Toucan Design | Orlando Web Designer | Web Design Orlando Florida

Beside providing services we tend to educate our customers as well. At Toucan Design we want our customers to know and understand what services we provide. We have selected important terms and their meanings used in today's high tech world. If your task is to work on a new website project then you will find these terms very helpful. (Sorted alphabetically)

Animation

It is referred to an image that changes over time. A simple example is Abacus logo where the red dot is moving up and down every several seconds.

ASP

Short for Active Server Pages that is used for creating dynamic content of a web page. Technically said it is a server side scripting language. It is mostly used on Windows platforms.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that can travel a communications path in a given time, usually measured in seconds. If you think of the communications path as a pipe, then bandwidth represents the width of the pipe that determines how much data can flow through it all at once.

Banner

Also referred to as a banner ad, a banner is a typically rectangular advertisement placed on a Web site either above, below or on the sides of the Web site's main content and is linked to the advertiser's own Web site.

Browser

Very often called Web browser, a software application used to locate and display Web pages. The two most popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. There are many other browsers like AOL Browser, Opera, NeoPlanet and many others.

Database

A special way of organizing computer data. It looks like a table implemented columns and rows for fast accessing data from any of the cells in the table. There are many different types of databases but all of them work on the same principle. Databases are very useful for storing and organizing data for later retrieval. Very often used for managing accounts, managing user information, creating guest books and bulletin boards, even this page (dictionary) is implemented with database.

Discussion Group

A web page that supports interactive discussions by users. Users submit text content using a form, that is saved on the server and that way make it available to other visitors.

DNS

The Domain Name System which identifies each computer as a network point on the Internet using an internet protocol address systems to translate from domain name to IP and reverse.

Domain Name

A unique name that identifies one or more IP addresses. For example, the domain name Toucan Design represents one IP address. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages. Every web site that you visit is stored under domain name.

Domain Name Extension

Part after the dot in the domain name is a domain name extension. In the Toucan Design domain, domain extension is .net . There are many other domain name extensions such as .com .net .org .gov .edu .mil .info .web .us .uk .cc .it .mx .ba and many others.

Downloading

Downloading is the method by which users access and save or "pull down" software or other files to their own computers from a remote computer, usually via a modem.

E-Commerce

E-Commerce means conducting business on the Internet. It is mostly referred to buying and selling items on line.

Encryption

A way of coding the information in a file or e-mail message so that if it is intercepted by a third party as it travels over a network it cannot be read. Only the persons sending and receiving the information have the key and this makes it unreadable to anyone except those persons (your browser does it automatically).

Flash

Browser independent vector and graphic animation technology owned by Macromedia Inc.. Most browsers support Flash technology and one flash animation looks the same on all browsers.

FTP

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol which is one of the methods of transferring files over the Internet.

GIF

GIF stands for graphics interchange format, it is a bit-mapped graphics file format used by the World Wide Web. GIF supports colour and various resolutions. But it is limited to 256 colors.

Home Page

It is a first page (also called opening page) of a Web site.

Hosting

Hosting is a service provided by hosting company. That's a place (a computer available on the Internet) where web site is stored and made available to web site users to view the content of that web site.

HTML

Stands for HyperText Markup Language, the authoring and editing language used to create web pages on the World Wide Web.

Internet

The largest global network connecting millions of computers. It is strictly based on TCP/IP protocol for communication between host and server.

Intranet

A private network belonging to an organization, usually a corporation, accessible only by the organization's members, employees, or others with authorization.

IP Address

An IP (Internet Protocol) address is a unique identifier for a point or host connection on an IP network. An IP address is a 32 bit binary number usually represented as 4 decimal values, each representing 8 bits, in the range 0 to 255 (known as octets) separated by decimal points. It is just a number like 66.46.105.9

Java applet

A short program written in Java (not JavaScript) that is attached to a World Wide Web page and executed by the browser machine. Often used for complicated web applications.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a client-side scripting language that allows dynamic behavior to be specified within HTML documents. Most browsers support java however some browsers are disabled for JavaScript use.

JPEG (JPG)

Stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. JPEG uses compression technique for color images and therefore some details are lost in the compression yet giving relatively good quality. It is widely used on the Internet and other digital applications.

Link

Sometimes called hyperlink. A link is object on the web page. When visitor of a web site click with the mouse on that object then user is taken to another web page where the link is pointing to. Different types of links are: text links, graphic links, java links, form links and some other which are not very important.

MP3

MP3 is the file extension for MPEG, audio layer 3. Layer 3 is one of three coding schemes (layer 1, layer 2 and layer 3) for the compression of audio signals. MP3 files could be embedded into web site providing music while visitors are viewing the site. MP3 files are relatively small comparing to other audio files and therefore are quite suitable for transferring over the Internet.

PHP

PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is a server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. Designed for Windows and Unix type platforms.

Protocol

A formal set of conventions that allow communication between two communicating functional units. Simply said it is a language that computers use to talk to each other. Of course there are many such languages. Most popular is TCP/IP used officially on the Internet.

Search Engine

A program that performs searching on documents for specified terms or phrases and returns a list of the documents where those terms were found. Search Engines are lately referred to Internet Search Engines. Most popular search engines today are Google, Yahoo, MSN, AllTheWeb, Excite, Lycos, AOL, HotBot, Altavista. There are over several thousands search engines and growing every day.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an act of of increasing the the number of visitors to a particular Web site by adding appropriate keywords and phrases, and such ranking high in the search results. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that your site will be found by a search user. For general and competitive web sites it takes a lot of professionalism to tweak the web site in order to be well optimized and search engine friendly.

Spam

Spam refers to the practice of blindly sending commercial messages or advertisements to e-mail users or posting to newsgroups.

Submission Forms

Forms are web pages "fields" for a user to fill in with information. They are an excellent way of collecting and processing information from people visiting a website, as well as allowing them to interact with web pages. Forms are written in HTML and processed by CGI programs. The output can be sent as an e-mail form, stored online, printed, and/or returned to the user as an HTML page.

Thumbnail

A small version of a bigger image on a web page. Usually containing a hyperlink to a full-size version of the image.

URL

It stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is a string that supplies the Internet address of a resource on the World Wide Web, along with the protocol by which the resource is accessed. The most common URL type is "http," which gives the Internet address of a World Wide Web page. Some other URL types are gopher and ftp.

Video Clip

A short video sequence that can be embedded into a web page.

Web Application

Web Applications are web programs or real programs designed to be used on the web site using a browser. Example of web application would be e-commerce web site, web banking, stock exchange on the web, web games and many others. Web applications are becoming very popular due to wide availability of the Internet access.

Web Based E-mail

Web based e-mail is a software on a POP3 server that allows you the luxury, if desired, to access your POP accounts by simply using a web-browser. It allows users to send and receive emails via any web-browser by viewing an HTML web page.

Web Page

One of the pages one the web site including home page.

Web Site

A site presence on the World Wide Web. Each Web site contains a home page (opening page), which is the first document users see when they enter the site.

World Wide Web

A system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a script called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web.