CIS86 Fall 2007 : Terminology Reference

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CIS86 2007 Terminology Reference

WWW: The World Wide Web is a network overlaid on top of the Internet, using a protocol called HTTP to transfer information between Web servers and Web browsers. By adding a visual aspect to Internet traffic, the Web became the most pervasive communications medium in the modern world within a few years.
Hypertext: The basic idea behind Hypertext is creating relationships between elements, regardless of their type or location. Although most pre-Web hypertext systems used bidirectional links, the Web was built with unidirectional links to simplify the infrastructure (e.g., you can link to something without the system knowing on the other end, which greatly simplifies the implementation).
HTML: HyperText Markup Language is the basic markup language that describes Web pages, and allows for the integration of other services within a Web page. HTML is distinguished by pairs of tags, which are embedded in angle brackets. HTML files are plain text files, and can be opened and modified in any text editor. Because of the structured HTML, however, these pages can also be displayed with formatting in Web tools like GoLive and Dreamweaver.
CSS: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the mechanism by which modern Web pages are formatted. Page components are formatted as overlapping and embedded boxes (the "Box Model"), where CSS allows you to specify the appearance, behavior, and position of all page elements. Styling can be applied at a number of levels, and the properties cascade down in order of precedence to individual elements in a page.
DHTML: Dynamic HTML (DHTML) is the combination of Javascript and CSS with the DOM (Document Object Model) to create more dynamic Web pages. DHTML effects include image rollovers, popup menus, simple animations, and other common effects.
DOM: The Document Object Model (DOM) is the means by which a Web browser operates on Web pages and their components. Certain DOM objects correspond to all of the browser, window, and HTML page elements, and each of these elements can be manipulated using Javascript in the client browser.
FTP: File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a protocol used to transfer large blocks of data between servers on a network. Web development tools like GoLive and Dreamweaver use FTP (transparently, for the most part) to transfer files between your local hard drive and your ISP's Web server. You will also find a command line interface to FTP in all operating systems. While convenient, most FTP programs do not offer the synchronize feature common to Web development systems, whereby the system automatically determines which files need to be updated.
HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the protocol by which HTML files and other media are passed between Web browsers and Web servers.
XML: eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that allows you to create a schema that describes the data in your application. Many tools can manipulate XML these days, because it provides a common framework for describing the data entities in your own application, thereby allowing tools to interact with that data by knowing the schema.
XHTML: XHTML is the most rigorous form of HTML, using an XML schema as the basis for implementing an HTML parser. Using the XHTML doctype subjects your code to the most rigorous interpretation, but it also allows you to use the most up-to-date versions of HTML and CSS.
AJAX: Asynchronous Javascript and XML (AJAX) is a term coined by Jesse Garrett at Adaptive Path. AJAX is a style of interaction that is the hallmark of the emerging "Web 2.0" applications. This technique allows portions of a Web page to be updated without refreshing the entire page, a significant advance in the development of Web-based applications. An asynchronous request for information is sent to the Web server through Javascript, and a separate Javascript function processes the response when it is returned by the server.
Web 2.0: This euphemism, coined by O'Reilly Media, describes a new wave of Web applications that are vastly more interactive than "traditional" Web applications. AJAX is the poster boy technique for Web 2.0, but there's a lot going on there under the hype.
PHP: PHP: Hypertext Processor is a widely-used, public domain system used in conjunction with Web (HTTP) servers. Using PHP, programmers embed PHP commands in HTML pages. These HTML pages can contain any mix of HTML commands and PHP commands, since the PHP processor will turn the PHP commands into the resulting HTML. The Web server first hands these pages off to the PHP program, which then processes the PHP commands embedded in the file, and returns pure HTML to the Web server. PHP is often used in conjunction with MySQL, a public domain relational database system, to create dynamic pages. The WordPress blogging system uses PHP to create pages dynamically.
Javascript: Javascript is the primary language by which a Web designer can manipulate the Web browser when a page is viewed. Javascript is used to implement many dynamic effects, such as image rollovers, validation in forms, and popup menus.
Java: Java is an object-oriented , general-purpose programming language that is understood by most Web browsers. These browsers run a Java virtual machine that allows a Web page to load a small program (or "applet") to provide some particular functionality in the browser.
Browsers: Web Browsers are the primary mechanism by which users can browse the World Wide Web. There are a number of different Web browsers on every imaginable platform, and they all vary slightly in how they interpret HTML and CSS, as well as Javascript. These differences, while usually minor, can be extremely difficult to reconcile or even understand.
Dynamic vs Static Web Pages: Another useful distinction between pages is whether they are static or dynamic. Static pages are HTML files that do not change when served up from a user's request; all requests receive a copy of the same "pure" HTML file on the server. Dynamic pages are ultimately HTML files when returned to a user, but some or all of that HTML is created on the fly by some back-end program that receives customer input. For example, such a program might read records from a database to create a table of your credit card transactions. The information from the database would be formatted as "pure" HTML, and then returned to the user as a standard HTML page. A handy way to tell whether a page is static or dynamic is to look at the URL. If the extension is .html, .htm, .shtml, .shtm, then the file is a static Web page. If the extension is pretty much anything else (such as .php, .asp, .jsp), then some program on the Web server is either creating or modifying the page before returning it to the user via the Web server.
Web Server: A Web server is a program that responds to requests using the HTTP Protocol, usually on port 80. These responses are in the form of HTML pages and associated media. Some of these pages are static (the exact same page is returned every time when requested), whereas many of these HTML pages are created on request by a service running on the Web server. Web servers typically integrate other services, allowing Web designers to use these services to create dynamic pages. For example, Web servers use the PHP pre-processor to integrate data from MySQL databases.

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