 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Geek speak Carol Daniels cad@melbpc.org.au |
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It's time for another edition of Geek Speak. This time I've grouped some entries and included context markers for other because some common words take on a specific technical meaning within certain contexts.
HTML
Body
The Body element encompasses the body of the document, in other words, all the text and other content that makes up the displayed document. The body appears between the opening <body> and closing </body> body tags. The separation of head and body elements tells you something important about HTML and its structural nature. It is logical to separate information about the document from the document itself.
Head
The next element inside the HTML element, it is enclosed within the opening <head> and closing </head> tags. The Head element contains information about the document, including the Title element. The Head element must be the first document element and must come immediately after the opening <html> element. Information within the Head element is not displayed within the document. In fact much of it is not displayed at all.
HTML
The outermost HTML element, which encompasses the entire document. Everything between the opening <html> and closing </html> tags is part of the HTML document and is treated as such by programs displaying or transmitting the document.
Title
One of the elements within the Head element. The Title is displayed along the top of Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer. It is not displayed as part of the actual HTML document. You can use the file name or actual document name in the Title element, but it is more useful to use a short descriptive title, as it is the Title element that will be recorded automatically for Favorites, bookmarks and references to visited sites. Ideally you should be able to predict the content of the document from the Title element alone.
Cascading Style Sheets / CSS (HTML)
CSS a new feature to the HTML standard, which is designed to provide more control over presentation of HTML documents. HTML was not designed to describe presentation or layout, but to describe structural and logical relationships within and between documents. When fully implemented CSS will define how HTML elements, such as headers and links, will appear within a Web site. The CSS will hold for referred pages within that site. Ideally a well developed CSS will degrade gracefully, still producing properly (logically correct) marked up HTML documents even when the visitor's browser does not support all of the special layout functions specified in the CSS.
Dynamic HTML
DHTML is the next step in the evolution of HTML. It is based on industry standard HTML and Java, which together provide new control features, such as absolute positioning and layers. With these features, designers will be able to exercise more control over the way their Web pages look.
Meta Tag (HTML)
A meta tag is a self referential HTML tag. Meta tags describe the document. Although meta tags are optional (that is they are not a required to form a valid HTML document) they are common and becoming more so. They are especially useful for some indexing operations.
Newsgroups/Usenet
Cancelbot (newsgroup/usenet)
A program a systems administrator can use to identify and cancel Usenet postings. Cancelbots are primarily used to cancel messages from a person or with a subject used by known spammers. In ordinary circumstances messages can only be cancelled by the original sender.
Cross Posting
When you cross post a message you list all the groups on the "Newsgroups:" line of a single post. Therefore a cross posted message only takes up the space of 1 post (on every news server in the world that received that newsgroup). Although cross posting is better than multi posting, it's not a good idea. If you must cross post, do it selectively. Only cross post to relevant groups and set message follow ups to the single, most appropriate group, or to the sender (yourself) by modifying the message header (read your news reader's manual for the exact procedure).
Multi Posting
When you multi post, you send a separate individual message to each newsgroup you send it to, so each multi post takes up space in each of the newsgroup to which it is sent (on every news server in the world that receives that newsgroup).
Deja News
A search engine for newsgroup postings. Just as you use a Web search engine to find Web sites on a particular topic, you can use Deja News to find newsgroup postings on a specific topic, made during a specific period of time or made by a particular individual.
General
Home Page
Strictly speaking a personal page on the World Wide Web, it can also be used to refer to the initial page of any entire web site.
MIME
Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, this standard was originally developed to encode media into electronic mail messages, it is now used in many other applications.
The Portable Document Format, a document description language developed by the Adobe Corporation. If an Acrobat Reader is available (as either a stand-alone application, or a plug-in for a Web browser) PDF provides a platform-independent mechanism for sharing formatted documents. Adobe provides the Acrobat PDF reader free.
SGML
The Standard Generalized Markup Language.
Case Sensitive
Used to indicate conditions in which upper and lower case letters have different meanings. For example, UNIX is a case sensitive operating system. In a system running under UNIX, ABC.txt and abc.txt name two different files.
CERN (Organisation)
Acronym for Conseil Européen (later Organisation Européenne) pour la Recherche Nucléaire, now the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. CERN was the birthplace of the World Wide Web and one of the world's largest scientific laboratories.
Vincent Cerf (Net Identity)
President of the Internet Society (ISOC) and co-creator of TCP/IP (the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol ) which enables computers to talk to each other over the Internet.
Configure
Changing hardware or software settings to cause some effect.
Configuration
Used as a general catch-all to describe your computer's overall setup. It can also be used specifically with a qualifier, for example your sound card configuration, to describe a single element's setup.
CoolTalk (Internet software)
A realtime audio and data tool specifically designed for the Internet. It provides full-duplex audio conferencing (both users can speak and be heard simultaneously). It also includes a chat tool and a shared whiteboard for textual and graphical data conferencing.
Default
The setting in effect unless the user sets it differently. For example, your word processing program's default folder for saving documents may be "My Files". Unless you specifically choose another file (either by changing the default) or selecting a folder at the time you save the file, your new documents will be saved to the default ("My Files") folder.
Daemon
Not diabolical in the least, a daemon is a UNIX program that runs in the background, waiting and watching. It is executed when a request is made on the port that it is watching. Most daemons do their work without users ever realising it. You may receive a message from a mailer daemon when you send an e-mail that can not be delivered to the addressee. The mailer daemon sends you a message telling you that the message could not be delivered.
Directory
What folders used to be called.
Document info
A Netscape option that displays useful information about a given Web page. Choosing View, Document Info, produces the document's structure (including the URLs of images within the document), composition (including location, file type, length and character set used, source, last modification date and expiration date, and if you are viewing it from your cache) and security status (including any information about certification and encryption).
Easter Egg
A surprise hidden within a program or sometimes a Web site. Easter eggs can be extra game levels, special graphics, or a message from the developers of the program.
eXtensible Markup Language (XML)
A pared-down version of SGML, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium for use on the Web.
Mail Bomb
Flooding an e-mail address with messages causing the recipient's in box to overflow. In extreme cases the mail bomb can clog access to all mail addresses on the recipients' mail server. This is a severe abuse of netiquette and a violation of all ISP's terms of service. Mail bombing someone is virtually guaranteed to result in the suspension or cancellation of your Internet access.
Mailbot
An e-mail server programmed with automatic responses to requests for information.
Mail Filter
Sorting rules established by a user to divide messages automatically, based on subject, sender, or some other element within the message header.
MOO
For Mud, Object Oriented, one of may types of MUDs
MUD
For Multi User Dimension (or Dungeon) a simulated environment (usually text based) in which visitors interact. MUDs can be used for fun or educational purposes (sometimes both at once). One significant feature of many MUDs is that things users create can stay after the user has left. This feature is important in the development of worlds and their communities.
ASCII
For "American Standard Code for Information Interchange", the de facto standard for the numbers used by computers to represent all upper and lower case Latin letters, numbers, punctuation, etc. There are 128 standard ASCII codes each of which can be represented by a 7 digit binary number: 0000000 through 1111111.
Bitnet
A network of educational sites separate from the Internet. Messages are exchanged between Bitnet and Internet computers. Now you will usually find Bitnet and Internet newsgroups listed side by side within the listing of newsgroups your service provider carries.
Finger
An Internet software tool used to locate people at other sites. The most common use of Finger is to find out if a person has an account at a particular site. However many sites do not allow incoming Finger requests.
Listserv
The proper name of a particular mailing list program. It is not a generic name for mailing lists or the software that runs mailing lists. Listserv originated in the Bitnet network, but it is now used on the Internet as well.
NNTP
Acronym for Network News Transport Protocol. This is the news equivalent of HTTP. NNTP is the protocol client and server software use to transmit newsgroup postings.
Reprinted from the July 1998 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
