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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
ADSL
Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line, a high-speed
communications line, used primarily for digital
video
Anchor
A place in an html document that you jump to when
following an internal link (like going to a letter
within this glossary)
AVI
A type of video file - playable by nearly all
modern computers.
B
Banner
The title bar of a page or in the context of an
advert, a bar across the page which often links
to another site.
Beta
"Beta testing" or "in beta" means that a program
isn't ready for sale because there are still some
bugs in it. Because of the fast development of the
web, most of the browsers, applets, etc., i.e. the
programs you use to access what you want, almost
always seem to be "in beta."
BPS Bits Per Second -- the rate your modem
can send and accept information. 28,800 is the current
basic standard, although that is quickly changing
to 33 or even 56k -- over standard phone connections.
Computer nets using Ethernet connections operate
either at 56k (56,000) or 1Mb (1,000,000). The "backbone"
operates at 45Mb
Brownout In 'net terms, when a system is
overloaded by requests that it slows down to the
point of near unusability, it is suffering a "brownout."
Browser
The program you use to surf the Internet e.g. Internet
Explorer or Netscape Navigator
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C
Cache
Computer systems typically incorporate capacious
storage devices that are slow (e.g., disk drives)
and smaller storage devices that are fast (e.g.,
memory chips, which are 100,000 times faster than
disk). File systems and database management systems
keep recently used information from the slow devices
in a cache in the fast device. Recently visited
web pages are stored in the cache for quick offline
retrieval.
CGI Common Gateway Interface; a special type
of UNIX program which allows a web server to access
an application and transfer the information to your
display. If you access a homepage and are told you
are visitor #____, that information is usually provided
& updated by programs via CGI
Client
Normally YOU...or the person who is surfing the
site
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D
Domain
Name A unique identifier that gives each computer
a location on the Internet. There are different
types of domain name, e.g. .com, .co.uk You can
decide which you prefer and search to see if it
is available.
Dial
Up Modem link to an internet access provider,
where you use their computer system/network to access
the internet (an indirect internet link). If you
are accessing this via gnofn, the odds are you're
using their dial-up services
DNS Domain Name Server : The automatic systems
which allow you to input a name in an e-mail, www,
telnet, etc. address, and have it transferred to
the actual address (which is really a series of
numbers).
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E
E-mail The electronic version of the Royal
Mail! - You can send messages from your computer
to other computers as long as you know their e-mail
address. This looks something like john@romseyassociates.com
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F
Firewall
A computer that sits between a company's internal
network of computers and the public Internet. The
firewall's job is to make sure that internal users
can get out to enjoy the benefits of the Internet
while external crackers are unable to make connections
to machines behind the firewall
FTP
File Transfer Protocol - The process by which you
can send information held on your computer to the
Internet. There are many programs which you can
use to do this...an example is CuteFTP. A freeware
version can be downloaded from www.cuteftp.com
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G
GIF
Graphical Interchange Format. Developed in 1987
by CompuServe, this is a way of storing compressed
images with up to 256 colours. It became popular
on the Web because it was the only format that could
be displayed in-line by the first multi-platform
Web browser
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H
HTML HyperText Markup Language - This is
the code in which all web sites are written. Many
programs now allow you to design a site without
having to learn this programming language.
Hosting
We provide the computer disk space you need to put
your web site on. This is called ‘hosting’. We use
web servers for this process
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I
IP
address A "real" internet address, in numbers.
You usually need to know these only if you are setting
up a SLIP or PPP account, are using very old system
software (pre-1990), or are using some sites for
CUSEMEE or similar programs. Some web sites however,
give their addresses in numbers when they're trying
to hide something. (dodgy content for example)
ISDN Integrated Services Digital Network,
is a special, digital (and faster) phone connection.
It allows the user to connect at guaranteed speeds
of 64 Kb/s or 128 Kb/s on a dual line
ISP Internet Service Provider. The company
that you use to connect to the Internet, most often,
they also provide your email facilities too.
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J
JPEG
Joint Photographic Experts Group. A group who sat
designed a standard for image compression. This
standard works particularly well for 24-bit colour
photographs. Such a file is what people commonly
refer to as "a JPEG" and typically ends in ".jpg"
or ".jpeg".
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K
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L
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LAN Local Access Network, set up within a
limited area, like a business or campus.
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M
MIDI
Musical Instrument Digital Interface The connection
between a musical instrument (usually a keyboard)
and a computer; The file resulting from such a connection.
Mirror
Some sites (esp. ftp software sites) are so popular
that mirror sites are set up with the same information.
If there is a mirror site closer to you than the
one you're accessing, the odds are downloads will
be faster. You can also check mirror sites to see
if they are less busy (any mirror site information
is usually provided as part of the opening information
at any ftp, gopher, or web site).
MPEG
A type of scanned-in video file. You need a special
reader program to view these. They can also take
up a lot of memory.
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N
Netscape
Currently one of the most popular web browsers.
The developers of Netscape have also added a number
of special features, which can usually only be seen
with netscape itself. Some sites are so fully "netscaped"
that other browser programs are worthless and the
odds are good that your version of Netscape will
stumble a few times on these, too!
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O
OCR
Optical Character Recognition, any type of software
that works with a scanner to read printed (or in
theory even hand-written) material, which would
then allow the text to be stored and manipulated
electronically
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P
PDF Portable Document File, a document which,
with the proper Acrobat reader, is displayed the
same way on all systems. Many CD’s of documents
and many documents and forms on government Internet
sites, are in pdf.
PPP
A direct link between your home computer and the
internet
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Q
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R
Router
A piece of equipment which connects two or more
networks or parts of networks
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S
Server
The machine that sends the information to your computer
for the web site that you are viewing. Also known
as a web server.
Search Engine Any of the web sites or other
computer programs which allow you to search for
certain types of information, e.g. www.altavista.com
Spider
A spider or Web crawler is a program that exhaustively
surfs all the links from a page and returns them
to another program for processing. For example,
all of the Internet search engine sites rely on
spider robots to discover new Web sites and add
them to their index. Another typical use of a spider
is by a publisher against his or her own site. The
spider program makes sure that all of the links
function correctly and reports dead links.
Spam
Posting an inappropriate message, especially if
commercial, over a number of groups or mass e-mailings
is "spamming; the message itself is the "Spam."
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T
Thumbnail A small graphic image that gives
you enough information to decide if you want to
see it full-sized. Many galleries of images on web
sites have the images in thumbnail, rather than
making you download each large image one at a time.
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U
URL
Uniform Resource Locator. A way of specifying the
location of something on the Internet, e.g., "http://www.internetology/faq/glossary/index.html"
is the URL for this glossary. The part before the
colon specifies the protocol (HTTP). Legal alternatives
include encrypted protocols such as HTTPS and legacy
protocols such as FTP, news, gopher, etc. The part
after the "//" is the server hostname ("internetology.co.uk").
The part after the next "/" is the name of the file
on the remote server.
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V
VPOP
Virtual Point of Presence. The process by which
we can offer you local rate telephone calls for
your dialup facility. The server recognises your
telephone code and emulates a presence in the same
area, thereby creating a local call.
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W
WYSIWYG
What You See Is What You Get. A WYSIWYG word processor,
for example, lets a user work view an on-screen
document as it will appear on the printed page,
e.g., with text in italics appearing on-screen in
italics
WWW
The World Wide Web; hypertext links between the
public files areas of computers who have set-up
"homepages."
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X
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Y
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Yahoo
A powerful search engine - one of the top 10
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Z
Zip
The most common file/program compression program.
Especially useful for "zipping" groups of files
together
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