Glossary

Apache: Apache is one of the the world's most widely used Web servers. Originally developed in 1995 by a group that was to go on to become the The Apache Group, the Apache HTTP Server is Open Source Software, and considered by proponents to be fast, scalable and secure. The name was derived from the project's less robust beginnings ('A patchy Web server').

API: Abbreviation of Application Program Interface, a set of routines, protocols, and tools for building software applications. A good API makes it easier to develop a program by providing all the building blocks. A programmer puts the blocks together.

Bandwidth: This refers to how much data you can send through a network or modem connection. It is usually measured in bits per second, or "bps." A good analogy for bandwidth is a highway with cars traveling on it. The highway is the network connection and the cars are the data. The wider the highway, the more cars can travel on it at one time. Therefore more cars can get to their destinations faster. It's the same principle with computer data -- the more bandwidth, the more information that can be transferred at one time.

Captcha: A captcha (an acronym for 'completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart') is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether or not the user is human.

Coupon Code: A coupon is a ticket or document that can be exchanged for a financial discount on a product.

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets for a set of formatting rules interpreted by the Web browser (or other client) that may contain the styling and formatting information intended for the presentation of a Web page. The W3C recommends the use of CSS to help keep Web content (HTML/XHTML) separate from its formatting information.

Domain Name: This is the name that identifies an Web site. For example, 'microsoft.com' is the domain name of Microsoft's Web site. A single Web server can serve Web sites for multiple domain names, but a single domain name can point to only one machine. For example, Apple Computer has Web sites at www.apple.com, www.info.apple.com, and store.apple.com. Each of these sites could be served on different machines. Then there are domain names that have been registered, but are not connected to a Web server. The most common reason for this is to have e-mail addresses at a certain domain name without having to maintain a Web site. In these cases, the domain name must be connected to a machine that is running a mail server.

GIF: The GIF image format is widely used on the World Wide Web. It was initially used by Compuserve to compress images for display on its online services. GIF uses a loss-less compression algorithm based on LZW. LZW is patented in some countries. A new standard, PNG, uses similar, non-patented compression algorithm and supports a wider range of image types including full colour images. PNG is well supported in recent software.

HTML: Stands for 'Hyper-Text Markup Language.' This is the language that Web pages are written in. Also known as hypertext documents, Web pages must conform to the rules of HTML in order to be displayed correctly in a Web browser. The HTML syntax is based on a list of tags that describe the page's format and what is displayed on the Web page. Fortunately, the HTML language is relatively easy to learn. Even more fortunately (so much for good grammar), many Web development programs allow you to create Web pages using a graphical interface. These programs allow you to place objects and text on the page and the HTML code is written for you.

Hyperlink: A hyperlink, more commonly called a link, is an electronic connection between one web page to either (1) other web pages on the same web site, or (2) web pages located on another web site. More specifically, a hyperlink is a connection between one page of a hypertext document to another.

IP Address: The unique numeric identifier of every computer connected to the Internet. Each IP address consists of a four number pattern separated by periods (XX.XX.XX.XX). Each number must be between 0 - 255. IP adresses work with DNS servers to direct and route requests through the Web. Although home users have IP addresses, the process is normally transparently handled by the ISP.

JPEG: JPEG is an image file format commonly used for compressing photographic images for low bandwidth applications such as the Web. JPEG stands for "Joint Photographics Expert Group", the body who created the JPEG standard. JPEG uses a lossy compression algorithm based on a Discrete Cosine Transform to compress its images. A new standard called JPEG2000 exists, based on superior Wavelet compression and having more features. JPEG2000 is not well supported by software.

JPG: (JPEG) A standardized image compression mechanism designed for compressing either full-color or grayscale photographic images, often for use on the Web. JPG is "lossy," meaning that the decompressed image is not quite of the same quality as the original image.

MySQL: L MySQL is a free, open source database, commonly employed with most of the popular server-side scripting languages including PHP, JSP, and ASP.

Payment Gateway: A combination of software and hardware that provides an interface to the bank card processing network.

RSS: RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by news websites and weblogs. They are used to provide items containing short descriptions of web content together with a link to the full version of the content. This information is delivered as an XML file called RSS feed, webfeed, RSS stream, or RSS channel.

SMTP: (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) The standard Internet protocol for transferring electronic mail messages.

SSL: Short for Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol developed by Netscape for transmitting private documents via the Internet. SSL works by using a private key to encrypt data that's transferred over the SSL connection. Both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer support SSL, and many Web sites use the protocol to obtain confidential user information, such as credit card numbers. By convention, URLs that require an SSL connection start with https: instead of http:.

Text Editor: A text editor is any word processing program that you can use to type and edit text. Hey, they don't call it a text editor for nothing... Word Pad and NotePad for Windows and SimpleText and TextEdit for the Mac are common text editors. Larger programs such as Microsoft Word and Word Perfect are also text editors, but they have many more features. You can actually write HTML code and create HTML pages with a simple text editor, as long as you know the correct HTML syntax.

URL: The Uniform Resource Locator is the address of a resource available on the Internet.

W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a non-profit organisation for the development of common Web standards. Chaired by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the membership of the organisation consists of industry leaders in World Wide Web technologies. Membership is open to all. The consortium has established procedures for drafting and commenting, and issuing recommendations for future Web standards.

XHTML: XHTML combines XML and HTML 4 to provide developers with a language that conforms to the XML format, as opposed to HTML which is based on SGML. XML is much simpler to parse than SGML, and standards exist such as XSLT, XPath, and XQuery for manipulating XML documents. Unfortunately, support for XHTML in browsers is poor, with the leading browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer, not supporting the XHTML mime type 'application/xhtml+xml'.

Zip: Windows users will see this term a lot when looking for files on the Internet. A zip file (.zip) is a "zipped" or compressed file. For example, when you download a file, if the filename looks like this: "filename.zip," you are downloading a zipped file. "Zipping" a file involves compressing one or more items into a smaller archive. A zipped file takes up less hard drive space and takes less time to transfer to another computer. This is why most Windows files that you find on the Internet are compressed. To use a zipped file, you'll need to unzip it first. PKZIP for DOS, or WinZip for Windows, are some popular programs that can unzip files for you. Fortunately, these programs can be downloaded for free from Web sites like Download.com. Macintosh files are most often "stuffed" into Stuffit files (.sit), which can be "unstuffed" using Aladdin's Stuffit Expander. The term "Zip" also refers to a product by Iomega. The company makes a removable storage device called a Zip Drive. Depending on the model, these drives can hold 100, 250 or 750 MB Zip disks. They are usually used for backup and for transferring large files to different locations. However, Zip drives are not as fast as hard drives, so it is usually not a good idea to run programs off them