This glossary provides definitions to a selected list of terms used in this document and is not intended as a comprehensive listing of WWW terminology. Links to other Web glossaries are provided at the bottom of this page.
Anchor - the anchor <A> element is used to define the start and/or destination of a hypertext link. Anchor tags are used to connect readers to other documents and to specific places within the same document.
Example:
The <A HREF="http://www.cals.cornell.edu">CALS Home Page</A> contains information about the Cornell College of Agriculture & Life Sciences.
The text between the start <A> and end </A> tag defines the label for the link. Selecting the link takes the reader to the document specified by the HREF attribute, in this case, the CALS home page. The document may contain inline images which use the IMG attribute.
Banner - banners are analogous to the masthead on paper letterhead, providing a unifying, as well as identifying logo, name or image at the head of the page. Here is an example from CUL .
Body - main portion of a Web page that is bounded by body tags and is displayed in the browser's window.
Browser - A client program (software) that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources. (e.g. WWW, Gopher, FTP) The Netscape browser can be automatically downloaded or opened on your machine by clicking on the button "World Wide Web" from the Bear Access Launch Pad. A browser called Lynx provides text-based browsing of the Web without graphical components.
Button - small rectangular graphic usually labeled with text to indicate its function. Buttons may be used to initiate or conclude a process. Small graphics that act as hyperlinks are also called buttons.
CGI - a Common Gateway Interface, or CGI, contains the instructions to a server on how to run an external program, or gateway. More information is given at http://www.frw.uva.nl/org/aut/personeel/mars/unix/html/cgi/intro.html.
Client - a computer and a software program used to contact and obtain data from a server. Web browsers are clients.
Copyright - the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the law which legally secures the right to publish and sell any literary or artistic work, pertains equally to networked digital information. To copyright web-based documents a "Statement of Copyright" should be appended in the footer of the document. An example is given at Cornell's Home Page Copyright Notice.
Download - the transfer of information from a remote server to your computer through a networked connection. This can include simple data sets, graphics, or full applications.
Footer - the text and images at the bottom of a Web document that provide information on author/institutional sponsor, revision date, copyright, comments form, and navigational links. Sometimes these links are buttons. The footer is often set off from the rest of the text on the page by a horizontal rule. Footers are not the opposite of headers in Web documents. See Header
GIF - a common image file format on the Internet often used for basic images and graphic elements in Web documents. Another kind of image file format is JPEG. GIF stands for Graphic Interchange Format.
Head - the portion of a Web page not displayed by the browser (e.g., not visible on your computer screen), bounded by head tags (<HEAD> ... </HEAD>) that contains the metatags for the page. For example, the title of the Web page is the text inserted between the title tags (<TITLE> ... </TITLE>). It displays in the title bar of the browser window. Title tags belong in the head portion of a Web document.
Header or Header Tags - the HTML tagging that displays the text inside the tags in a size relative to the header tag number. <H1> ... </H1> is the largest; <H6> ... </H6> is the smallest. Text within header tags is bolded. The header tags also insert implicit paragraph tags before and after the header text; this sets the header text apart from the surrounding text or images.
Helper Application - a program used by a Web browser to interpret files that it cannot handle internally. It must be installed separately, and your Web browser must be properly configured to recognize the files, and launch the helper application. In the Netscape browser, this is done from the Preferences menu.
Home Page - a Web document that serves as a starting point or organizational center for a collection of Web documents.
HREF - hypertext reference; the part of the anchor tag which specifies the exact URL to be used in a hyperlink.
HTML - Hypertext Markup Language; a simple data language that uses tags to guide the display of Web documents by a browser.
HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol; a network communication protocol for identifying, sending, and receiving Web documents between clients and servers.
Hyperlink - the relationship between two anchors. Clicking on a hyperlink will download and display the destination document it is "linked-to". Hyperlinks in Web documents appear as underlined text in blue (untraversed) or purple (traversed).
Hypertext - documents containing embedded links (hyperlinks) to other documents or other parts of the same document. Web documents tagged in hypertext markup language are hypertext documents.
Icon - graphics displayed by the browser as small images. Generally decorative or serving an identifying function, they rarely have a navigational function.
IMG - specifies an image file to be loaded with a Web Page. Example:
<IMG SRC = "Icons/ALS_ivy_banner.gif" ALIGN=TOP>The ALIGN attribute tells the browser to begin displaying adjoining text at the top, middle, or bottom right of the graphic.
The SRC (source) attribute is followed by the full name of the graphic file with complete path.
Inline Images - graphics displayed with text in a WWW page. Most browers support inline GIF images, and more recent browsers include the JPEG format. Most browsers include an option to disable auto-loading of inline images, so that slower links may display a page quickly; individual inline images can then be loaded as desired. Another option for faster loading of pages, is to include thumbnail graphics to represent large picture files.
Interlaced - graphics are often converted to an "interlaced" format. Interlacing causes the graphic to display on the web page as it loads, thus giving the illusion that the graphic is loading more quickly. A "blurry" version of the graphic appears first and details are added later. If graphics are not interlaced, the browser will display the graphic only after it has loaded the entire file. (The larger the graphic file size, the more noticeable the difference garnered from interlacing.)
Internet - a world-wide network that connects LAN's (Local Area Networks) to each other and provides routes for users on one LAN to reach users on other LANs.
JPEG - a compressed format that stores high quality images in relatively small files. JPEG is similar to GIF formats, but higher in quality. It is useful for information-rich images such as scanned photographs, but is not currently supported by all Web browsers. JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group.
LAN - Local Area Network; a high speed network connecting computers within a single site.
Logo - logos serve as institutional identifiers and are similar to banners. Here are CUL examples.
Metadata - data about data: brief information about a document (author, title, date of creation, subject) that describes or represents the content of that document. For example, the contents of the MARC record are the metdata for the book, serial, or audiovisual item the record represents. The information inside the head tags of a Web document are the metadata for that document. Metatags - the required tags (<HTML> ... </HTML>) for CUL web documents that frame the whole document and define its two main parts, the head and the body.
Navigation Bar - a set of graphic or text hyperlinks located in the document footer that helps users go to parts of a single Web site and other closely-related Web sites. Examples of CUL navigation bars.
Page - a document located on the Web.
Pixel - short for picture elements; the number of individual units that make up a graphic image displayed on a monitor. They are measured in two dimensions, width and height. Pixels are analogous to the dpi (dots per square inch) of a printed image.
Protocol - a set of communication rules that allows computers to accurately exchange and display information.
Search Engine - the software which allows users to find Web and Gopher sites on the Internet by scanning a database of their titles or text.
Server - a computer and a software program that responds to queries from a client. The term can refer to a particular piece of software, such as a WWW server, or to the machine on which the software is running, example: "Our mail server is down today, that's why e-mail is not being delivered." A single server can have several different server software programs running on it, thus providing many different services to clients on the network.
Tables - HTML tags that format text or images in columns and rows. There is provision for table headers. The rows and columns of tables can be bordered or borderless. For examples of table tagging and appearance, see this introductory and advanced sites.
Thumbnail - a small graphic, usually included as an inline image link to a larger external image. Thumbnails should be kept small so they load quickly. The user can then follow the links to the larger images, if they wish, and not be slowed down while waiting for the fullsize images to be loaded all at once.
Title Tags - see Headers
Transparent - graphics are often converted to a "transparent" format. This makes the graphic look like it is placed directly on the web page background, regardless of what that background is.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator. The address of a resource or document on the World Wide Web (WWW).
Examples:
http://www.cornell.edu gopher://gopher1.cit.cornell.edu ftp://cit.cornell.edu
URLs consist of a prefix that identifies the protocol used (http://, gopher://, file://, ftp://, etc.) followed by the specific address of the server and the name of a document or program on that server.
Web Site - a home page and all locally associated links.
World Wide Web - a client/server system which transmits hypertext documents over the Internet to provide access to many types of information (text, sound, images).
Other Glossaries:
Yale Glossary of Graphic User Interface (GUI) Elements
Modified from an original document at http://www.cals.cornell.edu/admin/glossary.html
Revised August 13, 1996, ver 2.0
Send comments to design-l@cornell.edu
Peter McDonald and Michael Engle
Design Subcommittee, WWW Implementation Committee
Cornell University Library