Internet
Service Provider or ISP
The organisation which provides your access to the
world wide web.
It provides you with a telephone connection, a username.
a password and e-mail facilities. |
Hosting
The provision of disk space to house your website;
the provision of communications equipment to respond to
requests for pages from your website; the registration
of your website in order to advertise its presence to
the worldwide web. An organisation can provide hosting
services without being an ISP. |
Website
A website is a collection of instructions rendered at
the lowest level. This source code describes in minute
detail both the appearance and the actions involved -
from "this dot is blue" to "on mouse click,
carry out this action".
For speed of transmission, the website is broken down
into pages.
Every time a web surfer requests a page of a website from
the Internet, that page of source code is transmitted
over the Internet to be interpreted by the browser (unless
a recent copy exists in a temporary file). |
Page
A sub division of a website required to reduce transmission
times.
A collection of related information, however long.
FTP or File Transfer Protocol
A set of standards for the uploading (put) of websites
or downloading (get) between the website's designer's
computer and its Internet Service Provider's host computer.
|
Browser
A browser, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, is a
computer program that requests, reads and interprets the
source code of website pages.
Latest versions of these browsers are available as free
downloads over the Internet yet many people persist in
using old versions.
Many improvements were made between releases 3 and 4 and
later releases have concentrated on an increasing compliance
to standards.
It is easy to produce websites with excellent facilities
that simply do not work in old browsers.
Not only do the old browsers not work, they do not tell
you why they are not working.
Whatever effort you put into producing a website, its
appearnace and functionality is decided by the screen
it is displayed on and the browser that reads it. |
Flash
/ Flash Player
Macromedia Flash is the software commonly used
to introduce movement and change into websites - from
cartoons to melding/blending wording.
A small program called Flash Player is required to reproduce
these effects.
It is available as a quick, free download over the Internet.
A newer browser will tell you it needs to download this
add-in.
An older browser may not. |
Fixed
Sites
A fixed website returns the same information
in response to the same request every time.
It may include tests to check the release of your browser
or your screen resolution but will basically provide the
same response for every request for the same page.
The information in web pages can be changed as often as
necessary but, once changed, will stay the same until
the next intervention. |
Dynamic
websites
Dynamic websites commonly refer to further computer
facilities - databases - and return an answer depending
on who you are and/or what you want.
Memebership sites - banks, credit cards, frequent flier
programmes etc. look up your information in a database
before returning a page that has been modified to accommodate
only your information.
Reservation systems, catalogue sales etc. look up a database
to check availability of rooms, stock etc. before returning
a page that is modified both by your request and the system's
ability to fulfill it. |
Screen
sizes/resolution
Screen sizes have been growing over the years. 15"
screens (measured diagonally) were the norm. Now 17"
screens are more normal and 19" and 21" are
increasingly popular.
The amount of information that can be displayed on a screen,
or its resolution, is expressed in pixels (one dot of
colour), width by depth.
The most common screen resolution has been 800 x 600.
Increasingly, 1024 x 768 is taking over as the standard. |
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