The Jargon File

(or the beginnings of one, in the future this will have far more entries but for now this will have to suffice)

 

BLOG or WEB LOG

A blog (short for "web log") is a type of web page that generally serves as a publicly accessible personal journal (or log) for an individual. Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author. A blog may also be used in the selling of goods and services or to promote and organization or point of view. The appeal of blogging software is that the user simply publishes their entries with out getting bogged down with HTML, etc. Blog software usually has archives of old blogs, and is searchable. Frequently blogging software is used by web pages providing excellent information on many topics.

COOKIE
A message from a web Server computer sent to and stored by your browser on your computer. When your computer consults the originating server computer, the cookie is sent back to the server, allowing it to respond to you according to the cookie's contents. The main use for cookies is to provide customized Web pages according to a profile of your interests. It is also used by some advertising agencies to track your behavior online/

CYBER

A prefix used in a growing number of terms to describe new things that are being made possible by the spread of computers. Cyberphobia, for example, is an irrational fear of computers. Cyberpunk is a genre of science fiction that draws heavily on computer science ideas. Cyberspace is the non-physical terrain created by computer systems. Anything related to the Internet also falls under the cyber category.

DOMAIN, TOP LEVEL DOMAIN (TLD)

Hierarchical scheme for indicating logical and sometimes geographical venue of a web-page from the network. In the US, common domains are .edu (education), .gov (government agency), .net (network related), .com (commercial), .org (nonprofit and research organizations). Outside the US, domains indicate country: ca (Canada), uk (United Kingdom), au (Australia), jp (Japan), fr (France), etc.

DOMAIN NAME, DOMAIN NAME SERVER (DNS) ENTRY

Any of these terms refers to the initial part of a URL, down to the first /, where the domain and name of the host or SERVER computer are listed (most often in reversed order, name first, then domain). The domain name gives you who "published" a page, made it public by putting it on the Web.

DOWNLOAD
To copy something from a primary source to a more peripheral one, as in saving something found on the Web (currently located on its server) to a file on your local hard drive.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language. A standardized language of computer code, imbedded in "source" documents behind all Web documents, containing the textual content, images, links to other documents (and possibly other applications such as sound or motion), and formatting instructions for display on the screen. When you view a Web page, you are looking at the product of this code working behind the scenes in conjunction with your browser.

HYPERTEXT

On the World Wide Web, the feature, built into HTML, which allows a text area, image, or other object to become a "link" (as if in a chain), that retrieves another computer file (another Web page, image, sound file, or other document) on the Internet. The range of possibilities is limited by the ability of the computer retrieving the outside file to view, play, or otherwise open the incoming file. It needs to have software that can interact with the imported file. Many software capabilities of this type are built into browsers or can be added as "plug-ins."

INTERNET

The vast collection of interconnected networks that all use the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from the ARPANET of the late 60’s and early 70’s. An "internet" (lower case i) is any computers connected to each other (a network), and are not part of the Internet unless the use TCP/IP protocols. An "intranet" is a private network inside a company or organization that uses the same kinds of software that you would find on the public Internet, but that is only for internal use. An intranet may be on the Internet or may simply be a network.

IP Address or IP Number

(Internet Protocol number or address). A unique number consisting of 4 parts separated by dots, e.g. 165.113.245.2 Every machine that is on the Internet has a unique IP address. If a machine does not have an IP number, it is not really on the Internet. Most machines also have one or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember.
ISP or Internet Service Provider

JAVA

A network-oriented programming language invented by Sun Microsystems that is specifically designed for writing programs that can be safely downloaded to your computer through the Internet and immediately run without fear of viruses or other harm to our computer or files. Using small Java programs Web pages can include functions such as animations, calculators, and other fancy tricks. We can expect to see a huge variety of features added to the Web using Java, since you can write a Java program to do almost anything a regular computer program can do, and then include that Java program in a Web page.

JAVASCRIPT

A simple programming language developed by Netscape to enable greater interactivity in Web pages. It shares some characteristics with JAVA but is independent. It interacts with HTML, enabling dynamic content and motion.

LINK

The URL imbedded in another document, so that if you click on the highlighted text or button referring to the link, you retrieve the outside URL.

PDF or .pdf or pdf file

Abbreviation for Portable Document Format, a file format developed by Adobe Systems, that is used to capture almost any kind of document with all the formatting in the original. Viewing a PDF file requires Acrobat Reader or some other compatible reader, which is built into most browsers and can generally be downloaded free from Adobe or some other site with differing capabilities.

SERVER, WEB SERVER

A computer running that software, assigned an IP address, and connected to the Internet so that it can provide documents via the World Wide Web. Web servers are the closest equivalent to what in the print world is called the "publisher" of a print document.

SITE or WEB-SITE

This term is often used to mean "web page," but there is supposed to be a difference. A web page is a single entity, one URL, one file that you might find on the Web. A "site," properly speaking, is a location or gathering or center for a group of related pages linked to from that site.

TCP/IP

(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) -- This is the suite of protocols that defines the Internet. Originally designed for the UNIX operating system, TCP/IP software is now available for every major kind of computer operating system. To be truly on the Internet, your computer must have TCP/IP software.

URI

Short for Uniform Resource Identifier, the generic term for all types of names and addresses that refers to objects on the World Wide Web. A URL is one kind of URI.