There are so many terms, acronyms, lingo, terminology and what not regarding the web, the internet and computers in general. So here is a simple explanation/guide, in layman’s terms, regarding some of the more well known and widespread terms and acronyms.
This part of the guide covers terms from A to C
- Address
- Kinda like your where your home is, or your work or the local pub. Except not on a street: but online. Can be a domain name, URL and much more.
- Anchor
- Not to be confused with those big heavy things which hang off boats. An anchor, on a website, indicates the start and/or end of a hyper link. Example:
<a id=”this is an anchor”></a> - ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line)
- Typically a broadband connection which runs over your standard copper phone lines. Speeds range from 256kb up to 22mbps with ADSL 2. The “A” stands for asymmetric, which usually means your upload speed is less than your download speed, a 512kb ADSL line would usually have an upload limit of 128kb or so. Most Australians who have broadband now have an ADSL connection.
- Apache Web Server
- Despite some people confusing it’s origins with the Native American tribe, Apache initially got its moniker from being “a patchy” piece of software. Today it’s a very stable, very widely adopted open source web server. It powers a vast number of websites on the internet. It is most often associated with Linux, FreeBSD and other Unix-like operating systems, but can also run under Windows.
- API (Application Programming Interface)
- Basically a fancy term for letting software programs communicate with other programs. In the online space, it allows web servers to communicate with other web servers or communicate with a client computer, through something like a web browser or any number of other online based programs.
- ASP (Active Server Pages)
- Microsoft’s scripting language developed for web page creation. Allows more complex websites which are not just “static” pages, usually works in tandem with a database backend. ASP has been around for ages and has now largely been superseded by Microsoft’s .NET technology (whose extension is ASPX).
- AVI (Audio Video Interleave)
- One of the most common video formats in existence, it’s now been superseded by much better formats which allow for smaller file sizes and higher quality movies.
- Banner Ad
- You know them, you mostly hate them. They’re all over the online world, promoting web sites and services you most likely aren’t interested in. Usually in the form of an image or animated image, sometimes they are interactive (if using a technology such as Flash). Despite their bad reputation, banner ads are a key foundation of online advertising. They’re typically ignored a lot of the time, so in order for banner ads to work they need to be: well designed, deliver a strong message, and most importantly, targeted for the correct audience.
- Bandwidth
- If the internet is a “series of tubes”, then bandwidth is basically a measure of how big the pipe is :). In reality, it’s the amount of data you can send through an internet connection. Typically home users have less bandwidth, and servers located in data centers have a lot more. Just having a “phat pipe” is not going to guarantee you of a speedy internet experience however. There are many other factors in play, such as network congestion, where other connection ends, and so on. Also, here in Australia we tend to have pretty crappy bandwidth due to our outdated infrastructure and the fact that we are on the other side of the world from just about everyone.
- BBS (Bulletin Board System)
- A relic from the past, when you actually had to “dial in” to a system to share data with other users. Few exist now days. Was the equivalent of the “early internet” for many back in the early days, long before common-folk could get actual access to the real thing.
- Binary Data
- A term used to describe data stored in a machine readable form. If you’re reading this, you are most likely *not* a machine. For the machines out there, here is some binary: “01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 00100000 01110100 01100101 01111000 01110100”
- BMP (Bitmap)
- One of the earliest formats to store an image in. Horribly outdated today, it offers no real compression abilities nor the ability to do anything fancy. You can use bitmap files online and in web sites, but you’d be stupid to. They’re simply too large. Most web sites use either JPEG images (for photos), or GIF images (for block/graphic images), or PNG (for either of the previous two).
- Bookmark (if you’re from a Netscape world) – Favourite (if you’re from the Microsoft One)
- Normally you’d just fold the corner of a page or whack in something to indicate the place you last read up to. That’s if you were reading a book. In the online space, it’s basically a pointer to something you might or might not want to visit later. Usually this is done through a browser, but other applications also use the term “bookmark”.
- Browsing/Browse
- What you do when you are surfing the web. Really. Most times you are “browsing”, checking stuff out, reading, watching a video, downloading a file and so on. Note an important difference: when you are browsing, you are interacting with the medium. When you are “watching” TV, you are just sitting there being a couch potato. This is why the online space is taking off and television is shrinking. You can get so much more out of the online experience.
- Cache
- When you access something online through a web browser, bits of it are usually stored in your cache, so that if you access the same thing again, your browser can load it directly from its hard disk rather than going all around the world again. You cache can contain all sorts of things, pages you’ve visited, images you’ve looked at and so on. Caching makes your internet experience more speedier.
- Chat
- Unless you never leave the house, or deal with any other humans in your day-to-day existence, you do this regularly. Online it is not that much different. People love to chat, it’s a great form of communication. There are many ways to chat online, from using specific applications (such as MSN Messenger, ICQ) or using one of the many other chat protocols (such as internet relay chat) or doing so through a web browser.
- CGI Program
- Basically a way to execute programs through a web server. Initially this was the predominant way all complex sites were built. Today there are many other technologies around, such as PHP, Java, .NET, Ruby, Python… the list goes on.
- Client/Server
- Someone provides something, someone receives something. If you run a business, you may have many clients. Online it isn’t much different. A client requests something, a server provides. Usually a server will provide for many more clients. This is why servers are dedicated to… er… serving. That’s what they do.
- Click
- Most people use a mouse with their computer. Usually it has one, two or lots more buttons on it. To do an action, you “click” on the mouse. This carries over to the web. Most people navigating websites use the mouse as their primary means of navigation. Generally if you want to do an action, visit another site, the average end user will “click” to get there. In the case of online marketing, it’s a core metric to measure. If your banner was getting a “lot of clicks”, you’d be doing well.
- Clickthrough Rate
- See our guide to online marketing terms.
- Codec (Compressor / Decompressor)
- If you wanted to watch a movie in its “raw” digital format, you’d need a lot of storage space. So movies, videos and images are usually compressed, to save a ton of space but only reducing quality a tinsy bit. A codec is basically a super-smart algorythim which compressed a file, then decompresses it on play back. Codecs are using in everything from your home DVD player to the multitude which exist to encode and play back movies on the web.
- Communication Protocol
- When you talk to someone, you usually are communicating in a protocol: it’s called language. You understand it, so does the other person. Unless one of you is very intoxicated, the message should go across. With computers, it is no different. In order for one computer to “talk” to another, they use a defined “language”. There are many protocols. HTTP, for example, is the way a web server communicates with a web browser. That’s why you can see the http://www.sillysitename.com at the beginning in your address bar. There are many, many, other protocols. Some are very high level, some very low level. Internet Protocol (IP addresses) are one of the fundamental building blocks of the internet. A lot of other protocols run on top of that, to put it simply, such as HTTP.
- Compression
- Compression makes big chunks of data smaller. It’s quite complex, but you can reduce the size of most data using fancy math.
- Cookie
- Nothing to do with the monster. Cookies were invented when website owners and developers want to store bits of information on your computer/browser when you visited a website. Say you were a member of a forum, and you logged in and wanted to stay logged in (after all that’s why you are a member of it). A cookie would be stored on your computer so that when you returned: hey presto, you’re still logged in! Cookies can be used to store lots of useful information that can be used to enhance your online experience. They can also be used to try and track your movements online, but it’s easy to delete them and these days they do more good than harm.
- ColdFusion
- ColdFusion is a web application programming language. Initially created by a company called Allaire, who made a very popular web editor back in the 90s, it was later acquired by Macromedia, who was then later acquired by Adobe. It started off as a pretty simple scripting language and has since evolved into much more. Despite this, it’s never really taken off as a widely adopted language. One of the bigger sites to use ColdFusion was MySpace, but they eventually moved away from it. Here in Australia, Whirlpool.net.au is probably the largest site that still uses it. ColdFusion has a mixed reputation among web developers.
- CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
- CSS is basically a way to define the look and feel of a website. When websites were first built, all the styling was embedded in the code that was sent to your browser. This meant complex web pages could be become quite large. CSS allows a web designer/developer to define how all the elements in a web page will look to the end user. This means its much easier to make site-wide aesthetic changes, by editing just one file. The other advantage is that a browser can store the CSS file, and then all the HTML files can reference it, meaning faster, leaner, web pages. Cascading Style Sheets took a while to take off with websites, but today they are used by just about every site. They have many, many, benefits when it comes to building a web site.
