 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Glossary of Printing Terms Printing Terms A Accordion fold: Bindery
term, two or more parallel folds which open like an accordion. Against the grain: At right
angles to direction of paper grain. Alteration: Change in copy of
specifications after production has begun. Artboard: Alternate term for
mechanical art. Author's corrections: Also know
as "AC's". Changed and additions in copy after it has been typeset. B Back up: Printing the second side of
a sheet already printed on one side. Banding: Method of packaging printed
pieces of paper using rubber or paper bands. Basis weight: Weight in pounds of a ream
of paper cut to the basic size for its grade. Bind: To fasten sheets or
signatures with wire, thread, glue. or by other means. Bindery: The finishing department of
a print shop or firm specializing in finishing printed products. Blanket: The thick rubber mat on a
printing press that transfers ink from the plate to paper. Bleed: Printing that goes to the
edge of the sheet after trimming. Blind embossing: An image
pressed into a sheet without ink or foil. Blueline: A blue photographic proof
used to check position of all image elements. Board: Alternate term for
mechanical. Bond & carbon: Business
form with paper and carbon paper. Bond paper: Strong durable paper grade
used for letterheads and business forms. Break for color: Also
known as a color break. To separate mechanically or by software the parts to be
printed in different colors. Brightness: The brilliance or
reflectance of paper. Bulk: Thickness of paper stock in
thousandths of an inch or number of pages per inch. Bulk pack: Boxing printed product
without wrapping or banding. Burn: Exposing a printing plate to
high intensity light or placing an image on a printing plate by light. Butt: Joining images without
overlapping. Butt fit: Printed colors that overlap
one row of dots so they appear to butt. C Carbonless: Pressure sensitive writing
paper that does not use carbon. Caliper: Paper thickness in
thousandths of an inch. Camera-ready copy: Print
ready mechanical art. Carload: A truck load of paper
weighing 40000 pounds. Case bind: A type of binding used in
making hard cover books using glue. Cast coated: Coated paper with a high
gloss reflective finish. Chrome: A term for a transparency. Coated paper: A clay coated printing paper
with a smooth finish. Collate: A finishing term for
gathering paper in a precise order. Color bar: A quality control term
regarding the spots of ink color on the tail of a sheet. Color correction: Methods
of improving color separations. Color filter: Filters uses in making color
separations, red, blue, green. Color key: Color proofs in layers of
acetate: Color matching system: A system
of formulated ink colors used for communicating color. Color separations: The
process of preparing artwork, photographs, transparencies, or computer
generated art for printing by separating into the four primary printing colors.
Comb bind: To plastic comb bind by
inserting the comb into punched holes. Composite film: Combining
two or more images on one or more pieces of film. Continuous-tone copy:
Illustrations, photographs or computer files that contain gradient tones from
black to white or light to dark. Contrast: The tonal change in color
from light to dark. Copy: All furnished material or
disc used in the production of a printed product. Cover paper: A heavy printing paper used
to cover books, make presentation folders, etc. Crash number: Numbering paper by pressing
an image on the first sheet which is transferred to all parts of the printed
set. Crimping: Puncture marks holding
business forms together. Cromalin: Trade name for DuPont color
proofs. Crop: To cut off parts of a picture
or image. Crop marks: Printed lines showing where
to trim a printed sheet. Crossover: Printing across the gutter
or from one page to the facing page of a publication. Cyan: One of four standard process
colors. The blue color. D Densitometer: A quality control devise to
measure the density of printing ink. Density: The degree of color or
darkness of an image or photograph. Diazo: A light sensitive coating
used on printing plates. Die: Metal rule or imaged block
used to cut or place an image on paper in the finishing process. Die cutting: Curing images in or out of
paper. Dot: An element of halftones.
Using a loupe you will see that printed pictures are made many dots. Dot gain or spread: A term
used to explain the difference in size between the dot on film v paper. Double burn: Exposing a plate to multiple
images. Draw-down: A sample of ink and paper
used to evaluate ink colors. Drop-out: Portions of artwork that do
not print. Dummy: A rough layout of a printed
piece showing position and finished size. Duotone: A halftone picture made up
of two printed colors. Dylux: Photographic paper made by
DuPont and used for bluelines. E Emboss: Pressing an image into paper
so that it will create a raised relief. Emulsion: Light sensitive coating
found on printing plates and film. Eurobind: A patented method of binding
perfect bound books so they will open and lay flatter. F Facsimile transmission: The process of converting graphic images into electronic signals. Film rip: See Rip film. Flat: An assembly of negatives
taped to masking materials for platemaking. Flood: To cover a printed page with
ink, varnish, or plastic coating. Flop: The reverse side of an
image. Foil: A metallic or pigmented
coating on plastic sheets or rolls used in foil stamping and foil embossing. Foil emboss: Foil stamping and embossing a
image on paper with a die. Foil stamping: Using a die to place a
metallic or pigmented image on paper. 4-color-process: The
process of combining four basic colors to create a printed color picture or
colors composed from the basic four colors. French fold: Two folds at right angles to
each other. G Galley proof: Text copy before it is put
into a mechanical layout or desktop layout. Gang: Getting the most out of a
printing press by using the maximum sheet size to print multiple images or jobs
on the same sheet. A way to save money. Generation: Stages of reproduction from
original copy. A first generation reproduction yields the best quality. Ghost bars: A quality control method
used to reduce ghosted image created by heat or chemical contamination. Ghosting: A faint printed image that
appears on a printed sheet where it was not intended. More often than not this
problem is a function of graphical design. It is hard to tell when or where
ghosting will occur. Sometimes you can see the problem developing immediately
after printing the sheet, other times the problem occurs while drying. However
the problem occurs it is costly to fix, if it can be fixed. Occasionally it can
be eliminated by changing the color sequence, the inks, the paper, changing to a
press with a drier, printing the problem area in a separate pass through the
press or changing the racking (reducing the number of sheets on the drying
racks). Since it is a function of graphical design, the buyer pays for the
increased cost. Gloss: A shiny look reflecting
light. Grain: The direction in which the
paper fiber lie. Grippers: The metal fingers on a
printing press that hold the paper as it passes through the press. H Hairline: A very thin line or gap
about the width of a hair or 1/100 inch. Halftone: Converting a continuous tone
to dots for printing. Hard copy: The output of a computer
printer, or typed text sent for typesetting. Hickey: Reoccurring unplanned spots
that appear in the printed image from dust, lint, dried ink. High-bulk paper: A paper
made thicker than its standard basis weight. Highlight: The lightest areas in a
picture or halftone. I Image area: Portion of paper on which
ink can appear. Imposition: Positioning printed pages so
they will fold in the proper order. Impression: Putting an image on paper. Imprint: Adding copy to a previously
printed page. Indicia: Postal information place on
a printed product. Ink fountain: The reservoir on a printing
press that hold the ink. J K Keylines: Lines on mechanical art that show position of photographs or illustrations. Kiss die cut: To cut the top layer of a
pressure sensitive sheet and not the backing. Knock out: To mask out an image. L Laid finish: Simulating the surface of
handmade paper. Laminate: To cover with film, to bond
or glue one surface to another. Layflat: See Eurobind. Line copy: High contrast copy not
requiring a halftone. Lines per inch: The
number of rows of dots per inch in a halftone. Loupe: A magnifying glass used to
review a printed image, plate and position film. M Magenta: Process red, one of the basic colors in process color. Makeready: All the activities required
to prepare a press for printing. Marginal words: Call outs
for directions on various parts of a business form. Mask: Blocking light from reaching
parts of a printing plate. Matchprint: Trade name for 3M integral
color proof. Matte finish: Dull paper or ink finish. Mechanical: Camera ready art all
contained on one board. Mechanical separation:
Mechanical art overlay for each color to be printed. Micrometer: Instrument used to measure
the thickness of different papers. Middle tones: The tones in a photograph
that are approximately half as dark as the shadow area. Moire: Occurs when screen angles
are wrong causing odd patterns in photographs. N Negative: The image on film that makes
the white areas of originals black and black areas white. Non-reproducing blue: A blue
color the camera cannot see. Used in marking up artwork. O Offsetting: Using an intermediate surface
used to transfer ink. Also, an unpleasant happening when the images of freshly
printed sheets transfer images to each other. Offset paper: Term for uncoated book
paper. Ok sheet: Final approved color inking
sheet before production begins. Opacity: The amount of show-through
on a printed sheet. The more opacity or the thicker the paper the less
show-through. (The thicker/heavier the paper the higher the cost.) Outline halftone: Removing
the background of a picture or silhouetting an image in a picture. Overlay: The transparent cover sheet
on artwork often used for instructions. Overrun or overs: Copies
printed in excess of the specified quantity. (Printing trade terms allow for +
- 10 % to represent a completed order.) P Page count: Total number of pages in a
book including blanks. Pattern carbon: Special
carbon paper used in business forms that only transfers in certain areas. Perfect bind: A type of binding that glues
the edge of sheets to a cover like a telephone book, Software manual, or?Magazine. Perfecting press: A sheet
fed printing press that prints both sides of a sheet in one pass. Pica: Unit of measure in
typesetting. One pica = 1/6 inch. Picking: Printers nightmare that
occurs as the surface of a sheet lifts off during printing. Generally a paper
manufactures quality control problem. Pin register: A standard used to fit film
to film and film to plates and plates to press to assure the proper
registration of printer colors. Plate gap: Gripper space. The area
where the grippers hold the sheet as it passes through the press. PMS: The abbreviated name of the
Pantone Color Matching System. PMT: Abbreviated name for
photomechanical transfer. Often used to make position prints. Point:?For paper, a unit of thickness equaling 1/1000 inch. for
typesetting, a unit of height equaling 1/72 inch. PostScript: The computer language most
recognized by printing devices. Press number: A method of numbering
manufacturing business forms or tickets. Pressure-sensitive paper: Paper
material with self sticking adhesive covered by a backing sheet. Process blue: The blue or cyan color in
process printing. Process colors: Cyan
(blue), magenta (process red), yellow (process yellow), black (process black). R Ragged left: Type that is justified to the
right margin and the line lengths vary on the left. Ragged right: Type that is justified to
the left margin and the line lengths vary on the right. Ream: Five hundred sheets of
paper. Recto: Right-hand page of an open
book. Reflective copy: Copy that
is not transparent. Register: To position print in the
proper position in relation to the edge of the sheet and to other printing on
the same sheet. Register marks:
Cross-hair lines or marks on film, plates, and paper that guide strippers,
platemakers, pressmen, and bindery personnel in processing a print order from
start to finish. Reverse: The opposite of what you
see. Printing the background of an image. For example; type your name on a
piece of paper. The reverse of this would be a black piece of paper with a
white name. Rip film: A method of making printing
negatives from PostScript files created by desktop publishing. Saddle stitch: Binding a booklet or
magazine with staples in the seam where it folds. S Scanner: Device used to make color
separations, halftones, duo tones and tri tones. Also a device used to scan
art, pictures or drawings in desktop publishing. Score: A crease put on paper to
help it fold better. Screen angles: Frequently a desktop
publishers nightmare. The angles at which halftone, duo tones, tri tones, and
color separation printing films are placed to make them look right. Self-cover: Using the same paper as the
text for the cover. Shadow: The darkest areas of a
photograph. Show-through: Printing on one side of a
sheet that can be seen on the other side of the sheet. Side guide: The mechanical register unit
on a printing press that positions a sheet from the side. Side stitch: Binding by stapling along
one side of a sheet. Signature: A sheet of printed pages
which when folded become a part of a book or publication. Silhouette halftone: A term
used for an outline halftone. Skid: A pallet used for a pile of
cut sheets. Specifications: A precise
description of a print order. Spine: The binding edge of a book
or publication. Split fountain: Putting
more than one ink in a printing fountain to achieve special color affects. Spoilage: Planned paper waste for all
printing operations. Spot varnish: Varnish used to hilight a
specific part of the printed sheet. Stamping: Term for foil stamping. Stat: Term for inexpensive print
of line copy or halftone. Step-and-repeat: A
procedure for placing the same image on plates in multiple places. Stet: A proof mark meaning let the
original copy stand. Stock: The material to be printed. Stripping: The positioning of film on a
flat prior to platemaking. Substance weight: A term of
basis weight when referring to bond papers. Substrate: Any surface on which
printing is done. T Text paper: Grades of uncoated paper with textured surfaces. Tints: A shade of a single color or
combined colors. Tissue overlay: Usually a
thin transparent paper placed over artwork for protection uses for marking
color breaks and other printer instructions. Transfer tape: A peel and stick tape used
in business forms. Transparency: A positive photographic
slide on film allowing light to pass through. Transparent copy: A film
that light must pass through for it to be seen or reproduced. Transparent ink: A
printing ink that does not conceal the color under it. Trapping: The ability to print one ink
over the other. Trim marks: Similar to crop or register
marks. These marks show where to trim the printed sheet. Trim size: The final size of one
printed image after the last trim is made. U Under-run: Production of fewer copies than ordered. See over run. Up: Printing two or three up
means printing multiple copies of the same image on the same sheet. UV coating: Liquid laminate bonded and
cured with ultraviolet light. Environmentally friendly. V Varnish: A clear liquid applied to
printed surfaces for looks and protection. (UV coating looks better.) Verso: The left hand page of an
open book. Vignette halftone: A
halftone whose background gradually fades to white. W Washup: Removing printing ink from a
press, washing the rollers and blanket. Certain ink colors require multiple
washups to avoid ink and chemical contamination. Waste: A term for planned spoilage.
Watermark: A distinctive design created
in paper at the time of manufacture that can be easily seen by holding the
paper up to a light. Web: A roll of printing paper. Web press: The name of a type of
presses that print from rolls of paper. Wire O: A bindery trade name for
mechanical binding using double loops of wire through a hole. Wire-O binding: A method
of wire binding books along the binding edge that will allow the book to lay
flat using double loops. See Wire O. With the grain: Folding
or feeding paper into the press or folder parallel to the grain of the paper. Work and tumble: Printing
one side of a sheet and turning it over from the gripper to the tail to print
the second side using the same side guide and plate for the second side. Work and turn: Printing one side of a sheet
and turning it over from left to right using the same side guides and plate for
the second side. Wove paper: A paper having a uniform
unlined surface with a smooth finish. X, Y, Z Glossary of Graphic Design Terms Graphic Design Terms A Alley: the space between columns
within a page. Not to be confused with the gutter, which is the combination of
the inside margins of two facing pages. Ascender: in typography, the parts of
lowercase letters that rise above the x-height of the font, e.g. b, d, f, h, k,
I, and t. B Banner: the title of a periodical,
which appears on the cover of the magazine and on the first page of the
newsletter. It contains the name of the publication and serial information --
date, volume, number. Baseline: in typography, the imaginary
horizontal line upon which the main body of the letters sits. Rounded letters
actually dip slightly below the baseline to give optical balance. Bit-mapped (mode): the Paint
graphics mode describes an image made of pixels where the pixel is either on
(black) or off (white). Black (font): a font that has more weight
than the bold version of a typeface. Bleed: an element that extends to
the edge of the page. To print a bleed, the publication is printed on oversized
paper which is trimmed. Block quote: a long quotation -- four or
more lines -- within body text, that is set apart in order to clearly
distinguish the author's words from the words that the author is quoting. Body type: roman -- normal, plain, or
book -- type used for long passages of text, such a stories in a newsletter,
magazine, or chapters in a book. Generally sized from 9 point to 14 point. See Display type. Byline: in newsletter/magazine
layout, a credit line for the author of an article. C Callout: an explanatory label for an
illustration, often drawn with a leader line pointing to a part of the
illustration. Camera-ready copy: final
publication material that is ready to be made into a negative for a printing
plate. May be a computer file or actual print and images on a board. Cap height: in typography, the distance
from the baseline to the top of the capital letters. Caption: an identification (title)
for an illustration, usually a brief phrase. The caption should also support
the other content. Character: any letter, figure,
punctuation, symbol or space Clip art: ready-made artwork sold or
distributed for clipping and pasting into publications. Available in hard-copy
books, and in electronic form, as files on disk. Color separation: the
process of creating separate negatives and plates for each color of ink (cyan,
magenta, yellow, and black) that will be used in the publication. See Process color separation, Spot color separation. Color spacing: the addition of spaces to
congested areas of words or word spacing to achieve a more pleasing
appearanceafter the line has been set normally. Column gutter: the space between columns of
type. Comprehensive layout (comp): a
blueprint of the publication, showing exactly how the type will be set and
positioned, and the treatment, sizing, and placement of illustrations on the
page. Condensed font: a font in
which the set-widths of the characters is narrower than in the standard
typeface. (Note: not the inter-character space -- that is accomplished through
tracking). Continuous tone: artwork
that contains gradations of gray, as opposed to black-and-white line art.
Photographs and some drawings, like charcoal or watercolor, require treatment
as continuous-tone art. See Line Art. Copy: generally refers to text --
typewritten pages, word-processing files, typeset galleys or pages -- although
sometimes refers to all source materials (text and graphics) used in a
publication. Copyfitting: the fitting of a variable
amount of copy within a specific and fixed amount of space. Counter: in typography, an enclosed
area within a letter, in uppercase, lowercase, and numeric letterforms. Crop marks: on a mechanical, horizontal
and vertical lines that indicate the edge of the printed piece. Cropping: for artwork, cutting out the
extraneous parts of an image, usually a photograph. Cutlines: explanatory text, usually full
sentences, that provides information about illustrations. Cutlines are
sometimes called captions or legends; not to be confused with title-captions,
which are headings for the illustration, or key-legends, which are part of the
artwork. D Descender: in typography, the part of
the letterform that dips below the baseline; usually refers to lowercase
letters and some punctuation, but some typefaces have uppercase letters with
descenders. Dingbat typeface: a
typeface made up of nonalphabetic marker characters, such as arrows, asterisks,
encircled numbers. Discretionary hyphen: a hyphen
that will occur only if the word appears at the end of a line, not if the word
appears in the middle of a line. Display type: large and/or decorative type
used for headlines and as graphic elements in display pieces. Common sizes are
14, 18, 24, 30, 36, 48, 60, and 72 point. Dither: for digital halftones, the
creation of a flat bitmap by simply rutning dots off or on. All dots are the
same size there are simply more of them in dark areas and fewer of them in
light areas -- as opposed to deep bitmaps used in gray-scale images. See Gray-scale images, Halftone. DPI (dots per inch): the unit
of measurement used to describe the resolution of printed output. The most
common desktop laser printers output a 300 dpi. Medium-resolution printers
output at 600 dpi. Image setters output at 1270-2540 dpi. Duotone: a halftone image printed
with two colors, one dark and the other light. The same photograph is halftoned
twice, using the same screen at two different angles; combining the two
improves the detail and contrast. E Egyptian type: originally, from 1815 on,
bold face with heavy slabs or square serifs. Em space: a space as wide as the point
size of the types. This measurement is relative; in 12-point type an em space
is 12 points wide, but in 24-point type an em space is 24 points wide. En space: a space half as wide as the
type is high (half an em space. Expanded (font): a font in
which the set widths of the characters are wider than in the standard typeface.
(Note: not the intercharacter space -- that is accomplished through
letterspacing -- but the characters themselves). Extended type: typefaces that are wide
horizontally -- Hellenic, Latin Wide, Egyptian Expanded, Microgramma Extended,
etc. F Facing pages: in a double-sided document,
the two pages that appear as a spread when the publication is opened. See Recto, Spread, Verso. Feather: to insert small amounts of
additional leading between lines, paragraphs, and before and after headings in
order to equalize the baselines of columns on a page. Folio: a page number, often set
with running headers or footers. Font: a set of characters in a
specific typeface, at a specific point size, and in a specific style.
"12-point Times Bold" is a font -- the typeface Times, at 12-point
size, in the bold style. Hence "12-point Times Italic" and
"10-point Times Bold" are separate fonts. G Galleys: in traditional publishing,
the type set in long columns, not laid out on a page. In desktop publishing,
galleys can be printed out using a page-assembly program, for proofreading and
copyfitting purposes. Greeked text: in page-assembly programs,
text that appears as gray bars approximating the lines of type rather than
actual characters. This speeds up the amount of time it takes to draw images on
the screen. Gray-scale image: a
"deep" bitmap that records with each dot its gray-scale level. The
impression of greenness is a function of the size of the dot; a group of large
dots looks dark and a group of small dots looks light. Gutter: In double-sided documents,
the combination of the inside margins of facing pages; the gutter should be
wide enough to accommodate binding. H Halftone: in traditional publishing, a
continuous-tone image photographed through a screen in order to create small
dots of varying sizes that can be reproduced on a printing press. Digital
halftones are produced by sampling a continuous-tone image and assigning
different numbers of dots, which simulate different sized dots, for the same
effect. See Dither, Gray-scale images, TIFF. Halftone screen: in
traditional publishing, the screen through which a continuous-tone image is
photographed, measured in lines per inch. Although digital halftones are not
actually photographed through a screen, the term is still used to describe the
size of the dots; the larger the dots (fewer lines per inch), the more grainy
the image. Special screens can be used for special effects. See Mezzotint, Solarization Hang indent alignment: type set
so that the first line is flush left and subsequent lines are indented. Hard hyphen: a non breaking hyphen, used
when the two parts of the hyphenated word should not be separated. As opposed
to a soft (or normal) hyphen, on which the word-wrapping function of a program
will break a line. Hard return: a return created by the
Return or Enter key, as opposed to a word-wrap, or soft return, which will
adjust according to the character count and column width. Head: a line or lines of copy set
in a larger face than the body copy. Hyphenation zone: For
ragged-right text, an arbitrary zone about 1/5 to 1/10 of the length of the
line; if a long word is not hyphenated and leaves a gap within that zone,
discretionary hyphens are used to fill the line. See Discretionary hyphen. I, J Image area: the area on a page within
which copy is positioned; determined by the margins. Italic: any slanted or leaning
letter designed to complement or be compatible with a companion roman typeface. See Oblique. Justified alignment: See Right-justified alignment. K Kern: to squeeze together
characters, for a better fit of strokes and white space. In display type,
characters almost need to be kerned because the white space between characters
at large sizes is more noticeable. Kicker: a brief phrase or sentence
lead-in to a story or chapter; usually set smaller than the headline or chapter
title, but larger than text type. Knockout: in printing, when one color
is to be printed immediately adjacent to another color; actually they are
printed with a slight overlap. See Lap register. L Landscape (orientation): a page or
layout that is wider than it is tall. Lap register: used with knockouts, images
of different colors are slightly overlapped, to avoid the appearance of a white
line between the two inks. Leader: a line of dots or dashes to
lead the eye across the page to separated copy. Leading: (pronounced
"led-ding") the space between lines of type, traditionally measured
baseline-to-baseline, in points. Text type is generally set with one or two
points of leading; for example, 10-point type with 2 points of leading. This is
described as 10/12, read ten on twelve. Letterforms: in typography, the shapes of
the characters. Ligature: in typography, characters
that are bound to each other, such as "oe" and "ae." In
professional typefaces, the lowercase "f" is also often set as a
ligature in combination with other characters such as "fi" and
"fl." Light (font): a font that is lighter than
the roman (normal, plain, or book) version of the typeface. Line art: black-and-white artwork with
no gray areas. Pen-and-ink drawings are line art, and most graphic images
produced with desktop publishing graphics programs can be treated as line art.
For printing purposes, positive halftones can be handled as line art. Logotype: a symbol, mark, or
identifying name. M Majuscule: a capital letter. Miniscule: a lowercase letter. Masthead: the credit box, headed by
the publication name, that lists sponsors, editors, writers, designers,
illustrators, photographers, and others, along with the publication office
address, subscription and advertisinginformation, etc. Measure: (noun) in typography, the
length of a line, even if the line is not filled with characters (such as a
centered or partial line), designated in picas. When the text is set in
columns, the line length is called columnmeasure. Mezzotint: for a halftone, a special
screen that produces connected, dusty-looking dots. Moir?patterns:
(pronounced "mo-ray") irregular plaid-like patterns that occur when a
bit-mapped image is reduced, enlarged, displayed, or printed at a resolution
different from the resolution of the original. See Scaling. Monospaced type: a
(typewriter) typeface in which the amount of horizontal space taken up by each
character is the same. N Negative space: in
design, the space where the figure isn't -- in artwork, usually the background;
in a publication, the parts of the page not occupied by type or graphics. See White space. Nested stories: in
newsletter/magazine layout, stories run in multiple columns at different column
depths. O Objected-oriented (mode): the Draw
graphics mode. A set of algorithms describe graphic form in abstract
geometrical terms, as object primitives, the most fundamental shapes from which
all other shapes are made: lines, curves, and solid or patterned areas. Oblique type: characters that are slanted
to the right; sans serif typefaces often have oblique rather than true italics,
which are a separate font. Offset printing: for
high-volume reproduction -- utilizes three rotating drums: a plate cylinder, a
blanket cylinder, and an impression cylinder. The printing plate is wrapped
around the plate cylinder, inked and dampened. The plate image is transferred,
or offset, onto the blanket cylinder. Paper passes between the blanket cylinder
and the impression cylinder, and the image is transferred onto the paper. Orphan: in a page layout, the first
line of a paragraph separated from the rest of the paragraph by a column or
page break.Headings without enough type under them may be considered as
orphans; there should be as much type below the heading as the height of the
heading itself, including white space. P Pasteup: the process of preparing
mechanicals -- in traditional publishing, positioning and pasting type and
graphics on a board (and overlays). In desktop publishing, page-assembly
software enables the user to do electronic pasteup. Pica: a measurement used in
typography for column widths and other space specifications in a page layout.
There are 12 points in a pica, and approximately 6 picas to an inch. Pixel (picture element): the
smallest unit that a device can address. Most often refers to display monitors,
a pixel being the smallest spot of phosphor that can be lit up on the screen. PMS (Pantone Matching System): a
standard color-matching system used by printers and graphic designers for inks,
papers, and other materials. A PMS color is a standard color defined by
percentage mixtures of different primary inks. Point: a measurement used in
typography for type size, leading, and other space specifications in a page
layout. There are 12 points in a pica, and approximately 70 points to an inch. Posterization: for a halftone, the
reduction of the number of gray scales to produce a high-contrast image. See Gray-scale image, Halftone. Printer font: high-resolution bitmaps or
font outline masters used for the actual laying down of the characters on the
printed page, as opposed to display on the screen. See Screen font. Process color separation: in
commercial printing, used for reproduction of color photographs. The various
hues are created by superimposition of halftone dots of the process colors:
cyan (a greenish blue), magenta (a purplish red), yellow, and black. See Color separation. Proportionally spaced type: a
typeface in which the set width (horizontal space) of characters is variable,
depending on the shape of the character itself and the characters surrounding
it. SeeSet width. Pull quote: a brief phrase (not
necessarily an actual quotation) from the body text, enlarged and set off from
the text with rules, a box, and/or a screen. It is from a part of the text set
previously, and is set in the middle of a paragraph, to add emphasis and
interest. Punctuation block: in
right-justified or right-aligned text, several consecutive lines that end with
punctuation and make the right margin look uneven. Q R Ragged right alignment: type set
so that the extra white space in a line is set at the right, giving the text a
ragged margin. Usually set with flush left. Recto: in a double-sided document,
the page that appears on the right side of the spread; an even-numbered page. Resolution: the crispness of detail or
fineness of grain in an image. Screen resolution is measured in dots by lines
(for example, 640 x 350); printer resolution is measured in dpi (for example,
300 dpi). Reverse: white or light-colored type
of images on a dark background. Right-justified alignment: type set
so that the text runs even on the right margin as well as on the left margin;
the extra white space is distributed between words and sometimes between
characters on the line. Rivers: spaces between words that
create irregular lines of white space in body type, particularly occurs when
the lines of type have been set with excessive word spacing. Roman type: book weight, regular, or in
desktop publishing systems, called plain or normal type -- used for the body
type in a text-intensive publication. Rough: a refined thumbnail sketch
for a publication design, done at actual size, with more detail. Roughs are
often used for the first client review. Rule (ruling line): a
geometric line used as a graphic enhancement in page assembly -- the term is
used to distinguish ruling lines from a line of type. Run-around: type that is set to fit the
contour of an illustration, photo, ornament or initial. Run-in heading: a heading
set on the same line as the text, usually in bold or italic type. Running heads/feet: titles
(often accompanied by page numbers) set at the top/bottom of text pages of a
multipaged publication. S Sans serif typeface: a
typeface that has no serifs, such as Helvetica or Swiss. The stroke weight is
usually uniform and the stress oblique, though there are exceptions. Scaling: reduction or enlargement of
artwork, which can be proportional (most frequently) or disproportional. In
desktop publishing, optimal scaling of bitmaps is reduction or enlargement that
will avoid or reduce moir?patterns. Screen font: low-resolution (that is, screen resolution) bitmaps of type
characters that show the positioning and size of characters on the screen. As
opposed to the printer font, which may be high-resolution bitmaps or font
outline masters. See Printer font. Screen (tint): in graphic arts, a uniform
dotted fill pattern, described in percentage (for example, 50 percent screen). Script: connected, flowing letters
resembling hand writing with pen or quill. Either slanted or upright. Sometimes
with a left-hand slant. Serif: in a typeface, a
counterstroke on letterforms, projecting from the ends of the main strokes. For
example, Times or Dutch is a serifed typeface. Some typefaces have no serifs;
these typefaces are called sans serif. Set width: in typography, the
horizontal width of characters. Typefaces vary in the average horizontal set
width of each character (for example, Times has a narrow set width), and set
widths of individual characters vary in typeset copy depending on the shape of
the character and surrounding characters. Sidebar: in newsletter/magazine
layout, a related story or block of information that is set apart from the main
body text, usually boxed and/or screened. Small caps: capital letters set at the
x-height of the font. Solarization: a photographic image in
which both blacks and whites appear black, while midtones approach white. Solid: lines of type with no space
between the lines (unleaded). Spot color separation: for
offset printing, separation of solid premixed ink colors (for example, green,
brown, light blue, etc.); used when the areas to be colored are not adjacent.
Spot color separations can be indicated on the tissue cover of the mechanical,
or made with overlays. Spread: in a double-sided document,
the combination of two facing pages, which are designed as a unit. Also, the
adjacent inside panels of a brochure when opened. Standing elements: in page
design, elements that repeat exactly
from page to page, not only in terms of style, but also in terms of page
position and content. The most commonly used standing elements are page headers
or footers, with automatic page numbers. Standoff: the amount of space between
a clock of text and a graphic, or between two blocks of text that wrap. See Text Wrap. Stress: in a typeface, the axis
around which the strokes are drawn: oblique (negative or positive) or vertical.
Not to be confused with the angle of the strokes themselves (for instance,
italics are made with slanted strokes, but may not have oblique stress). Stroke weight: in a typeface, the amount of
contrast between thick and thin strokes. Different typefaces have
distinguishing stroke-weight characteristics. Style sheet: in desktop publishing
program, style sheets contain the typographic specifications to be associated
with tagged text. They can be used to set up titles, headings, and the
attributes of blocks of text, such as lists, tables, and text associated with
illustrations. The use of style sheets is a fast and efficient way to insure
that all comparable elements are consistent. See Tags. Subhead: a secondary phrase usually
following a headline. Display line(s) of lesser size and importance than the
main headline(s). Subscript: a character slightly smaller
than the rest of the font, set below the baseline; used in chemical equations
and as base denotation in math, and sometimes as the denominator of fractions. Superscript: a character slightly smaller
than the rest of the font, set above the baseline, used for footnote markers
and sometimes as the numerator of fractions. T Tabloid-sized page: a page
that measures 11" x 17" -- most often used in portrait orientation
for newspapers. Not to be confused with an 11" x 17" spread, which is
made up of two letter-sized pages. Tags: for style sheets, delimited
sets of characters embedded in the text or internally coded. Tags apply to
paragraphs (text terminated with a hard return -- this includes titles and
headings) and indicate the function
of paragraphs. The actual type specification depends on the style sheet that is
associated with the tag. See Style sheet. Template: in page design, a file with
an associated style sheet and all standing and serial elements in place on a
master or base page, used for publication following the same design. Text wrap: the spatial relationship
between blocks of text and graphics, or between two blocks of text. A text wrap
may be rectangular (most commonly), irregular, or arbitrary. See Standoff. Thumbnails: miniature pictures sketched
as first design ideas, like thinking on paper (or on screen). TIFF (Tagged Image File Format):
for digital gray-scale halftones, a device-independent graphics file format.
TIFF filescan be used on IBM/compatible or Macintosh computers, and may be
output to PostScript printers. See Gray-scale image, Halftone. Tiling (tile): printing a page layout in
sections with overlapping edges so that the pieces can be pasted together. Tombstoning: in multicolumn publications,
when two or more headings in the same horizontal position on the page. Track: in typography, to reduce
space uniformly between all characters in a line. As opposed to kerning, which
is the variable reduction of space between specific characters. Type alignment: the
distribution of white space in a line of type where the characters at their
normal set width do not fill the entire line length exactly. Type maybe aligned
left, right, centered, or right-justified. Typeface: the set of characters
created by a type designer, including uppercase and lowercase alphabetical
characters, numbers, punctuation, and special characters. A single typeface
contains many fonts, at different sizes and styles. See Font. Type families: a group of typefaces of the
same basic design but with different weights and proportions. See Light, Black, Condensed, Expanded. U U&lc: abbreviation for upper- and
lowercase. Unit: in typography, divisions of
the em space, used for fine-tuning the letterspacing of text type. Different
typesetting systems and desktop publishing software use different unit
divisions: 8, 16, 32, and 64 are common. One unit is a thin space or a hair
space. V Verso: in a double-sided document,
the page that appears on the left side of the spread; an odd-numbered page. W Weight: denotes the thickness of a
letter stroke, light, extra-light, "regular," medium, demi-bold,
bold, extra bold and ultra bold. White space: in designing publication,
the areas where there is no text or graphics -- essentially, the negative space
of the page design. Widow: in a page layout, short last
lines of paragraphs -- usually unacceptable when separated from the rest of the
paragraph by a column break, and always unacceptable when separated by a page
break. Word wrap: in a word processor or text
editor, the automatic dropping of characters to the next line when the right
margin is reached. WYSIWYG (What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get): an interactive mode of computer processing, in which there is a
screen representation of the printed output. WYSIWYG is never entirely
accurate, because of the difference in resolution between display screens and
printers. X, Y, Z x-height: the height of the lowercase
"s." Sometimes referred to as "body height." More
generally, the height of the lowercase letters. Glossary of Internet Terms Internet Terms A ADN: (Advanced Digital Network) Usually refers to a 56Kbps leased-line. See also: Leased Line ?/span> ADSL: (Asymmetric Digital
Subscriber Line) A DSL line where the upload speed is different from the download
speed. Usually the download speed is much greater. See also: DSL, SDSL ?/span> Anonymous FTP: See also: FTP ?/span> Applet: A small Java program that can be embedded in an HTML page. Applets differ from full-fledged Java applications in that
they are not allowed to access certain resources on the local computer, such as
files and serial devices (modems, printers, etc.), and are prohibited from
communicating with most other computers across a network. The common rule is
that an applet can only make an Internet connection to the computer from which
the applet was sent. See also: HTML, Java ?/span> Archie: A tool (software) for
finding files stored on anonymous FTP
sites. You need to know the exact file name or a substring of it. By 1999 Archie had been almost completely
replaced by web-based search engines. Back when FTP was the main way people moved files over the Internet archie was quite popular. See also: FTP ?/span> ARPANet : (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) The precursor to the Internet. Developed in the late 60's and
early 70's by the US Department of Defense as an experiment in
wide-area-networking to connect together computers that were each running
different system so that people at one location could use computing resources
from another location. See also: Internet (Upper case I), Network, WAN ?/span> ASCII: (American Standard Code for
Information Interchange) This is the defacto world-wide
standard for the code numbers used by computers to represent all the upper and
lower-case Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. There are 128 standard
ASCII codes each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number:
0000000 through 1111111. B Backbone: A high-speed line or series
of connections that forms a major pathway within a network. The term is
relative as a backbone in a small network
will likely be much smaller than many non-backbone lines in a large network. See also: Network ?/span> Bandwidth: How much stuff you can send
through a connection. Usually measured in bits-per-second. A full page of
English text is about 16,000 bits. A fast modem can move about 57,000 bits in
one second. Full-motion full-screen video would require roughly 10,000,000
bits-per-second, depending on compression. See also: Bit, bps, T-1 ?/span> Baud: In common usage the baud
rate of a modem is how many bitsit can send or receive per second.
Technically, baud is the number of times per second that the carrier signal
shifts value - for example a 1200 bit-per-second modem actually runs at 300
baud, but it moves 4 bits per baud (4 x 300= 1200 bits per second). See also: Bit, Modem ?/span> BBS: (Bulletin Board System) A
computerized meeting and announcement system that allows people to carry on
discussions, upload and download files, and make announcements without the
people being connected to the computer at the same time. In the early 1990's
there were many thousands (millions?) of BBS?s around the world, most are very
small, running on a single IBM clone PC with 1 or 2 phone lines. Some are very
large and the line between a BBS and a system like AOL gets crossed at some
point, but it is not clearly drawn. Binary: Information consisting
entirely of ones and zeros. Also, commonly used to refer to files that are not
simply text files, e.g. images. See also: MIME, UUENCODE ?/span> Binhex: (BINary HEXadecimal) A
method for converting non-text files (non-ASCII) into ASCII. This is needed because Internet e-mail can only handle
ASCII. See also: ASCII, MIME, UUENCODE ?/span> Bit: (Binary DigIT) A single
digit number in base-2, in other words, either a 1 or a zero. The smallest unit
of computerized data. Bandwidthis
usually measured in bits-per-second. See also: Bandwidth, Bit, bps, Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte ?/span> BITNET: (Because It's Time NETwork
(or Because It's There NETwork)) A network
of educational sites separate from the Internet, but e-mail is freely exchanged
between BITNET and the Internet. Listservs?/i>, a popular form of e-mail
discussion groups, originated on BITNET. At its peak (the late 1980's and early
1990's) BITNET machines were usually mainframes, often running IBM's MVS
operating system. BITNET is probably the only international network that is
shrinking. See also: Internet (Upper case I), Listserv ?/span>, Network ?/span> Blog: (weB LOG) A blog is
basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and
someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated
daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background
to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always
arranged in chronological order with the most recent additions featured most
prominently. bps: (Bits-Per-Second) A
measurement of how fast data is moved from one place to another. A 56K modem can move about 57,000 bits per
second. See also: Bandwidth, Bit ?/span> Browser: A Client program (software) that is used to look at various kinds of
Internet resources. See also: Client, Server, URL, WWW ?/span> BTW: (By The Way) A shorthand
appended to a comment written in an online forum. See also: IMHO ?/span> Byte: A set of Bits that represent
a single character. Usually there are 8 Bits in a Byte, sometimes more,
depending on how the measurement is being made. See also: Bit C CATP: (Caffeine Access Transport
Protocol) Common method of moving caffeine across Wide Area Networks such as the Internet
CATP was first used at the Binary
Cafe in Cybertown and quickly spread world-wide. There are reported problems with
short-circuits and rust and decaffinated beverages were not supprted until
version 1.5.3 See also: Internet (Upper case I), IRC, WAN ?/span> Certificate Authority: An issuer
of Security Certificates used in SSL connections. See also: SSL ?/span> CGI: (Common Gateway Interface) A
set of rules that describe how a Web Server communicates with another piece
of software on the same machine, and how the other piece of software (the ?CGI
program?) talks to the web server. Any piece of software can be a CGI program
if it handles input and output according to the CGI standard. See also: Server, WWW ?/span> cgi-bin: The most common name of a
directory on a web server in which CGIprograms
are stored. See also: CGI ?/span> Client: A software program that is
used to contact and obtain data from a Server
software program on another computer, often across a great distance. EachClient program is designed to work with
one or more specific kinds of Server
programs, and each Server requires a
specific kind of Client. A Web Browser is a specific kind of Client. See also: Browser, Client, Server ?/span> co-location: Most often used to refer to
having a server that belongs to one
person or group physically located on an Internet-connected
network that belongs to another
person or group. Usually this is done because the server owner wants their
machine to be on a high-speed Internet connection and/or they do not want the
security risks of having the server on thier own network. See also: Internet (Upper case I), Network, Server ?/span> Cookie: The most common meaning of
"Cookie" on the Internet refers to a piece of information sent by a
Web Server to a Web Browser that the Browser software is
expected to save and to send back to the Server whenever the browser makes
additional requests from the Server. Depending on the type of Cookie
used, and the Browsers' settings, the Browser may accept or not accept the
Cookie, and may save the Cookie for either a short time or a long time. Cookies might contain information
such as login or registration information, online "shopping cart"
information, user preferences, etc. When a Server receives a request
from a Browser that includes a Cookie, the Server is able to use the
information stored in the Cookie. For example, the Server might customize what
is sent back to the user, or keep a log of particular users' requests. Cookies are usually set to expire
after a predetermined amount of time and are usually saved in memory until the
Browser software is closed down, at which time they may be saved to disk if
their "expire time" has not been reached. Cookies do not read your hard drive
and send your life story to the CIA, but they can be used to gather more
information about a user than would be possible without them. See also: Browser, Server ?/span> CSS: (Cascading Style Sheet) A
standard for specifying the appearance of text and other elements. CSS was
developed for use with HTML in Web pages but is also used in other
situations, notably in applications built using XPFE. CSS is typically used to provide a single "library"
of styles that are used over and over throughout a large number of related
documents, as in a web site. A CSS file might specify that all numbered lists
are to appear in italics. By changing
that single specification the look of a large number of documents can be easily
changed. See also: HTML, Web page, XPFE ?/span> Cyberpunk: Cyberpunk was originally a
cultural sub-genre of science fiction taking place in a not-so-distant,
dystopian, over-industrialized society. The term grew out of the work of
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and has evolved into a cultural label
encompassing many different kinds of human, machine, and punk attitudes. It
includes clothing and lifestyle choices as well. See also: Cyberspace ?/span> Cyberspace: Term originated by author
William Gibson in his novel Neuromancer
the word Cyberspace is currently used to describe the whole range of
information resources available through computer networks. See also: Cyberpunk ?/span> D DHTML: (Dynamic HyperText Markup
Language) DHTML refers to web pages
that use a combination of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to create features such as letting the user drag items around
on the web page, some simple kinds of animation, and many more. See also: CSS, HTML, JavaScript, Web page ?/span> Digerati: The digital version of
literati, it is a reference to a vague cloud of people seen to be
knowledgeable, hip, or otherwise in-the-know in regardsto the digital
revolution. DNS: (Domain Name System) The
Domain Name System is the system that translates Internet domain names into IP numbers.
A "DNS Server" is a server
that performs this kind of translation. See also: Domain Name, IP Number, Server ?/span> Domain Name: The unique name that
identifies an Internet site. Domain Names always have 2 or more parts,
separated by dots. The part on the left is the most specific, and the part on
the right is the most general. A given machine may have more than one Domain
Name but a given Domain Name points to only one machine. For example, the
domain names: yhdesign.net mail.yhdesign.net workshop.yhdesign.net can all refer to the same machine, but
each domain name can refer to no more than one machine. Usually, all of the machines on a
given Network will have the same thing as the right-hand portion of their
Domain Names (matisse.net in the examples above). It is also possible for a
Domain Name to exist but not be connected to an actual machine. This is often
done so that a group or business can have an Internet e-mail address without
having to establish a real Internet site. In these cases, some real Internet
machine must handle the mail on behalf of the listed Domain Name. See also: IP Number, TLD ?/span> Download: Transferring data (usually a
file) from a another computer to the computer your are using. The opposite of upload. See also: Upload ?/span> DSL: (Digital Subscriber Line) A
method for moving data over regular phone lines. A DSL circuit is much faster
than a regular phone connection, and the wires coming into the subscriber's
premises are the same (copper) wires used for regular phone service. A DSL
circuit must be configured to connect two specific locations, similar to a
leased line (howeverr a DSL circuit is not a leased line. A common configuration of DSL allows
downloads at speeds of up to 1.544 megabits (not megabytes) per second, and
uploads at speeds of 128 kilobits per second. This arrangement is called ADSL: Asymmetric Digital Subscriber
Line. Another common configuration is
symmetrical: 384 Kilobits per second in both directions. In theory ADSL allows download
speeds of up to 9 megabits per second and upload speeds of up to 640 kilobits
per second. DSL is now a popular alternative to
Leased Lines and ISDN, being faster than ISDN and less costly than traditional
Leased Lines. See also: ADSL, Bandwidth, ISDN, Leased Line, SDSL E Email: (Electronic Mail) Messages,
usually text, sent from one person to another via computer. E-mail can also be
sent automatically to a large number of addresses. See also: Listserv ?/span>, SMTP ?/span> Ethernet: A very common method of
networking computers in a LAN. There is more than one type of Ethernet.
By 2001 the standard type was "100-BaseT" which can handle up to
about 100,000,000 bits-per-second and can be used with almost any kind of
computer. See also: Bandwidth, FDDI, LAN ?/span> Extranet: An intranet that is accesible to computers that are not hysically part
of a companys' own private network,
but that is not accessible to the general public, for example to allow vendors
and business partners to access a company web site. Often an intranet will make use of a
Virtual Private Network. (VPN.) See also: Intranet, Network, VPN F FAQ: (Frequently Asked Questions)
FAQs are documents that list and answerthe most common questions on a
particular subject. There are hundreds of FAQs on subjects as diverse as Pet
Grooming and Cryptography. FAQs are usually written by people who have tired of
answering the same question over and over. FDDI: (Fiber Distributed Data
Interface) A standard for transmitting data on optical fiber cables at a rate
of around 100,000,000 bits-per-second (10 times as fast as 10-BaseTEthernet, about twice as fast as T-3). See also: Ethernet, T-3 ?/span> Finger:?An Internet software tool for locating people on other Internet
sites. Finger is also sometimes used to give access to non-personal
information, but the most common use is to see if a person has an account at a
particular Internet site. Many sites do not allow incoming Finger requests, but
many do. Fire Wall: A combination of hardware
and software that separates a Network
into two or more parts for security purposes. See also: Network ?/span> Flame: Originally,
"flame" meant to carry forth in a passionate manner in the spirit of
honorable debate. Flames most often involved the use of flowery language and
flaming well was an art form. More recently flame has come to refer to any kind
of derogatory comment no matter how witless or crude. See also: Flame War ?/span> Flame War: When an online discussion
degenerates into a series of personal attacks against the debators, rather than
discussion of their positions. A heated exchange. See also: Flame ?/span> FTP: (File Transfer Protocol) A
very common method of moving files between two Internet sites. FTP is a way to login to another Internet site for the purposes of retrieving
and/or sending files. There are many Internet sites that have established
publicly accessible repositories of material that can be obtained using FTP, by
logging in using the account name "anonymous", thus these sites are
called "anonymous ftp servers". FTP was invented and in wide use
long before the advent of the World Wide
Web and originally was always used from a text-only interface. See also: Login, WWW G Gateway: The technical meaning is a
hardware or software set-up that translates between two dissimilar protocols,
for example America Online has a gateway that translates between its internal,
proprietary e-mail format and Internet e-mail format. Another, sloppier meaning
of gateway is to describe any mechanism for providing access to another system,
e.g. AOL might be called a gateway to the Internet. GIF: (Graphic Interchange Format)
A common format for image files, especially suitable for images containing
large areas of the same color. GIF format files of simple images are often
smaller than the same file would be if stored in JPEG format, but GIF format does not store photographic images as
well as JPEG. See also: JPEG, PNG ?/span> Gigabyte: 1000 or 1024 Megabytes, depending on who is
measuring. See also: Byte ?/span> Gopher: Invented at the University
of Minnesota in 1993 just before the Web,
gopher was a widely successful method of making menus of material available
over the Internet. Gopher was designed to be much
easier to use than FTP, while still
using a text-only interface. Gopher is a Client and Server style
program, whichrequires that the user have a Gopher Client program. Although Gopher spread rapidly across the globe in
only a couple of years, it has been largely supplanted by Hypertext, also known
as WWW (World Wide Web). There are
still thousands of Gopher Servers on
the Internet and we can expect they will remain for a while. See also: Client, FTP, WWW H Hit: As used in reference to the
World Wide Web, ?hit? means a single request from a web browser for a single item from a web server; thus in order for a web browser to display a page that contains
3 graphics, 4 ?hits? would occur at the server: 1 for the HTML page, and one for each of the 3 graphics. See also: Browser, HTML, Server ?/span> Home Page (or Homepage): Several
meanings. Originally, the web page
that your browser is set to use when
it starts up. The more common meaning refers to the main web page for a
business, organization, person or simply the main page out of a collection of
web pages, e.g. "Check out so-and-so's new Home Page." See also: Browser, WWW ?/span> Host: Any computer on a network that is a repository for
services available to other computers on the network. It is quite common to have one host machine provide
several services, such as SMTP
(email) and HTTP (web). See also: Network, SMTP ?/span> HTML:?(HyperText Markup Language) The coding language used to create Hypertext documents for use on the World Wide Web. HTML looks a lot like
old-fashioned typesetting code, where you surround a block of text with codes
that indicate how it should appear. The "hyper" in Hypertext
comes from the fact that in HTML you can specify that a block of text, or an
image, is linked to another file on the Internet. HTML files are meant to be
viewed using a "Web Browser". HTML is loosely based on a more
comprehensive system for markup called SGML. See also: Browser, Hypertext, WWW ?/span> HTTP: (HyperText Transfer
Protocol) The protocol for moving hypertextfiles
across the Internet. Requires a HTTP client program on one end, and an HTTP server program on the other end. HTTP is
the most important protocol used in the World
Wide Web (WWW). See also: Client, Hypertext, Server, WWW ?/span> Hypertext: Generally, any text that
contains links to other documents - words or phrases in the document that can
be chosen by a reader and which cause another document to be retrieved and
displayed. See also: HTML, HTTP ?/span> I IMAP: (Internet Message Access
Protocol) IMAP is gradually replacing POP
as the main protocol used by email clients
in communicating with email servers. Using IMAP an email client program
can not only retrieve email but can also manipulate message stored on the
server, without having to actually retrieve the messages. So messages can be
deleted, have their status changed, multiple mail boxes can be managed, etc. IMAP is defined in RFC 2060 See also: Client, Email, POP, RFC, Server ?/span> IMHO: (In My Humble Opinion)A
shorthand appended to a comment written in an online forum, IMHO indicates that
the writer is aware that they are expressing a debatable view, probably on a
subject already under discussion. One of many such short hands in common use
online, especially in discussion forums. internet (Lower case i): Any time
you connect 2 or more networks
together, you have an internet - as in inter-national or inter-state. See also: Internet (Upper case I), Network ?/span> Internet (Upper case I): The vast
collection of inter-connected networks that are connected using the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from
the ARPANET of the late 60's and
early 70's. The Internet connects tens of
thousands of independent networks into a vast global internet and is probably the largest Wide Area Network in the world. See also: internet (Lower case i), Network, WAN ?/span> Intranet: 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. Compare with extranet. See also: Extranet, internet (Lower case i), Internet (Upper case I) ?/span> IP Number: (Internet Protocol Number)
Sometimes called a dotted quad. 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 number - if a machine does not have an IP number, it
is not really on the Internet. Many machines (especially servers) also have one
or more Domain Names that are easier for people to remember. See also: Domain Name, Server, TCP/IP ?/span> IRC: (Internet Relay Chat)
Basically a huge multi-user live chat facility. There are a number of major IRC
servers around the world which are
linked to each other. Anyone can create a channel and anything that anyone
types in a given channel is seen by all others in the channel. Private channels
can (and are) created for multi-person conference calls. See also: Server ?/span> ISDN: (Integrated Services Digital
Network) Basically a way to move more dataover existing regular phone lines.
ISDN is available to much of the USA and in most markets it is priced very
comparably to standard analog phone circuits. It can provide speeds of roughly
128,000 bits-per-second over regular phone lines. In practice, most people will
be limited to 56,000or 64,000 bits-per-second. Unlike DSL, ISDN can be used to connect to many different locations, one
at a time, just like a regular telephone call, as long the other location also
has ISDN. See also: DSL ?/span> ISP: (Internet Service Provider)
An institution that provides access to the Internet in some form, usually for
money. J Java: A cup of coffee (just
kidding) Java is a network-friendly programming language invented by Sun
Microsystems. Java is often used to build large,
complex systems that involve several different computers interacting across
networks, for example transaction processing systems. Java is also becoming popular for
creating programs that run in small electronic devicws, such as mobile
telephones. A very common use of Java is to
create programs that can be safely downloaded to your computer through the
Internet and immediately run without fear of viruses or other harm to your
computer or files. Using small Java programs (called "Applets"), Web pages can include functions such as
animations,calculators, and other fancy tricks. See also: Applet, JDK ?/span> JavaScript: JavaScript is a programming
language that is mostly used in web pages, usually to add features that make
the web page more interactive. When JavaScript is included in an HTML file it relies upon the browser to
interpret the JavaScript. When JavaScript is combined with Cascading Style Sheets(CSS), and later versions of HTML (4.0 and
later) the result is often called DHTML.
See also: HTML ?/span> JDK: (Java Development Kit) A
software development package from Sun Microsystems that implements the basic
set of tools needed to write, test and debug Java applications and applets
See also: Applet, Java ?/span> JPEG: (Joint Photographic Experts
Group) JPEG is most commonly mentioned as a format for image files. JPEG format
is preferred to the GIF format for
photographic images as opposed to line art or simple logo art. See also: GIF, PNG K Kilobyte A thousand bytes. Actually, usually
1024 (210)
bytes. See also: Byte ?/span> L LAN: (Local Area Network) A
computer network limited to the immediate area, usually the same building or
floor of a building. See also: Network, VPN, WAN ?/span> Leased Line: Refers to line such as a
telephone line or fiber-optic cable that is rented for exclusive 24-hour,
7-days-a-week use from your location to another location. The highest speed
data connections require a leased line. See also: DSL, ISDN ?/span> Linux: A widely used Open Source
Unix-like operating system. Linux was first released by its inventor Linus
Torvalds in 1991. There are versions of Linux for almost every available type
of computer hardware from desktop machines to IBM mainframes. The inner
workings of Linux are open and available for anyone to examine and change as
long as they make their changes available to the public. This has resulted in
thousands of people working on various aspects of Linux and adaptation of Linux
for a huge variety of purposes, from servers to TV-recording boxes. See also: Open Source Software, Unix ?/span> Listserv ? The most common kind of maillist, "Listserv" is a
registered trademark of L-Soft international, Inc. Listservs originated on BITNET but they are now common on the Internet. See also: BITNET, Internet (Upper case I), Maillist ?/span> Login: Noun or a verb. Noun: The account name used to gain
access to a computer system. Not a secret (contrast with Password). Verb: the act of connecting to a
computer system by giving your credentials (usually your "username"
and "password") See also: Password M Maillist: (or Mailing List) A
(usually automated) system that allows people to send e-mail to one address, whereupon their message is copied and sent
to all of the other subscribers to the maillist. In this way, people who have
many different kinds of e-mail access can participate in discussions together. See also: Email, Listserv ?/span> ?/span> Megabyte: A million bytes. Actually, technically, 1024 kilobytes. See also: Byte, Kilobyte ?/span> Meta Tag: A specific kind of HTML tag that contains information not
normally displayed to the user. Meta tags contan information about the page
itself, hence the name ("meta" means "about this subject") Typical uses of Meta tags are to
include information for search engines
to help them better categorize a page. You can see the Meta tags in a page
if you view the pages' source code. See also: HTML, Search Engine, SEO ?/span> MIME: (Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions) Originally a standard for defining the types of files attached to
standard Internet mail messages. The MIME standard has come to be used in many
situations where one cmputer programs needs to communicate with another program
about what kind of file is being sent. For example, HTML files have a MIME-type of text/html, JPEG files are image/jpeg, etc. See also: HTML, JPEG ?/span> Mirror: Generally speaking, "to
mirror" is to maintain an exact copy of something. Probably the most
common use of the term on the Internet refers to "mirror sites" which
are web sites, or FTP sites that maintain copies of
material originated at another location, usually in order to provide more
widespread access to the resource. For example, one site might create a library
of software, and 5 other sites might maintain mirrors of that library. See also: FTP, WWW ?/span> Modem: (MOdulator, DEModulator) A
device that connects a computer to a phone line. A telephone for a computer. A
modem allows a computer to talk to other computers through the phone system.
Basically, modems do for computers what a telephone does for humans. MOO: (Mud, Object Oriented) One
of several kinds of multi-user role-playing environments. See also: MUD ?/span> Mosaic: The first WWW browser that was available for the
Macintosh, Windows,and UNIX all with the same interface. Mosaic really started
the popularity of the Web. The source-code to Mosaic was licensed by several
companies and used to create many other web browsers. Mosaic was developed at the National
Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), at the Univeristy of
Urbana-Champange in Illinois, USA. The first version was released in late 1993.
See also: Browser, WWW ?/span> MUD: (Multi-User Dungeon or
Dimension) A (usually text-based) multi-user simulation environment. Some are
purely for fun and flirting, others are used for serious software development,
or education purposes and all thatlies in between. A significant feature of
most MUDs is that users can create things that stay after they leave and which
other users can interact within their absence, thus allowing a world to be
built gradually and collectively. See also: MOO ?/span> MUSE: (Multi-User Simulated
Environment) One kind of MUD - usually with little or no violence. See also: MUD ?/span> N Netiquette: The etiquette on the Internet. Netizen: Derived from the term
citizen, referring to a citizen of the Internet,or
someone who uses networked resources. The term connotes civic responsibility
and participation. Netscape: A WWW Browser and the name of a company. The Netscape (tm) browser
was originally based on the Mosaic
program developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
(NCSA). See also: Mosaic ?/span> Network: Any time you connect 2 or
more computers together so that they can share resources, you have a computer
network. Connect 2 or more networks together and you have an internet. See also: internet (Lower case i) ?/span> Newsgroup: The name for discussion
groups on USENET. See also: USENET ?/span> NIC: (Network Information Center)
Generally, any office that handles information for a network. The most famous
of these on the Internet was the InterNIC, which was where most new domain
names were registered until that process was decentralized to a number of
private companies. Also means "Network Interface card", which is the
card in a computer that you plug a network cable into. See also: Domain Name, Network ?/span> NNTP: (Network News Transport
Protocol) The protocol used by clientand
server software to carry USENET postings back and forth over a TCP/IP network. If you are using any of the more common software such as Netscape, Nuntius, Internet Explorer,
etc. to participate in newsgroups
then you are benefiting from an NNTP connection. See also: Client, Server, TCP/IP ?/span> Node: Any single computer
connected to a network. See also: Network O Open Content: Copyrighted information
(such as this Glossary) that is made available by the copyright owner to the
general public under license terms that allow reuse of the material, often with
the requirement (as with this Glossary) that the re-user grant the public the
same rights to the modified version that the re-user received from the
copyright owner. Information that is in the Public
Domain might also be considered a form of Open Content. See also: Open Source Software ?/span> Open Source Software: Open
Source Software is software for which the underlying programming code is
available to the users so that they may read it, make changes to it, and build
new versions of the software incorporating their changes. There are many types
of Open Source Software, mainly differing in the licensing term under which
(altered) copies of the source code may (or must be) redistributed. See also: Open Content ?/span> P Packet Switching: The
method used to move data around on the Internet.
In packet switching,all the data coming out of a machine is broken up into
chunks, each chunk has the address of where it came from and where it is going.
This enables chunks of data from many different sources to co-mingle on the
same lines, and be sorted and directed along different routes by special
machines along the way. This way many people can use the same lines at the same
time. You might think of several caravans
of trucks all using the same road system to carry materials. See also: Internet (Upper case I), Router ?/span> Password: A code used to gain access (login) to a locked system. Good
passwords contain letters and non-letters and are not simple combinations such
as virtue7. See also: Login ?/span> ping: To check if a server is
running. From the sound that a sonar systems makes in movies, you know, when
they are searching for a submarine. Plug-in: A (usually small) piece of
software that adds features to a larger piece of software. Common examples are
plug-ins for the Netscape?browser
and web server. Adobe Photoshop?also
uses plug-ins. See also: Browser, Server ?/span> PNG: (Portable Network Graphics)
PNG is a graphics format specifically designed for use on the World Wide Web.
PNG enable compression of images without any loss of quality, including
high-resolution images. Another important feature of PNG is that anyone may
create software that works with PNG images without paying any fees - the PNG
standard is free of any licensing costs. See also: GIF, JPEG ?/span> POP: (Point of Presence, also
Post Office Protocol) Two commonly used meanings: Point of Presence and Post Office
Protocol. A Point of Presence usually means a
city or location where a network can be connected to, often with dial up phone
lines. So if an Internet company says they will soon have a POP in Belgrade, it
means that they will soon have a local phone number in Belgrade and/or a place
where leased lines can connect to their network. A second meaning, Post Office
Protocol refers to a way that e-mail client
software such as Eudora gets mail from a mail server. When you obtain an account from an Internet Service
Provider (ISP) you almost always get
a POP account with it, and it is this POP account that you tell your e-mail
software to use to get your mail. Another protocol called IMAP is replacing POP
for email. See also: Client, Email, IMAP, ISP, Server ?/span> Port: 3 meanings. First and most
generally, a place where information goes into or out of a computer, or both.
E.g. the serial port on a personal computer is where a modem would be connected. On the Internet port often refers to
a number that is part of a URL, appearing after a colon (:) right after the
domain name. Every service on an Internet server listens on a particular port
number on that server. Most services have standard port numbers, e.g. Web servers
normally listen on port 80. Services can also listen on non-standard ports, in
which case the port number must be specified in a URL when accessing the
server, so you might see a URL of the form: ?
gopher://peg.cwis.uci.edu:7000/ This shows a gopher server running
on a non-standard port (the standard gopher port is 70). Finally, port also refers to
translating a piece of software to bring it from one type of computer system to
another, e.g. to translate a Windows program so that is will run on a
Macintosh. See also: URL ?/span> Portal: Usually used as a marketing
term to described a Web site that is or is intended to be the first place
people see when using the Web. Typically a "Portal site" has a
catalog of web sites, a search engine, or both. A Portal site may also offer
email and other service to entice people to use that site as their main
"point of entry" (hence "portal") to the Web. Posting: A single message entered
into a network communications system. PPP: (Point to Point Protocol) The
most common protocol used to connect home computers to the Internet over
regular phone lines. Most well known as a protocol that
allows a computer to use a regular telephone line and a modem to make TCP/IPconnections
and thus be really and truly on the Internet.
See also: Modem, SLIP, TCP/IP ?/span> Protocol: On the Internet
"protocol" usually refers to a set of rules that define an exact
format for communication between systems. For example the HTTP protocol defines the format for communication between web
browsers and web servers, the IMAP
protocol defines the format for communication between IMAP email servers and
clients, and the SSL protocol defines
a format for encrypted communications over the Internet. Virtually all Internet protocls are
defined in RFC documents. See also: FTP, HTTP, IMAP, POP, PPP, RFC, SLIP, SMTP, SNMP, SSL, TCP/IP, UDP ?/span> Proxy Server: A Proxy Server sits in
between a Client and the
"real" Server that a Client
is trying to use. Client's are sometimes configured to use a Proxy Server,
usually an HTTP server. The clients
makes all of it's requests from the Proxy Server, which then makes requests
from the "real" server and passes the result back to the Client.
Sometimes the Proxy server will store the results and give a stored result
instead of making a new one (to reduce use of a Network). Proxy servers are commonly established on Local Area Networks See also: Client, HTTP, LAN, Network, Server ?/span> PSTN: (Public Switched Telephone
Network) The regular old-fashioned telephone system. R RDF: (Resource Definition
Framework) A set of rules (a sort of language) for creating descriptions of
information, especially information available on the World Wide Web. RDF could be used to describe a collection of
books, or artists, or a collection of web
pages as in the RSS data format
which uses RDF to create machine-readable summaries of web sites. RDF is also used in XPFE applications to define the
relationships between different collections of elements, for example RDF could
be used to define the relationship between the data in a database and the way
that data is displayed to a user. See also: RSS, Web page, WWW, XML, XPFE, XUL ?/span> RFC: (Request For Comments) The
name of the result and the process for creating a standard on the Internet. New standards are proposed and
published on the Internet, as a Request For Comments. The proposal is reviewed
by the Internet Engineering Task Force (http://www.ietf.org/), a
consensus-building body that facilitates discussion, and eventually a new standard
is established, but the reference number/name for the standard retains the
acronym RFC, e.g. the official standard for e-mail
message formats is RFC 822. Router: A special-purpose computer
(or software package) that handles the connection between 2 or more
Packet-Switched networks. Routers
spend all their time looking at the source and destination addresses of the packets passing through them and
deciding which route to send them on. See also: Network, Packet Switching ?/span> RSS: (Rich Site Summary or RDF
Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication) XML-based summary of a web site, used
for syndication, etc. See also: RDF, XML S SDSL: (Symmetric Digital
Subscriber Line) A version of DSL
where the upload speeds and download speeds are the same. See also: ADSL, DSL ?/span> Search Engine: A (usually web-based) system
for searching the information available on the Web. Some search engines work by
automatically searching the contents of other systems and creating a database
of the results. other search engines contains only material manually approved
for inclusion in a database, and some combine the two approaches. See also: WWW ?/span> Security Certificate: A chunk
of information (often stored as a text file) that is used by the SSL protocol to establish a secure
connection. See also: SSL ?/span> SEO: (Search Engine Optimization) The practice of designing web pages
so that they rank as high as possible in search results from search engines. There is "good" SEO and
"bad" SEO. Good SEO involves making the web page clearly describe its
subject, making sure it contains truly useful information, including accurate
information in Meta tags, and
arranging for other web sites to make links to the page. Bad SEO involves
attempting to deceive people into believing the page is more relevant than it
truly is by doing things like adding inaccurate Meta tags to the page. See also: Meta Tag, Search Engine ?/span> Server: A computer, or a software
package, that provides a specific kind of service to client software running on other computers. The term can refer to a
particular piece of software, such as a WWW
server, or to the machine on which the software is running, e.g. "Our mail
server is down today, that's why e-mail isn't getting out." A single server machine can (and
often does) have several different server software packages running on it, thus
providing many different servers to clients
on the network. Sometimes server software is
designed so that additional capabilities can be added to the main program by
adding small programs known as servlets.
See also: Client, Network, Servlet ?/span> Servlet: A small computer program
designed to be add capabilities to a larger piece of server software. Common examples are "Java
servlets", which are small programs written in the Java language and which are added to a web server. Typically a web server that uses Java servlets will
have many of them, each one designed to handle a very specific situation, for
example one servlet will handle adding items to a "shopping cart",
while a different servlet will handle deleting items from the "shopping
cart." See also: Java, Server, Web ?/span> SLIP:?(Serial Line Internet Protocol) A standard for using a regular
telephone line (a serial line) and a modem
to connect a computer as a realInternet
site. SLIP has largely been replaced by PPP.
See also: PPP ?/span> SMDS: (Switched Multimegabit Data
Service) A standard for very high-speed data transfer. SMTP: (Simple Mail Transfer
Protocol) The main protocol used to send electronic mail from server to server on the Internet. SMTP is defined in RFC 821 and modified by many later
RFC's. See also: Email, RFC, Server ?/span> SNMP: (Simple Network Management
Protocol) A set of standards for communication with devices connected to a
TCP/IP network. Examples of these
devices include routers, hubs, and
switches. SNMP is defined in RFC 1089 See also: Network, RFC, Router, TCP/IP ?/span> Spam (or Spamming): An
inappropriate attempt to use a mailing
list, or USENET or other
networked communications facility as if it was a broadcast medium (which it is
not) by sending the same message to a large number of people who didn?t ask for
it. The term probably comes from a famous Monty Python skit which featured the
word spam repeated over and over. The term may also have come from someone?s
low opinion of the food product with the same name, which is generally
perceived as a generic content-free waste of resources. (Spam?is a registered
trademark of Hormel Corporation, for its processed meat product.) See also: Maillist, USENET ?/span> SQL: (Structured Query Language)
A specialized language for sending queries to databases. Most
industrial-strength and many smaller database applications can be addressed
using SQL. Each specific application will have its own slightly different
version of SQL implementing features unique to that application, but all
SQL-capable databases support a common subset of SQL. A example of an SQL statement is: ?
SELECT name,email FROM people_table WHERE contry='uk' SSL: (Secure Socket Layer) A
protocol designed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated
communications across the Internet. Sysop: (System Operator) Anyone
responsible for the physical operations of a computer system or network
resource. For example, a System Administrator decides how often backups and
maintenance should be performed and the System Operator performs those tasks. T T-1: A leased-line connection capable of carrying data at 1,544,000 bits-per-second. At maximum theoretical
capacity, a T-1 line could move a megabyte
in less than 10 seconds. That is still not fast enough for full-screen,
full-motion video, for which you need at least 10,000,000 bits-per-second. T-1
lines are commonly used to connect large LANs
to theInternet. See also: Bit, Internet (Upper case I), LAN, Leased Line, Megabyte ?/span> T-3: A leased-line connection capable of carrying data at 44,736,000
bits-per-second. This is more than enough to do full-screen, full-motionvideo. See also: Internet (Upper case I), LAN, Leased Line ?/span> TCP/IP: (Transmission Control
Protocol/Internet Protocol) This is the suiteof protocols that defines the Internet. Originally designed for the UNIX operating system, TCP/IP software
is now included with every major kind of computer operating system. To be truly
on the Internet, your computer must
have TCP/IP software. See also: Internet (Upper case I), Packet Switching, Unix ?/span> Telnet: The command and program used
to login from one Internet site to another. The telnet
command/program gets you to the login: prompt of another host. See also: Host, Login ?/span> Terabyte: 1000 gigabytes. See also: Gigabyte ?/span> Terminal: A device that allows you to
send commands to a computer somewhere else. At a minimum, this usually means a
keyboard and a display screen and some simple circuitry. Usually you will use
terminal software in a personal computer - the software pretends to be
(emulates) a physical terminal and allows you to type commands to a computer
somewhere else. Terminal Server: A special
purpose computer that has places to plug in many modemson one side, and a connection to a LAN or host machine onthe
other side. Thus the terminal server does the work of answering thecalls and
passes the connections on to the appropriate node. Mostterminal servers can provide PPP or SLIP services if
connectedto the Internet. TLD: (Top Level Domain) The last
(right-hand) part of a complete Domain
Name. For example in the domain name www.matisse.net ".net" is
the Top Level Domain. There are a large number of TLD's,
for example .biz, .com, .edu, .gov, .info, .int, .mil, .net, .org, and a
collection of two-letter TLD's corresponding to the standard two-letter country
codes, for example, .us, .ca, .jp, etc. See also: Domain Name ?/span> Trojan Horse: A computer program is either
hidden inside another program or that masquerades as something it is not in
order to trick potential users into running it. For example a program that
appears to be a game or image file but in reality performs some other function.
The term "Trojan Horse" comes from a possibly mythical ruse of war
used by the Greeks sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C. A Trojan Horse computer program may
spread itself by sending copies of itself from the host computer to other
computers, but unlike a virus it will
(usually) not infect other programs. See also: Virus, Worm ?/span> U UDP: (User Datagram Protocol) One
of the protocols for data transfer that is part of the TCP/IP suite of protocols. UDP is a "stateless" protocol
in that UDP makes no provision for acknowledgement of packets received. See also: Packet Switching, TCP/IP ?/span> Unix: A computer operating system
(the basic software running on a computer, underneath things like word
processors and spreadsheets). Unix is designed to be used by many people at the
same time (it is multi-user) and has TCP/IP
built-in. It is the most common operating system for servers on the Internet. Apple computers' Macintosh operating
system, as of version 10 ("Mac OS X"), is based on Unix. See also: Linux, Server, TCP/IP ?/span> Upload: Transferring data (usually a
file) from a the computer you are using to another computer. The opposite of download. See also: Download ?/span> URI: (Uniform Resource
Identifier) An address for s resource available on the Internet. The first part of a URI is called
the "scheme". the most well known scheme is http, but there are many others. Each URI scheme has its own format
for how a URI should appear. Here are examples of URIs using the http, telnet, and news schemes:
?
http://www.yhdsign.com/industry.html ?
telnet://well.sf.ca.us ?
news:new.newusers.questions See also: URL, URN ?/span> URL: (Uniform Resource Locator)
The term URL is basically synonymous with URI.
URI has replaced URL in technical specifications. See also: URI, URN ?/span> URN: (Uniform Resource Name)A URI that is supposed to be available for
along time. For an address to be a URN some institution is supposed to make a
commitment to keep the resource available at that address. See also: URI ?/span> USENET: A world-wide system of
discussion groups, with comments passed among hundreds of thousands of
machines. Not all USENET machines are on the Internet. USENET is completely decentralized, with over 10,000
discussion areas, called newsgroups. See also: Newsgroup ?/span> UUENCODE: (Unix to Unix Encoding) A
method for converting files from Binaryto
ASCII (text) so that they can be sent
across the Internet via email. See also: ASCII, Binary, Email ?/span> V Veronicav (Very Easy Rodent Oriented
Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) Developed at the University of Nevada,
Veronica was a constantly updated database of the names of almost every menu
item on thousands of gopherservers.
The Veronica database could be searched from most major gophermenus. Now made obsolete by web-bases
search engines. See also: Gopher, Search Engine ?/span> Virus: A chunk of computer
programming code that makes copies of itself without any concious human
intervention. Some viruses do more than simply replicate themselves, they might
display messages, install other software or files, delete software of files,
etc. A virus requires the presence of
some other program to replicate itself. Typically viruses spread by attaching
themselves to programs and in some cases files, for example the file formats
for Microsoft word processor and spreadsheet programs allow the inclusion of
programs called "macros" which can in some cases be a breeding ground
for viruses. See also: Trojan Horse, Worm ?/span> VPN: (Virtual Private Network)
Usually refers to a network in which
some of the parts are connected using the public Internet, but the data sent across the Internet is encrypted, so
the entire network is "virtually" private. See also: Internet (Upper case I) W WAIS: (Wide Area Information
Servers) A commercial software package that allows the indexing of huge quantities
of information, and then making those indices searchable across networks such as the Internet. A prominent feature of WAIS is
that the search results are ranked (scored) accordingto how relevant the hits
are, and that subsequent searches can find more stuff like that last batch and
thus refine the search process. WAN: (Wide Area Network) Any internet or network that covers an area larger than a single building or
campus. See also: internet (Lower case i), LAN ?/span> Web: Short for "World Wide
Web." See also: WWW ?/span> Web page: A document designed for
viewing in a web browser. Typically written in HTML.
A web site is made of one or more web
pages. See also: Browser, HTML, Web, Website ?/span> Website: The entire collection of web pages and other information (such as
images, sound, and video files, etc.) that are made available through what
appears to users as a single web server. Typically all the of pages in a web
site share the same basic URL, for
example the following URLs are all for pages within the same web site: ?
http://www.baytherapy.com/ ?
http://www.baytherapy.com/whatis/ ?
http://www.baytherapy.com/teenagers/ The term has a somewhat informal
nature since a large organization might have separate "web sites" for
each division, but someone might talk informally about the organizations'
"web site" when speaking of all of them. See also: Web, Web page ?/span> Wi-Fi: (Wireless Fidelity) A
popular term for a form of wireless data communication, basically Wi-Fi is
"Wireless Ethernet". See also: Ethernet ?/span> |