Glossary -

Glossary

We have developed a glossary in order to help you approach some Web related terms.
Plenty of these definitions come from Wikipedia, or specific sources such as the W3C website, so don’t be surprised if you kinda read something alike recently. Hope it’s as useful for you as it has been for us.

Accessibility

Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging. It encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities.

API

An application programming interface (API) is a set of routines, data structures, object classes and/or protocols provided by libraries and/or operating system services in order to support the building of applications.The API itself is largely abstract in that it specifies an interface and the behavior of the objects specified in that interface; the software that provides the functionality described by an API is said to be an implementation of the API. An API is typically defined in terms of the programming language used to build an application.

Blog

A blog (a contraction of the term “Web log”) is a Web site, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. There are many different types of blogs, differing not only in the type of content, but also in the way that content is delivered or written. Personal, Corporate, Question blogging, By media type, by device or by genre. There exist an entire community in this area as well as Blog search engines – Bloglines, Blogscope and technorati.

CMS

A content management system (CMS) is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, search and publish various kinds of digital media and electronic text.

CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) consists of the processes a company uses to track and organize its contacts with its current and prospective customers. CRM software is used to support these processes; the software system can be accessed, and information about customers and customer interactions can be entered, stored and accessed by employees in different company departments. Typical CRM goals are to improve services provided to customers, and to use customer contact information for targeted marketing. While the term CRM generally refers to a software-based approach to handling customer relationships, most CRM software vendors stress that a successful CRM effort requires a holistic approach. CRM initiatives often fail because implementation was limited to software installation, without providing the context, support and understanding for employees to learn, and take full advantage of the information systems.

Crossbrowser

Cross-browser refers to the ability for a website, web application, HTML construct or client-side script to support all the web browsers. The term cross-browser is often confused with multi-browser. Multi-browser means something works with several web browsers. Cross-browser means something works with all versions of all browsers to have existed since the web began.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML.CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation (written in CSS). This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as by allowing for tableless web design).

DNS

The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource participating in the Internet. It associates various information with domain names assigned to such participants. Most importantly, it translates domain names meaningful to humans into the numerical (binary) identifiers associated with networking equipment for the purpose of locating and addressing these devices world-wide.

Domain

The main purpose of a domain name is to provide symbolic representations, i.e., recognizable names, to mostly numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an intranet, in effect changing the IP address. This translation from domain names to IP addresses (and vice versa) is accomplished with the global facilities of Domain Name System (DNS).

Dynamic Sites

Dynamic sites are those where the content and design live separately. The content lives in a database that is placed on a webpage only when needed or asked. The benefit of this is that it allows for quicker page loading and it allows just about anyone, with limited or no web design experience, to update their own website via an administrative backend. This set up is ideal for those who wish to make frequent changes to their websites including text and image updates. Dynamic sites are also great for image galleries, online calendars or e-commerce, etc.

Folksonomy

Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. Folksonomy describes the bottom-up classification systems that emerge from social tagging.[1] In contrast to traditional subject indexing, metadata is generated not only by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content. Usually, freely chosen keywords are used instead of a controlled vocabulary.[2] Folksonomy (from folk + taxonomy) is a user-generated taxonomy.

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. Its use for retrieving inter-linked resources led to the establishment of the World Wide Web.

Hosting

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation. The scope of hosting services varies widely. The most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface.

Linkback

A Linkback is a method for Web authors to obtain notifications when other authors link to one of their documents. This enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, or referring to their articles. The three methods (Refback, Trackback, and Pingback) differ in how they accomplish this task. Any of the four terms — Linkback, Trackback, Pingback, or (rarely) Refback — might also refer colloquially to items within a section upon the linked page that display the received notifications, usually along with a reciprocal link; Trackback is used most often for this purpose. Also, the word Trackback is often used colloquially to mean any kind of Linkback.

Online advertising

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing. Major benefit of online advertising is the immediate publishing of information and content that is not limited by geography or time.

Paypal

Is an e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. PayPal serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as checks and money orders.

Personal web page

Personal web pages are World Wide Web pages created to contain content of personal nature. The content can be about that person or about something he or she is interested in. Personal web pages can be the entire content of a domain name belonging to the person (which would then be a personal website), or can be a page or pages that are part of a larger domain on which other pages are located – an example of one such larger site is GeoCities.

PlugIN

Consists of a computer program that interacts with a host application (a web browser or an email client, for example) to provide a certain, usually very specific, function “on demand”. Applications usually support plugins in order to improve their features.

Ping(blogging)

In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated.[1] An XML-RPC signal is sent to one or more “ping servers,” which can then generate a list of blogs that have new material. Many blog authoring tools automatically ping one or more servers each time the blogger creates a new post or updates an old one.

Podcast

A podcast is a series of audio or video digital media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. Though the same content may also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from most other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added. Like the term broadcast, podcast can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

RSS

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works-such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video-in a standardized format.

Social Network

A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade. The resulting graph-based structures are often very complex.

Software framework

A software framework is a re-usable design for a software system (or subsystem). A software framework may include support programs, code libraries, a scripting language, or other software to help develop and glue together the different components of a software project. Various parts of the framework may be exposed through an API.

Search Engine

A Web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. Information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in newsbooks, databases, or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of algorithmic and human input.

Social Media

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings.[1] The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences. Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Typically, the higher a site’s “page rank” (i.e, the earlier it comes in the search results list), the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines. As a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term “search engine friendly” may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems and shopping carts that are easy to optimize.

Tagging

A tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are chosen informally and personally by the item’s creator or by its viewer, depending on the system. On a website in which many users tag many items, this collection of tags becomes a folksonomy.

URL

In computing, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it] In popular usage and in many technical documents and verbal discussions it is often, imprecisely and confusingly, used as a synonym for uniform resource identifier. The confusion in usage stems from historically different interpretations of the semantics of the terms involved. In popular language, a URL is also referred to as a Web address.

Usability

Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. Usability can also refer to the methods of measuring usability and the study of the principles behind an object’s perceived efficiency or elegance. In human-computer interaction and computer science, usability usually refers to the elegance and clarity with which the interaction with a computer program or a web site is designed. It is important to distinguish between usability testing and usability engineering. Usability testing is the measurement of ease of use of a product or piece of software. In contrast, usability engineering (UE) is the research and design process that ensures a product with good usability. Usability engineering is a field that is concerned generally with human-computer interaction and specifically with making human-computer interfaces that have high usability or user friendliness. In effect, a user-friendly interface is one that allows users to effectively and efficiently accomplish the tasks for which it was designed and one that users rate positively on opinion or emotional scales. Assessing the usability of an interface and recommending ways to improve it is the purview of the Usability Engineer.

User-centered design

In broad terms, user-centered design (UCD) is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use an interface, but also to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users.

User Experience

User experience design, most often abbreviated UX, but sometimes UE, is a term used to describe the overarching experience a person has as a result of their interactions with a particular product or service, its delivery, and related artifacts, according to their design.

WAI

The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities. The following WAI resources are intended to provide basic information for people who are new to Web accessibility.

web application

In software engineering, a web application or webapp is an application that is accessed via web browser over a network such as the Internet or an intranet.

Web Browser

A Web browser is a software application which enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music, games and other information typically located on a Web page at a Web site on the World Wide Web or a local area network. Some of the Web browsers currently available for personal computers include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera, Avant Browser, Konqueror, Lynx, Google Chrome, Maxthon, Flock, Arachne, Epiphany, K-Meleon and AOL Explorer.

Web Feed

A web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an Internet aggregator. A web feed is also sometimes referred to as a syndicated feed. Often the term RSS is used to refer to web feeds or web syndication in general, although not all feed formats are now RSS. For example, the Blogspace description of using web feeds in an aggregator is headlined “RSS info” and “RSS readers” even though its first sentence makes clear the inclusion of the Atom format: “RSS and Atom files provide news updates from a website in a simple form for your computer.”

widget – webwidget

A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation. They are derived from the idea of code reuse. Other terms used to describe web widgets include: gadget, badge, module, webjit, capsule, snippet, mini and flake. Web widgets usually but not always use DHTML, JavaScript, or Adobe Flash.

Wordpress

WordPress is an open source blog publishing application.features integrated link management; a search engine-friendly, clean permalink structure; the ability to assign nested, multiple categories to articles; multiple author capability; and support for tagging of posts and articles. Automatic filters that provide for proper formatting and styling of text in articles (for example, converting regular quotes to smart quotes) are also included. WordPress also supports the Trackback and Pingback standards for displaying links to other sites that have themselves linked to a post or article. Finally, WordPress has a rich plugin architecture which allows users and developers to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install.

W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.

XHTML

The Extensible Hypertext Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax.

Main source: Wikipedia