Web Design

Web design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of Markup language suitable for interpretation by Web browser and display as Graphical user interface (GUI). The intent of web design is to create a web site -- a collection of electronic files that reside on a web server/servers and present content and interactive features/interfaces to the end user in form of Web pages once requested. Such elements as text, bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs), forms can be placed on the page using HTML/XHTML/XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into web page by using HTML/XHTML tags.

Web Page

A Web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext links. Web pages may be retrieved from a local computer or from a remote web server. The web server may restrict access only to a private network, e.g. a corporate intranet, or it may publish pages on the World Wide Web. Web pages are requested and served from web servers using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Web Site

A website (alternatively, Web site or web site) is a collection of Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that is hosted on one or several Web server(s), usually accessible via the Internet, cell phone or a LAN.
A Web page is a document, typically written in HTML, that is almost always accessible via HTTP, a protocol that transfers information from the Web server to display in the user's Web browser.

Static Web Page

A static Web page is a Web page that always comprises the same information in response to all download requests from all users. Contrast with Dynamic web page.

Dynamic Web Page

Classical hypertext navigation occurs among "static" documents, and, for web users, this experience is reproduced using static web pages. However, web navigation can also provide an interactive experience that is termed "dynamic". Content (text, images, form fields, etc.) on a web page can change, in response to different contexts or conditions.

Flash

Adobe Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both the Adobe Flash Player, and to the Adobe Flash Professional multimedia authoring program. Adobe Flash Professional is used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform (such as web applications, games and movies, and content for mobile phones and other embedded devices). The Flash Player, developed and distributed by Adobe Systems (which acquired Macromedia in a merger that was finalized in December 2005), is a client application available in most common web browsers. It features support for vector and raster graphics, a scripting language called ActionScript and bi-directional streaming of audio and video. There are also versions of the Flash Player for mobile phones and other non-PC devices.

Scripting language

Scripting languages, also called script languages, are programming languages that control applications. Scripts are executed directly from their source code, which are generally text files containing language specific markup. Thus, "scripts" are often treated as distinct from "programs", which execute independently from any other application.

Source Code

In computer science, source code (commonly just source or code) is any sequence of statements and/or declarations written in some human-readable computer programming language. The source code which constitutes a program is usually held in one or more text files, sometimes stored in databases as stored procedures and may also appear as code snippets printed in books or other media.

HTML

HTML, an initialism of Hypertext Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document — by denoting certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on — and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of labels (known as tags), surrounded by angle brackets. HTML can also describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting language code which can affect the behavior of web browsers and other HTML processors.

Web Browser

A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network. Text and images on a Web page can contain hyperlinks to other Web pages at the same or different website. Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many Web pages at many websites by traversing these links. Web browsers format HTML information for display, so the appearance of a Web page may differ between browsers.

Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of proprietary graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995.

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox (commonly known as just Firefox, officially abbreviated as Fx or fx, and popularly abbreviated FF is a web browser project managed by the Mozilla Corporation.

Safari

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included in Mac OS X. It was first released as a public beta on January 7, 2003, and a finl version was included as the default browser in Mac OS X v10.3.

Opera

Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by the Opera Software company. Opera handles common Internet-related tasks such as visiting web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, IRC online chatting, downloading files via BitTorrent, and reading web feeds

Netscape

Netscape is the general name for a series of web browsers originally produced by Netscape Communications Corporation, now a subsidiary of AOL. The original browser was once the dominant browser in terms of usage share, but as a result of the first browser war it lost virtually all of its share to Internet Explorer.

Web Server

A computer that runs a computer program which provides the functionality described in the first sense of the term - Or - A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and linked objects (images, etc.).

URL

Strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable documents was the core idea of the World Wide Web. In the early times, these identifiers were variously called "document names", "Web addresses" and "Uniform Resource Locators". These names were misleading, however, because not all identifiers were locators, and even for those that were, this was not their defining characteristic. Nevertheless, by the time the RFC 1630 formally defined the term "URI" as a generic term best suited to the concept, the term "URL" had gained widespread popularity, which has continued to this day.

CSS

In web development, 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, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL. CSS is used by both the authors and readers of web pages to define colors, fonts, layout, and other aspects of document presentation. It 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 presentational characteristics, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content.

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. Whereas HTML is an application of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a very flexible markup language, XHTML is an application of XML, a more restrictive subset of SGML. Because they need to be well-formed, true XHTML documents allow for automated processing to be performed using standard XML tools—unlike HTML, which requires a relatively complex, lenient, and generally custom parser.

Fonts

In typography, a typeface is a coordinated set of glyphs designed with stylistic unity. A typeface usually comprises an alphabet of letters, numerals, and punctuation marks; it may also include ideograms and symbols, or consist entirely of them, for example, mathematical or map-making symbols.

Hyperlink

A hyperlink, is a reference or navigation element in a document to another section of the same document or to another document that may be on a different website. Hyperlinks are part of the foundation of the World Wide Web created by Tim Berners-Lee, but are not limited to HTML or the web. Hyperlinks may be used in almost any electronic media.

Thumbnails

Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to make it easier to scan and recognize them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words.

Search Engine

A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information which must be consulted, akin to other techniques for managing information overload.

SSL

Transport Layer Security (TLS) and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), are cryptographic protocols that provide secure communications on the Internet for such things as web browsing, e-mail, Internet faxing, instant messaging and other data transfers. The TLS protocol allows applications to communicate across a network in a way designed to prevent eavesdropping, tampering, and message forgery. TLS provides endpoint authentication and communications privacy over the Internet using cryptography.

IMAP

The Internet Message Access Protocol (commonly known as IMAP or IMAP4, and previously called Internet Mail Access Protocol, Interactive Mail Access Protocol, and Interim Mail Access Protocol is an application layer Internet protocol operating on port 143 that allows a local client to access e-mail on a remote server. The current version, IMAP version 4 revision 1, is defined by. IMAP4 and POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3) are the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval. Virtually all modern e-mail clients and servers support both.

FTP

FTP or File Transfer Protocol is used to transfer data from one computer to another over the Internet, or through a network. Specifically, FTP is a commonly used protocol for exchanging files over any network that supports the TCP/IP protocol (such as the Internet or an intranet). There are two computers involved in an FTP transfer: a server and a client. The FTP server, running FTP server software, listens on the network for connection requests from other computers. The client computer, running FTP client software, initiates a connection to the server. Once connected, the client can do a number of file manipulation operations such as uploading files to the server, download files from the server, rename or delete files on the server and so on.

TCP

The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols that implement the protocol stack on which the Internet and most commercial networks run. It has also been referred to as the TCP/IP protocol suite, which is named after two of the most important protocols in it: the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), which were also the first two networking protocols defined. Today's IP networking represents a synthesis of two developments that began in the 1970s, namely LANs (Local Area Networks) and the Internet, both of which have revolutionized computing.

IP Address

An IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique address that certain electronic devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other on a computer network utilizing the Internet Protocol standard (IP)—in simpler terms, a computer address. Any participating network device—including routers, switches, computers, infrastructure servers (e.g., NTP, DNS, DHCP, SNMP, etc.), printers, Internet fax machines, and some telephones—can have its own address that is unique within the scope of the specific network. Some IP addresses are intended to be unique within the scope of the global Internet, while others need to be unique only within the scope of an enterprise.

Java

Java refers to a number of computer software products and specifications from Sun Microsystems that together provide a system for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform environment. Java is used in a wide variety of computing platforms spanning from embedded devices and mobile phones on the low end to enterprise servers and super computers on the high end. Java is fairly ubiquitous in mobile phones, Web servers and enterprise applications, and somewhat less common on desktop computers, though users may have come across Java applets when browsing the World Wide Web.

Cross Platform

Cross-platform, or multi-platform, is a term which can refer to computer programs, operating systems, computer languages, programming languages, or other computer software and their implementations which can be made to work on multiple computer platforms. For example, a cross-platform application may run on Microsoft Windows on the x86 architecture, Linux on the x86 architecture and Mac OS X on either the PowerPC based Apple Macintosh or the x86 based Apple Macintosh systems.

SMS

The Short Message Service (SMS), often called text messaging, is a means of sending short messages to and from mobile phones. SMS was originally defined as part of the GSM series of standards in 1985[1] as a means of sending messages of up to 160 characters, to and from GSM mobile handsets.[2] Since then, support for the service has expanded to include alternative mobile standards such as ANSI CDMA networks and Digital AMPS, satellite and landline networks.[3] Most SMS messages are mobile-to-mobile text messages, though the standard supports other types of broadcast messaging as well.

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a communications protocol used to transfer or convey information on intranets and the World Wide Web. Its original purpose was to provide a way to publish and retrieve hypertext pages. Development of HTTP was coordinated by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force), culminating in the publication of a series of RFCs, most notably RFC 2616 (June 1999), which defines HTTP/1.1, the version of HTTP in common use.

Mozilla Firebird

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free, open source, cross-platform e-mail and news client developed by the Mozilla Foundation. The project strategy is modeled after Mozilla Firefox, a project aimed at creating a web browser. On December 7, 2004, version 1.0 was released, and received over 500,000 downloads in its first three days of release (and 1,000,000 in 10 days). As of 2007, Thunderbird has been downloaded more than 50 million times since 1.0 release.

Microsoft Outlook

Microsoft Outlook or Outlook (full name Microsoft Office Outlook since Outlook 2003) is a personal information manager from Microsoft, and is part of the Microsoft Office suite. Although often used mainly as an e-mail application, it also provides a calendar, task and contact management, note taking, a journal and web browsing.

Javascript

JavaScript is a scripting language most often used for client-side web development. It is a dynamic, weakly typed, prototype-based language with first-class functions. Currently, "JavaScript" is an implementation of the ECMAScript standard. JavaScript was influenced by many languages and was designed to have a similar look to Java, but be easier for non-programmers to work with.[1] The language is best known for its use in websites (as client-side JavaScript), but is also used to enable scripting access to objects embedded in other applications.

GUI

A graphical user interface or GUI (IPA: /ˈɡuːiː/) is a type of user interface which allows people to interact with a computer and computer-controlled devices which employ graphical icons, visual indicators or special graphical elements called "widgets", along with text, labels or text navigation to represent the information and actions available to a user. The actions are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements.

Vector Graphics

Vector graphics (also called geometric modeling or object-oriented graphics) is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and polygons, which are all based upon mathematical equations to represent images in computer graphics. It is used in contrast to the term raster graphics, which is the representation of images as a collection of pixels, and used as the sole graphic type for actual photographic images.

Pixels

A pixel (short for picture element, using the common abbreviation "pix" for "pictures") is a single point in a graphic image. Each such information element is not really a dot, nor a square, but an abstract sample. With care, pixels in an image can be reproduced at any size without the appearance of visible dots or squares; but in many contexts, they are reproduced as dots or squares and can be visibly distinct when not fine enough. The intensity of each pixel is variable; in color systems, each pixel has typically three or four dimensions of variability such as red, green, and blue, or cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.

Resolution

Image resolution describes the detail an image holds. The term applies equally to digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail. Image resolution can be measured in various ways. Basically, resolution quantifies how close lines can be to each other and still be visibly resolved. Resolution units can be tied to physical sizes (e.g. lines per mm, lines per inch) or to the overall size of a picture (lines per picture height, also known simply as lines, or TV lines). Furthermore, line pairs are often used instead of lines.

JPEG

In computing, JPEG (pronounced JAY-peg) is a commonly used method of compression for photographic images. The name JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the name of the committee that created the standard. The group was organized in 1986, issuing a standard in 1992, which was approved in 1994 as. JPEG is distinct from MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group), which produces compression schemes for video.

File Format

A file format is a particular way to encode information for storage in a computer file. Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for different kinds of information. Within any format type, e.g., word processor documents, there will typically be several different formats. Sometimes these formats compete with each other.

TIFF

Tagged Image File Format (abbreviated TIFF) is a container format for storing images, including photographs and line art. It is now under the ownership of Adobe. Originally created by the company Aldus for use with what was then called "desktop publishing," TIFF is a popular format for color and black and white images. The TIFF format is widely supported by image-manipulation applications, by publishing and page layout applications, by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition and other applications. Adobe Systems, which acquired Aldus, now holds the copyright to the TIFF specification.

Bitmap

In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to the similar concept of a spatially mapped array of pixels. Raster images in general may be referred to as bitmaps or pixmaps, whether synthetic or photographic, in files or in memory.

GIF

The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is an 8-bit-per-pixel bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987 and has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability. The format uses a palette of up to 256 distinct colors from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame. The color limitation makes the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with continuous color, but it is well-suited for more simple images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.

PNG

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) is a bitmapped image format that employs lossless data compression. PNG was created to improve upon and replace the GIF format, as an image-file format not requiring a patent license. PNG is pronounced "ping". PNG supports palette-based (palettes of 24-bit RGB colors) or greyscale or RGB images. PNG was designed for transferring images on the Internet, not professional graphics, and so does not support other color spaces (such as CMYK).

MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) is an Internet Standard that extends the format of e-mail to support: text in character sets other than US-ASCII; non-text attachments; multi-part message bodies; and header information in non-ASCII character sets. Virtually all human-written Internet e-mail and a fairly large proportion of automated e-mail is transmitted via SMTP in MIME format. Internet e-mail is so closely associated with the SMTP and MIME standards that it is sometimes called SMTP/MIME e-mail.

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, a user views web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks. The World Wide Web was created in 1989 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Since then, Berners-Lee has played an active role in guiding the development of web standards (such as the markup languages in which web pages are composed), and in recent years has advocated his vision of a Semantic Web.

CMYK

CMYK (short for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black), and often referred to as process color or four color) is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, also used to describe the printing process itself. Though it varies by print house, press operator, press manufacturer and press run, ink is typically applied in the order of the acronym. The CMYK model works by partially or entirely masking certain colors on the typically white background (that is, absorbing particular wavelengths of light). Such a model is called subtractive because inks “subtract” brightness from white.

RGB

The RGB color model is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additive primary colors, red, green, and blue. The term RGBA is also used to mean Red, Green, Blue, Alpha. This is not a different color model, but a representation; the Alpha is used for transparency.

DHTML

Dynamic HTML or DHTML is a collection of technologies used together to create interactive and animated web sites by using a combination of a static markup language (such as HTML), a client-side scripting language (such as JavaScript), a presentation definition language (Cascading Style Sheets, CSS), and the Document Object Model. A DHTML webpage is any webpage in which client-side scripting changes variables of the presentation definition language, which in turn affects the look and function of otherwise "static" HTML page content, after the page has been fully loaded and during the viewing process. Thus the dynamic characteristic of DHTML is the way it functions while a page is viewed, not in its ability to generate a unique page with each page load.

PHP

PHP is a reflective programming language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. PHP is used mainly in server-side scripting, but can be used from a command line interface or in standalone graphical applications. Textual User Interfaces can also be created using ncurses. PHP is a recursive initialism for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. The main implementation is produced by The PHP Group and released under the PHP License. This implementation serves to define a de facto standard for PHP, as there is no formal specification. The most recent version of PHP is 5.2.5, released on 9 November 2007. It is considered to be free software by the Free Software Foundation.

Homepage

The homepage (often written as home page) or main page is the URL or local file that automatically loads when a web browser starts and when the browser's "home" button is pressed. The term is also used to refer to the front page, webserver directory index, or main web page of a website of a group, company, organization, or individual. In some countries, such as Germany, Japan, and Korea, the term "homepage" commonly refers to a complete website (of a company or other organization) rather than to a single web page.

ASP

Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's server-side script engine for dynamically-generated web pages. It is marketed as an add-on to Internet Information Services (IIS). Programming ASP websites is made easier by various built-in objects. Each object corresponds to a group of frequently-used functionality useful for creating dynamic web pages. In ASP 2.0 there are six such built-in objects: Application, ASPError, Request, Response, Server, and Session. Session, for example, is a cookie-based session object that maintains variables from page to page.

PHP Nuke

PHP-Nuke is a web based automated news publishing and content management system based on PHP and MySQL. The system is fully controlled using a web-based user interface. PHP-Nuke was originally a fork of the Thatware news portal system. The system is released as free software under the GNU General Public License. Until version 7.5, the latest version of the software was freely downloadable from the PHP-Nuke website; version 7.5 is the first version for which a US$10 download charge is made.

MySQL

MySQL is a multithreaded, multi-user SQL database management system (DBMS) which has, according to MySQL AB, more than 10 million installations. The basic program runs as a server providing multiuser access to a number of databases. MySQL is owned and sponsored by a single for-profit firm, the Swedish company MySQL AB, which holds the copyright to most of the codebase. This is similar to the JBoss model. It is dissimilar to the Apache project, where the software is developed by a public community and the copyright to the codebase is owned by its individual authors.

Apache

The Apache HTTP Server, commonly referred to simply as Apache, is a web server notable for playing a key role in the initial growth of the World Wide Web. Apache was the first viable alternative to the Netscape Communications Corporation web server (currently known as Sun Java System Web Server), and has since evolved to rival other Unix-based web servers in terms of functionality and performance. Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the World Wide Web; since March 2006 however it has experienced a steady decline of its market share,[1] lost mostly against Microsoft Internet Information Services and the .NET platform. As of October 2007 Apache served 47.73% of all websites.

Patch

In computing, a patch is a small piece of software designed to update or fix problems with a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing bugs, replacing graphics and improving the usability or performance. Though meant to fix problems, poorly designed patches can sometimes introduce new problems (see software regressions).

Google

Google Inc. is an American public corporation, specializing in Internet search and online advertising. The company is based in Mountain View, California, and has 15,916 full-time employees (as of September 30, 2007). Google's mission statement is, "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." It is the largest American company (by market capitalization) that is not part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Google's corporate philosophy includes statements such as "Don't be evil" and "Work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun", illustrating a somewhat relaxed corporate culture.

Blog

A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

WordPress

WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP and backed by a MySQL database. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg.

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