Mouse Will Play
Skipton Web Design & Development
Tools & Resources
Glossary of Web Terminology
Ajax
A group of web development techniques used to created interactive web applications. Ajax runs on the user's local PC and often involves the use of Javascript together with XML. Examples of web applications using Ajax are Google Maps and Flickr.
ASP
A programming language used to write web applications that runs on the web server rather than within browser. Meaning Active Server Pages, this is the main Microsoft server side CGI scripting language. Used exclusively on Windows hosting and favoured by corporate IT departments over the Linux equivalent PHP. It uses Microsoft SQL Server as a database.
Blog
A regularly updated series of online articles published by an individual or company. A shortening of Weblog, blog has become a general purpose word for any day-to-day online publishing of stories, ideas, feelings, new products, latest fashions etc. Blogging can be a useful tool to keep customers returning to your site and can also help with search engine optimisation. Popular blogs include The Huffington Post - an influential American political blog and Lolcats - photos of cats with amusing captions written in 'Lol speak'.
Browser
An application that runs on a local computer enabling the viewing of web pages. Examples are Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome. For several years Microsoft IE had a monopoly in this area, eventually leading to legal proceedings in the US. Problems with IE have in recent years seen it rapidly lose ground. For more details see A Comparison of Browsers.
Cache
A temporary storage area used by a browser to hold web pages that it has downloaded so that they can be viewed without having to be downloaded again. This technique makes surfing the web much faster but can be confusing as changes to web pages that have been updated on the server may not immediatly show up on the browser.
Content Management System (CMS)
A system that allows non technical users to frequently update the content of their website without using a programming language. See Content Management Systems and Do You Need a Content Management System? for more information.
CSS
A language used to describe the presentation of a web page. Meaning Cascading Style Sheet, CSS is used by the HTML code of a web page to determine the layout, colours, fonts etc of the page. Using CSS files means that the look and feel of an entire website can easily be changed without editing each page. It also enables to designer to separate the content from the presentation - a principle of web standards. See a diagram showing the use of CSS to separate content from style.
Database
A collection of records or files used to store information or data. A database is normally made up of related tables containing information relevant to a particular application or applications.
Databases contain tables - collections of data records (or rows) with an identical set of fields. A field is a named piece of data in a record or row and is equivalent to a column. For example, in a database of information about customers the fields might be: company name, address, contact name and email address. Each record would represent the information for a customer. The database itself would also contain tables that have information about purchases, enquiries and other information relevant to customer activity.
Domain Name
Part of a URL or web address normally consisting of a recognisable word or words related to the site. For instance in the web address http://www.example.net/index.html the full domain name would be www.example.net. The domain name registered by the site provider would be just example.net. You need to purchase a domain name in order to set up a website. You purchase a domain name for a set period of time, e.g. 1 year or 2 years. After this time, you must renew your domain name otherwise it will become available for someone else to purchase. See Choosing a Domain Name for more information.
eCommerce
The buying and selling of goods and services using the internet or computer networking. eCommerce simply means Electronic Commerce. See Online Shops for more information.
Flash
A multimedia platform originally acquired by Macromedia and currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. Flash has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications. Although the use of Flash can certainly make a web site more visually exciting it has many down sides including the time (thus cost) of development, and the fact that, if not correctly implemented, it is invisible to search engines. In order to work it needs a program installed on the local PC known as a Flash player. Users of browsers without this player installed will not be able to view any web pages that use it. For more information see To Flash or not to Flash!
FTP
A way of uploading stuff to the internet. It stands for File Transfer Protocol and is the most common way of transferring files between a local PC and a web hosting.
GIF
An image format, i.e. a way of storing simple images in electronic format. Standing for Graphics Interchange Format it has the advantage of producing small files and supporting transparency & animation but is very limited in how complex the graphics can be. Since gifs are generally limited to 256 colours, they tend only to be used for simple logos and line drawings. See also JPG and PNG.
Hosting
A service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Hosting is normally offered as a package and may or may not include provision of PHP or ASP programming languages and MySQL or MS-SQL databases. See Choosing Hosting for more information.
HTML
The language used to write web pages, HTML stands for Hypertext Mark-up Language. HTML indicates to a web browser how the text is to be displayed, as well as to enable links, and other features. HTML started as a flexible way of formatting documents that could be sent between computers. Although based on a format dating from the 1960s it first surfaced in the early 90s when it was adapted to work over the internet. Over the years it has been extended and renamed several times, going from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) to Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML), which is the form most used today. A variant is Dynamic HTML (DHTML) which is actually a term referring to a collection of web programming languages used together.
HTTP
The way that browsers get pages. Standing for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, this is the basis on which web pages are sent from the hosting server to your local PC.
IP Address
A number that identifies a specific PC in a computer network or on the internet. The number is divided into several sections that relate to the group of PCs (sub net) and router identifications. IP addresses are usually represented as four numbers, each ranging from 0 to 255, separated by dots, e.g. 208.77.188.166
ISP
A company that provides access to the internet. An Internet Service Provider will own or rent a cluster of fast PCs which have high speed communications and are running some sort of server application.
Javascript
A scripting language used to add functionality to web sites. This is a way of making a web page react to the user on the PC they are using without needing interaction with the server. Javascript can be useful, particularly when used in combination with other techniques, but it is best used sparingly except on large and complex web sites.
JPG
Also known as JPEG, a file format used for images. The JPG format supports a palette of over 16 million colors. This allows for high quality photographic images, but that large a palette could make for huge file sizes. JPG files can be compressed but this involves loss of quality. JPG files are best used for photographs and paintings of realistic scenes with smooth variations of tone and color. See also GIF and PNG.
A photo of a flower compressed successively more from left to right.
Keywords
A list of words associated with a web page that might be used to search for it. For example, web design, website design, Skipton, Yorkshire. Keywords can be explicitly specified in the header of a web page but this is unlikely to result in good search engine rankings unless the words are used in context within the visual body of the page.
Linux
An operating system used on web servers. Linux is more commonly used than Windows as an operating system designed for general web hosting, rather than a corporate dedicated site.
Meta Tags
Used in a web page to specify information such as a title, description, keywords, language and associated CSS stylesheets.
MySQL
A type of database used for storing information or data. Commonly used when developing dynamic websites hosted on Linux servers and whose scripting language is PHP. When you subscribe to our newsletter, your details are stored in a MySQL database.
A format used to store text and graphics in a single document or file. It stands for Portable Document Format and is frequently used to allow manuals, catalogues or other documents to be easily downloaded over the web. The advantage of using PDF on the web over another formats such as Word documents is that it can be read on both PCs and Macs.
Permalink
A link on a website that points to some text or content whose actual location on the target site may change. An example is a link to an individual article in a blog containing many articles, where the individual article will move as others are submitted. Permalinks usually use 'readable' language and contain keywords thereby assisting with search engine optimisation. E.g. the permalink http://www.example.com/where_to_buy_cheese.php actually points to http://www.example.com/10482msjr12.php
PHP
A programming or scripting language used to write web applications that runs on the web server rather than within a browser. Originally meant to mean Personal Home Page, this is now one of the most common server side CGI scripting languages and is used to develop dynamic web sites, particularly when using a Linux hosting. It tends to be the method of choice for independent and creative web design, whilst the Microsoft equivalent (ASP) is favoured by corporate IT departments. PHP normally uses MySQL as a database.
PNG
A way of storing images in electronic format. Standing for Portable Network Graphics it was developed to overcome the limitations of the GIF format. PNG builds on the idea of transparency in GIF images and allows the control of the degree of transparency, known as opacity. Saving, restoring and re-saving a PNG image will not degrade its quality as in JPGs. PNG does not support animation like GIFs do. See also GIF and JPG.
Robot
A computer program that searches the web usually to catalogue pages for search engines. Also referred to as a Spider, Bot or Web Crawler.
RSS
RSS is a format for delivering regularly changing web content. Many news-related sites, weblogs and other online publishers syndicate their content as an RSS Feed to whoever wants it.
SEO
SEO or Search engine optimisation is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. See Search Engine Optimisation for more information.
Server
A PC that allows access to the internet, or provides services and data storage on a computer network. When used in the context of the internet servers fall into two main categories, those that run Windows as their operating system, and those that use Linux. The term can also be used to mean the application program that controls internet activity which in the case of Windows is usually IIS (Internet Information Services) and for Linux is usually Apache.
SQL
A way of storing information or data in a form which makes it very fast to retrieve it. Originally standing for Structured Query Language it has now come to mean a kind of database where information is accessed using SQL statements. Common examples are Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SQL Express and MySQL.
TCP-IP
The underlying communications protocols used to send data over the internet. It actually comes from two protocols developed separately in the 70s and 80s - Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol. Unless you are a very heavy duty techy, that really is more than you will ever need to know!
A simple social networking site which allows internet users to comment on their thoughts and everyday life. Uses of it include reporting news from areas where censorship is in place, finding out what your favourite celebrity had for breakfast, passing technical or news information between interested parties and imagining that people are interested in what you had for breakfast. Companies have started to use Twitter to keep clients informed about news and their latest products and services.
URL
Also referred to as a web address, a URL is the text that is keyed into a browser that directs it to a chosen site. An example is http://www.mousewillplay.co.uk
Web 2.0
A term used to refer to the second generation of web technology characterised by dynamic pages and information sharing rather than just static showcase sites. Web 2.0 technology must be implemented carefully so as to not cause accessibility problems.
Web 2.0 has also been used to describe a particular design style (that emerged at the same time as Web 2.0 technology) comprising of reflections, shiny buttons & badges, stripes, large bold text, gradients and strong colours.
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