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Terms to Know

Baud: Refers to the modem speed at which a user can view the Web. Baud rates basically means the transmission speed, or how fast information gets sent from the Web page to the person viewing it.

Browser: The software a person uses to view the Web. A browser reads HTML code and shows it to the viewer as a Web page. Viewers can choose from a number of different browsers to navigate the Web.

Content: Content is more than information on a Web page. The way it is delivered, organized, and shown together form content. Think of content as the foundation which holds the Web page together.

GIF: A graphic file type used as a means to distribute graphics to a wide audience. GIF is the current standard of the Web, since all browsers can view files in GIF format.

Hit: The number of times a file is accessed on a Web page. A hit actually measures total number of files accessed, so that all the graphics on a page (which are separate files), plus the actual HTML file, are recorded as hits.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): The language of the Web, HTML is a standardized code which allows people to structure text, graphics, and even sounds to be viewed on a variety of computer platforms.

Hypertext: Layers (i.e. pages) of linked content that are easily accessed and lead to related information. Hypertext is a term for the organization and delivery of information, made available through the structure of a Web page.

Inline Image: Images on the Web are called "inline" because to show them, the HTML code has to load the graphic file. They are never "pasted" onto a page, but are separate files told where to appear on the page by HTML code.

JPEG: JPEG files are the emerging standard of the Web. They provide better quality and colors than GIF files in most cases, having a more flexible way of handling images. But not all browsers support JPEG files.

Universal Resource Locator (URL): The address used by Web documents to locate files on servers. A URL gives the type of resource being accessed like this:

scheme: //host.domain/path/filename , such as http://www.best.com/~mddunn/links.html .

There are several schemes, or ways of viewing files available through URLs such as:

file://, a file on a local server;

http://, a file on a World Wide Web server;

ftp://, a file at an FTP site; or

gopher://, a file on a gopher server.

Web page: Refers to a single page on the World Wide Web, meaning a single text file. This file is defined by a beginning and ending HTML code which makes it a single file, with a name such as mypage.html, for example.

Web site: A collection of Web pages, or links, which together form a site. A site is a general definition for a collection of content, created to work both as a unit and individually.

World Wide Web (i.e, The Web): A means to link individual documents on computer servers worldwide and built with a standard Hypertext language, HTML, which allows text, graphics, and sounds to be linked.

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