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Sheldon Brown's Web Glossary

Anchor

An invisible name on a page marking a particular spot. It takes the form: <A NAME="[anchor_name]"> </A>. A hyperlink to http://www.somesite.com/somepage.html#[anchor_name] will go to that part of the desired page.

The source for this definition has <A NAME="anchor">Anchor</A> just above the definition. Only the "Anchor" is visible, but the <A NAME="anchor"> and the </A> that surround it are not visible. If you came to this definition via a hyperlink, that link ended with: .../web_glossary.html#anchor.

A.S.C.I.I.

(American Societytandard for Computer Information Interchange) The code by which letters, digits, punctuation and other marks are coded as numbers. HTML only uses the basic 128 character 7-bit ASCII character set, so if you want to use accents or other marks not included in this set, you must code them as an entity.

Bookmark

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Browser

A software program which allows you to access the World Wide Web. The best known browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer

Default

The condition that is standard if no specific preferences have been determined by the user.

Directory Buttons

Optional buttons that appear at the top of the browser window, below the level of the pull down menus.The Macintosh Netscape browser's directory buttons are:

Back Forward Home Reload Images Open Print Find Stop Netscape

The buttons may be labeled with text or with icons, or with both. This may be chosen by using the "General Preferences" window.

Domain

The overall name of a particular web site, in the form . The name will usually be descriptive of the site in some way. For example, the domain name of this site is "sheldonbrown.com." The suffix indicates what type of site it is: .com (commercial), .edu (educational), .mil(military), .org (organization), .net (network). Domains outside of the U.S. commonly end with a suffix which specifcies which country they are from: .au (Australia), .ca (Canada), .de (Germany), .fr (France), .jp (Japan) .uk (United Kingdom)...

The domain name is an essential part of a URL.

Entity

A character that is not one of the standard 128 ASCII characters. Entities are coded between an ampersand (&) and a semicolon(;). For instance, the French "é" is created by typing: "&eacute;"

GIF

A format for compressing images, one of the two popular image formats on the Web. (See also JPEG.)

Hex triplet

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HTML

Hyper Text Markup Language.

A very simple computer language, used for all text-based Web pages. HTML features commands to control the formatting of text and to provide links to images and other HTML pages.

This site features an HTML sampler, with a split window that shows exactly how HTML works.

Justified text

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Icon

A graphic symbol which can be clicked on with the mouse to give an instruction to the computer program.

JPEG

A format for compressing images, one of the two popular image formats on the Web. (See also GIF.)

Menu

In a browser, the row of commands at the very top of the screen, which reveal more commands when you click the mouse on them. The Macintosh Netscape browser's menus are:

File Edit View Go Bookmarks Options Directory Window

Different computers and different browsers will have similar, but slightly different menus.

Search Engine

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Among the most popular Search engines are:

Secret URL

A URL which does not have any public links to it can not be found by the world at large, unless they happen to guess the URL. Search engines will not find URLs that do not have links leading to them so a secret URL can be used to transfer information from one user to another confidentially.

Source

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URL

Uniform Resource Locator, the address that identifies each separate page or other file on the World Wide Web. They are usually in the form "http://www.<domain>.<type>>/filename"

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