic. content - Valuable information that makes people want to visit your Web site. Might include: policies and procedures, photographs, instructions, illustrations, contact phone numbers and addresses, entertainment, calendars and schedules of events contextual feedback - Clues about where we are. These are pointers, or signs of some sort that help people get their bearings within your site. Some are subtle, some are not. Kind of a "you are here." download - Copy a file via a network, from some other computer to the one on your desk. The most common way to download (or upload) is with a secure FTP program like SecureFX or Fugu. Usually the other computer is a host computer with the ability to handle many simultaneous connections to the Internet. FTP - file transfer protocol. A method of downloading and uploading files. http - HyperText Transmission Protocol. A method of moving Web page data to your browser. hard drive, hard disk - With Windows 95 it's the C: drive of My Computer. host computer - A server. Usually a powerful computer which can handle many simultaneous network connections. Often a UNIX computer. Occasional a Windows NT server. home
page -1) The main page of a site GUI - Graphical User Interface. Computer software that uses windows and the mouse, as opposed to doing things in a text only environment, or editing text files. graphic, jpeg, jpg, gif - Images. JPEG is the Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is a type of image compression that the image creator can decide to give up image quality in order to get a smaller file. JPEG (or jpg) is recommended for any photograph, or any image with fine gradations of color. Gif is Graphics Interchange Format, and can only do 256 colors (only 216 are safe to use on the Web) so it is fine for sketches, but bad for photographs. ISP - Internet Service Provider. A company with dialup phone lines that you use with your modem to get connected to the Internet. Usually you get e-mail and space for a Web site too. link - A hyperlink. That (usually) blue underlined text that takes you to a new Web site. A hyperlink in general is text which you can click on to take you to a new document, or a different part of the current document. A "document" on the Web is usually a Web page, but it could be a graphic, an MW Word document, a Flash animation, a PDF document, or basically any kind of electronic document. navigate - The mechanics of getting from one page to another. Usually this is done via hyperlinks organized into toolbars or groups of buttons with some logical organization. Netscape - a.k.a. Netscape Navigator or Netscape Communicator. The Web browser package from Netscape Corp. Software to view Web pages. Navigator is used by somewhere between 60 % to 80% of all people browsing Web pages worldwide. The other popular browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE or just IE). There are many browsers but Netscape and IE have all but a small fraction of the market. new media - electronic media, generally interactive, usually a Web page. Refers in the large sense to the large number of new types of documents and media creations that have sprung into existence around the Web. page - A single HTML document that we commonly call a Web page. A Web page which may be many traditional printable pages long. The Web has a very poor concept of printable pages since it was originally founded as a pure electronic medium. Parenthetical links - Links which lead to footnotes or definitions. These tend to be distracting and may lead the user away from your site, never to return. This parenthetical link is here to illustrate this point. Since there's no way to know where the user was before they came here, you can't provide a link back, and they'll have to use the Back button. Better to use a Glossary. Perl - A kind of scripting language that is a little easier to learn than a traditional programming language like C. Perl is used extensively for Web sites cgi scripts. Perl was initially invented on the UNIX operating system. search engine - A tool like Yahoo, AltaVista or Excite that we use to search for Web pages, and in fact for any info on the Web (even other types of documents like images, video clips, sound files, etc.) server - The thing that send out Web pages. Can refer to a computer, but can also refer to the software (usually Apache) that serves handles http requests. site - A collection of pages. Oddly enough, since the Web really is a Web, you can make a site which includes pages from other sites, or which includes pages which are not physically on the same computer. Of course, this must always be done with respect to intellectual property (i.e. copyright). story board - From the film and television industry. Putting one paper page for each 'shot' on the wall as a way to visualize all the scenes from the film and organizing the related tasks. For a Web site each 'page' gets a piece of paper, and you write notes on each piece of paper describing the content of the represented Web page, and how users will traverse the site so you can create appropriate links. surf - Browse the Internet. View Web pages on the Internet. upload - Copy a file from your desktop to another computer. Usually the other computer is a host computer with the ability to handle many simultaneous connections to the Internet. URL - Loosely speaking it is an Internet address. Usually specifies a Web page. Address means something technical, so don't call it that. Call it a URL. Stands for Uniform Resource Locator. user interface - The collection of buttons, menus, scrollbars, and other functional elements that you give your customers to manipulate your documents. In a general sense it is the things people click on and what they do when clicked. As a Web page designer you have to make sure that what your customers click on makes sense, and that the actions that happen are well thought out, standard, and not confusing to the customer. UNIX host - a particular type of host. Most Web host computers use UNIX due to it's reliability, stability, flexibility, and security. Web browser - browser (see above). Distinguishes it from other browsing (help, disk drive, desktop). Web - World Wide Web. The collection of Web sites on the Internet. The sites are all linked together somewhat like the strands of a spider Web. The Internet is a world wide network of computers. Although they have distinctive meanings, the two words "Web" and "Internet" are often casually used interchangeably. WYSIWYG - What You See Is What You Get (pronounced whizzy-wig). Document creation and editing where you see the document how it will appear in the final format. On the Web this refers to using a Web editor to create your Web pages instead of coding raw HTML. Modern word processors like MS Word and Word Perfect are wysiwyg word processors.
Web
Development Support | General
Info | Getting Started |
Design & Promotion If you need further assistance with Web applications or questions, send e-mail to web-consult@virginia.edu or call the ITC Help Desk at 924-3731.
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