Writing for the Web: A Primer for Librarians

by Eric H. Schnell

Glossary

BODY
The element which contains all the information which is part of the document, as opposed to information about the document itself, which is in the Head. See: HEAD below

 

BROWSER
The Internet software client which is used to access documents on the World-Wide Web.

 

CERN
 The European Laboratory for Particle Physics, located near Geneva, Switzerland. Where Tim Berners-Lee orginally conceived of the World-Wide Web. For more information visit CERN.

 

CGI
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard for interfacing external applications with information servers, such as Web servers. For more information, visit the CGI FAQ.

 

CLIENT
A software program which is installed on the users computer. It allows the user to utilize the function and the capabilities of their personal computer, such as a mouse. Web clients are called browsers.

 

HEAD
The element which contains information which applies to the whole document. The Head does not contain any text. Text makes up the Body of the document. See: BODY above. 

HOME PAGE
The first Web document which a user accesses when starting their Web browser. Also refers to the initial page of a World-Wide Web site. 

HTML
Hypertext Markup Language. a subset of the publishing industries Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). See: SGML below 

HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol. The Internet protocol which computers communicate on the Web. 

JAVA
 A new programming language designed by Sun Microsystems.

 

MIME
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. Originally developed for encoding media into electronic mail messages. The complete description of MIME is also available.

 

NCSA
 The National Center for Supercomputing Applications is located at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. They are developed of various software products which are used on the Internet today, including MOSAIC. For more information visit NCSA.

 

PDF
 The Portable Document Format has been developed by the Adobe Corporation and is in of itself a hypertext system.

PERL
Perl is an interpreted programming language which is becoming very popular in Web site development. For more information visit the Perl Institute.

PNG
 The Portable Network Graphics is a newer multimedia format being developed and organized by the World Wide Web Consortium. A complete technical description of PNG is available.

SGML
SGML is defined in ISO 8879:1986 "Information Processing -- Text and Office Systems -- Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). For more information go to A Gentle Introduction to SGML.

SMIL
Allows integration of media using only simple HTML-style markup tags. For more information go to SMIL.

VRML
The Virtual Reality Modeling Language. A language for describing virtual worlds networked via the Internet and hyperlinked with the World Wide Web. For more information visit the VRML Consortium.

WORLD-WIDE WEB
A mutimedia Internet search protocol which utilizes hypertext and graphics to aid in navigation.
This is a listing of the terms used in this document.


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Page Updated: Tuesday, 24-Nov-98
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