Web and Internet Glossary ...

To visit websites and web pages - moving from site to site (or page to page) by clicking links on those pages that may interest you and disocver what's there.

The opposite of browsing is "searching". When you search a page, you find a search box and enter terms specific to what you are looking for.

A temporary storage area on your computer that holds web pages yu recently visited.. As you jump from Web page to Web page, caching those pages in memory lets you quickly go back to a page without having to download it from the server again.

In order to ensure that the latest page is displayed, the browser USUALLY compares the dates of the cached page with the current Web page. If the Web page has not changed, the cached page is displayed immediately. If the Web page has changed, it is downloaded, displayed and cached.

Distinguishing lower case from upper case. In a case sensitive language, "abc" is considered different data than "ABC:. When matching a string of letters, it is case sensitive if capital and lower case letters must match exactly.

A message from a WEB SERVER computer, sent to and stored by your browser on your computer. When your computer consults the originating server computer, the cookie is sent back to the server, allowing it to respond to you according to the cookie's contents.

The main use for cookies is to provide customized Web pages according to a profile of your interests. When you log onto a "customize" type of invitation on a Web page and fill in your name and other information, this may result in a cookie on your computer which that Web page will access to appear to "know" you and provide what you want. If you fill out these forms, you may also receive e-mail and other solicitation independent of cookies.

Short for electronic mail, the transmission of messages over communications networks_ a software application that allows one to exchange messages with someone else.

Frames are boxes that surrouns a portion of a web page and allow several mini-pages to display at once on your computer screen.

File Transfer Protocol is the ability to transfer files from one computer to another. FTP is the method used to "Download" things like software, text, pictures or games from the remote computer it's stored on to your computer via the internet.

Hyper Text Markup Language - A markup language used to structure text and multimedia documents. Web pages are built with HTML tags (codes) embedded in the text. HTML defines the page layout, fonts and graphic elements as well as links to other documents within the site or on the Web. Each link contains the URL, or address, of a Web page residing on the same server or any server worldwide, hence "World Wide" Web.

HyperText Transport Protocol - The communications protocol used to connect to servers on the Web. Its primary function is to establish a connection with a Web server and transmit HTML pages to the client browser or any other files required by an HTTP application. Addresses of Web sites begin with an http:// prefix; however, Web browsers typically default to the HTTP protocol. For example, typing www.njmetronet.com is the same as typing http://www.njmetronet.com.

If you ever see HTTPS you'll know you're on a "secure" server and can use your credit card online or feel comfortable providing information that you don't want broadcast to the world.

The vast collection of interconnected networks that all use the TCP/IP protocols and that evolved from the ARPANET of the late 60’s and early 70’s. The Internet (upper case I) is the largest network in the world. It is made up of more than 100 million computers in more than 100 countries covering commercial, academic and government endeavors. Originally developed for the U.S. military, the Internet became widely used for academic and commercial research. Users had access to unpublished data and journals on a variety of subjects

An "internet" (lower case i) is 2 or more computers connected to each other (a network), and are not part of the Internet unless they use TCP/IP protocols.

Interactivity is the dialog that occurs between a human being and a computer program where an action by a user provokes an action by the site.

An interactive website would be one in which some action of the user generates a response either from another human being at the other end of the connection or with a program residing on a computer.

An Intranet is a private computer network based on the standards of the Internet. An intranet is 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. An intranet may be on the Internet or may simply be a network.

Internet Service Provider is the company that gives you internet access and e-mail. A company that sells Internet connections via modem (examples: aol, Mindspring - thousands of ISPs to choose from).

Words people use to search in search engines. For example, if you go to a search engine, type in "pizza" and hit the button, "pizza" is a keyword in your search. If you use "peperoni pizza" as your keyphrase, your search becomes a little more specific - the search engines will give you less results, but the reults will be more targetd to your keyphrase.

When designing your website, you want to target the right market. The way to do this is to choose the right keywords through the Search Engine Optimization process, which involves including your keywords and keyphrases in meta tags and prominerntly in the text of your site.

To achieve a high ranking in the search engines, really means getting a high ranking for the keywords that you've chosen to focus on.

A link (or hyperlink) when "clicked" on connects one spot on a webpage with either:

• another place on the same page
• to another page in the same web site
• to another web site entirely. or
• will open your mail window and automatically enter an Email Address of the intended receipient

Banners, buttons or underlined text are usually links. The way to know whether a graphic element or text is a link is to place your cursor over the item and watch it turn from an arrow into a small hand "pointing" and then look at the "status bar" at the bottom of your browser window where you will see the "destination" or "URL" of the link you are pointing at.

A process where one increases the quantity and quality of incoming and outgoing links to and from external sources with the intention of increasing a websites link popularity. This helps increase a Web page's position in some of the search engines.

A special HTML tag that provides information about a web page. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed. Instead, they provide information such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content. Many search engines use this information when building their index.

Any service generally designed to allow users to search the web or a specialized database of information. On the Internet, a search engine is a coordinated set of programs that includes:

• A spider (also called a "crawler" or a "bot") that goes to every webpage possible and reads it, using hypertext links on each page to discover and read a site's other pages
• A program that creates a huge index (sometimes called a "catalog") from the pages that have been read
• A program that receives your search request, compares it to the entries in the index, and returns results to you

Typically, a search engine works by sending out a spider to fetch as many documents as possible. Another program, called an indexer, then reads these documents and creates an index based on the words contained in each document. Each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm to create its indices such that, ideally, only meaningful results are returned for each query.

A computer that processes requests for HTML and other documents that are components of webpages and websites. A computer running that software, assigned an IP address, and connected to the Internet so that it can provide documents via the World Wide Web. Also called HOST computer.

Moving up or down within a document in your screen.

Computer robot programs, referred to sometimes as "crawlers" or "bots" that are used by search engines to roam the World Wide Web via the Internet, visit sites and databases, and keep the search engine database of web pages up to date. They obtain new pages, update known pages, and delete obsolete ones. Their findings are then integrated into the "home" database.

The Web is so enormous that it can take six months for spiders to cover it, resulting in a certain degree of "out-of-datedness" (link rot) in the search engines.

The World Wide Web is a big part of the Internet