WebSpeak – Terms

EmpathyEducates offers a short summary of Web terms, phrases, or words user in cyberspace.

Many of these are linked to other references. Please explore. Definitions for the terminology may be overwhelming. If I can be of further help, please ask and you shall receive.

Our hope is that what is offered here will be helpful to you. If there are other vocabulary words you would like us to define, please send an electronic message to learnglow@yahoo.com. I, Betsy, the EmpathyEducates Administrator will search for the term and then add the phrase.

Blog
1. A blog, or weblog, is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs are defined by their format: a series of entries posted to a single page in reverse-chronological order. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or reflect the purpose of the Web site> that hosts the blog. Topics sometimes include brief philosophical musings, commentary on Internet and other social issues, and links to other sites the author favors, especially those that support a point being made on a post.

2. To maintain a blog by posting text, links, images, or other content, often using blogging software.

Blogger
1. A person who creates and posts to a blog. Synonym of weblogger, though the latter is infrequently used.
2. Blogger.com, a popular blog hosting web site, acquired and run currently by Google.

Blog site
The location of a blog online, indicated by its URL. This may be a dedicated domain, like instapundit.com, a sub-domain, like techtargetnews.blogspot.com, or embedded within a web site, like http://www.gillin.co…. Sometimes confused with “blogsite.”

Browser
A browser is an application program that provides a way to look at and interact with all the information on the World Wide Web. The word “browser” seems to have originated prior to the Web as a generic term for user interfaces that let you browse (navigate through and read) text files online.

Technically, a Web browser is a client program that uses HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to make requests of Web servers throughout the Internet on behalf of the browser user. Most browsers support e-mail and the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) but a Web browser is not required for those Internet protocols and more specialized client programs are more popular.

The first Web browser, called WorldWideWeb, was created in 1990. That browser’s name was changed to Nexus to avoid confusion with the developing information space known as the World Wide Web. The first Web browser with a graphical user interface was Mosaic, which appeared in 1993. Many of the user interface features in Mosaic went into Netscape Navigator. Microsoft followed with its Internet Explorer (IE).

As of September 2006, Internet Explorer is the most commonly used browser, having won the so-called browser wars between IE and Netscape. Other browsers include:

• Firefox, which was developed from Mozilla (the open source version of Netscape)
• Flock, an open source browser based on Firefox and optimized for Web 2.0 features such as blogging and social bookmarking.
• Safari, a browser for Apple computers (at this writing, the third most popular browser).
• Lynx, a text-only browser for Unix shell and VMS users.
• Opera, a fast and stable browser that’s compatible with most relatively operating systems. A browser is an application program that provides a way to look at and interact with all the information on the World Wide Web. The word “browser” seems to have originated prior to the Web as a generic term for user interfaces that let you browse (navigate through and read) text files online.
• [Online] Chat
  Online chat can refer to any kind of communication over the internet, but is primarily meant to refer to direct 1-on-1 chat or text-based group chat (formally also known as synchronous conferencing), using tools such as instant messaging applications-computer programs, Internet Relay Chat, talkers and possibly MUDs, MUCKs, MUSHes and MOOes.

Diary
See Online Diary
Generally, a diary is a reflective writing. A journal, a treatise, a missive, a log. These are also referred to as posts.

Home Page
1) For a Web user, the home page is the first Web page that is displayed after starting a Web browser like Netscape’s Navigator or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The browser is usually preset so that the home page is the first page of the browser manufacturer. However, you can set it to open to any Web site. For example, you can specify that “http://www.yahoo.com… or “http://whatis.com” be your home page. You can also specify that there be no home page (a blank space will be displayed) in which case you choose the first page from your bookmark list or enter a Web address.

2) For a Web site developer, a home page is the first page presented when a user selects a site or presence on the World Wide Web. The usual address for a Web site is the home page address, although you can enter the address (Uniform Resource Locator) of any page and have that page sent to you.

Internet
The Internet is the worldwide, publicly accessible network of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a “network of networks” that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked Web pages and other documents of the World Wide Web.

Online Diary
An online diary is a personal diary or journal that is published on the world wide web on a personal website or a diary hosting website.

Online diaries began in 1995. As a community formed, these publications came to be almost exclusively known as online journals. Today they are almost exclusively called blogs, though some differentiate by calling them personal blogs. The running updates of online diarists combined with links inspired the term ‘web log’ which was eventually contracted to form the word blog.

In online diaries, people write their day-to-day experiences, social commentary, complaints, poems, prose, illicit thoughts, and any content that might be found in a traditional paper diary or journal. They often allow readers to contribute through comments or community posting.

Post
See Online Diary.

Posting
The act of placing a “diary” online.

Scripting Languages
Scripting languages (commonly called scripting programming languages or script languages) are computer programming languages that are typically interpreted and can be typed directly from a keyboard. Thus, scripts are often distinguished from programs, because programs are converted permanently into binary executable files (i.e., zeros and ones) before they are run. Scripts remain in their original form and are interpreted command-by-command each time they are run.

Scripts were created to shorten the traditional edit-compile-link-run process. The name ‘script’ is derived from the written script of the performing arts, in which dialog is set down to be interpreted by actors and actresses–the programs. Early script languages were often called batch languages or job control languages. Scripting languages can also be compiled, but because interpreters are simpler to write than compilers, they are interpreted more often than they are compiled.

The term scripting language is not technical, though embedding and dependence on a larger system are usually criteria. In computer games, scripts extend game logic, tailoring the game engine to particular game data. Scripts also make applications programmable from within, so that repetitive tasks can be quickly automated. Of course, not every scripting system that grows beyond its original design and delegation acquires a new name. Full-blown in-game languages such as UnrealScript exist, and JavaScript is a very influential standard, supported by virtually every browser on the market.

URL
A URL (Uniform Resource Locator, previously Universal Resource Locator) – usually pronounced by sounding out each letter but, in some quarters, pronounced “Earl” – is the unique address for a file that is accessible on the Internet.

A common way to get to a Web site is to enter the URL of its home page file in your Web browser’s address line.
However, any file within that Web site can also be specified with a URL. Such a file might be any Web (HTML) page other than the home page, an image file, or a program such as a common gateway interface application or Java applet.

The URL contains the name of the protocol to be used to access the file resource, a domain name that identifies a specific computer on the Internet, and a pathname, a hierarchical description that specifies the location of a file in that computer.

On the Web (which uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP), an example of a URL is:

Web site
A Web site is a related collection of World Wide Web (WWW) files that includes a beginning file called a home page. A company or an individual tells you how to get to their Web site by giving you the address of their home page. From the home page, you can get to all the other pages on their site. For example, the Web site for IBM has the home page address of http://www.ibm.com. (The home page address actually includes a specific file name like index.html but, as in IBM’s case, when a standard default name is set up, users don’t have to enter the file name.) IBM’s home page address leads to thousands of pages. (But a Web site can also be just a few pages.)

Since site implies a geographic place, a Web site can be confused with a Web server. A server is a computer that holds the files for one or more sites. A very large Web site may be spread over a number of servers in different geographic locations. IBM is a good example; its Web site consists of thousands of files spread out over many servers in worldwide locations. But a more typical example is probably the site you are looking at, whatis.com. We reside on a commercial space provider’s server with a number of other sites that have nothing to do with Internet glossaries.

A synonym and less frequently used term for Web site is “Web presence.” That term seems to better express the idea that a site is not tied to specific geographic location, but is “somewhere in cyberspace.” However, “Web site” seems to be used much more frequently.

You can have multiple Web sites that cross-link to files on each others’ sites or even share the same files.

World Wide Web
“The Web” and “WWW” redirect here. For other uses, see Web and WWW (disambiguation). For the world’s first browser, see WorldWideWeb.

WWW’s historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau
The World Wide Web (“WWW” or simply the “Web”) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents that runs over the Internet. With a Web browser, a user views Web pages that may contain text, images, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks. The Web was created around 1990 by the Englishman Tim Berners-Lee and the Belgian Robert Cailliau working at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. As its inventor, Berners-Lee conceived the Web to be the Semantic Web where all its contents should be descriptively marked-up.