Glossary of Internet Terms -- Jim LaTourrette

Here are the active links on Jerry Brown's slides:
#10: The site below will tell you if the name is available. {Don’t register here. Just check.}
http://www.networksolutions.com/purchase/index.html

#11: Here’s good place to find quality hosts. They review and rate them.
http://www.webhostdir.com/webhostawards/budget.asp

#13: Here are examples of good budget-class hosts.
http://www.schogini.com/std_virtual_hosting_services.htm
http://www.kangaweb.com/hosting.htm

#17: Here’s an example.
http://www.essexsys.com

#20: More information on meta tags and keywords is available at,
http://www.signpost-me.com/keywords.html

#22: There are sites that do this for free. Here are two.
http://www.couchpotato.net/1clicksubmit/submit.html
http://www.searchengineguide.org/addurl.htm

#23: I’ve just signed up my own site with Signpost.
http://www.signpost-me.com
http://submitit.linkexchange.com/

There are many terms you will encounter on the Web. Here is a glossary subdivided into the categories:

Web server
HTML
HTML extensions
CGI
Internet
Applets

References: Ian S. Graham, HTML Sourcebook, Wiley 1996

Paul McFedries, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating an HTML Web Page, Que 1997
Web server

Items to look for and be aware of when choosing a web server:

Domain name: the web address of the web page, eg:

www.consult-LI.com -- these are case insensitive.

IP address: the numerical address of our domain is:

216.15.134.88
POP3: -- email server

E-Mail Aliases -- provide email forwarding to another email address.

E-Mail Auto-Responder: will send an immediate pre-written response to all received email.

SSL - Secured Sockets Layer Settings. For secure transactions, eg credit card sales.

Support for CGI and Perl Scripts is important.
 
 

Web Server Services (continued)

Hit Counter -- records count of visitors.

Guest-Book is useful to record comments and email addresses

WWW Bulletin Board can be useful

Voting Script might be useful.

Access-Log Statistics

mSQL Database Creation

Support should be available and rapid.

HTML

Tag pairs - A "tag" has a tag name enclosed in angle brackets. A start tag may also have attributes and is usually paired with an end tag with the same tag name but preceded by a slash. Tag names and attribute names are case insensitive. Attributes have the form: name="value". Skeleton web page:

<HTML>
<HEAD> <TITLE> The Title </TITLE>
<META ... > ...
</HEAD>
<BODY> everything else goes here, including tags to define Headings, Paragraphs, line breaks, Lists, Tables and hypertext links to other web pages or anchor spots in the same web page.
</BODY> </HTML>

HTML extensions

Forms -- are graphical input regions that can contain text fields, radio buttons, check boxes and selection lists -- require CGI programming.

Frames -- are used to display several web pages on one page

TARGET -- attribute defines where a page is displayed

Multimedia -- Images, Audio and Video can be heard and seen on web pages.

<META NAME="name" CONTENTS="value">

META tags for keywords and description are used by search engines.
 
 

CGI

CGI -- Common Gateway Interface -- defines the interface or protocol for exchange of information between HTML pages and CGI programs on the Web server.

CGI programs can be written in any language, but C++ and Perl are the most common. The use of JavaScript and VBScript is growing.

CGI programming is necessary to process information gathered from the graphical input elements: Forms, radio buttons, check boxes and selection lists.

Basics of HTML

HTML -- HyperText Markup Language is a subset of:

SGML -- Standard Generalized Markup Language, and also

XML -- eXtensible Markup Language

All use "Tags" to enclose elements. The tags in HTML are pre-defined.

SGML and XML use a DDT -- Data Definition Table to define allowable tags. HTML has evolved and continues to change.

Tags have surrounding angle brackets and the tag names are case insensitive. In SGML, all tags come in pairs. The end tag name is the same as the start tag but preceded by a slash. HTML browsers are quite lenient about not requiring any end tag that can be inferred from the next start tag. Also in HTML, there are a few tags such as <BR> and <HR> that do not enclose anything so there is no </BR> or </HR> end tag.

The skeleton HTML page has the tags:

<HTML>
    <HEAD>
        <TITLE> Put your page title here </TITLE>
    </HEAD>
    <BODY>
        Everything else goes here.
    </BODY>
</HTML>

A web browser "renders" a web page based only on the HTML tags. It otherwise ignores white space, such as tabs, indentation and multiple spaces. There are tags for formatting, paragraphs, making lists and the very important link tags.

Basic Formatting Tags:


New Paragraph: 
Horizontal Rule:
Line Break: 
Headings: 
<P>
<HR>
<BR>
<H1> Biggest </H1> through <H6> smallest </H6>

Text Formatting:


Bold:
Italics:
Underlined:
Monospaced:
Preformatted:
<B> This text will appear in bold </B>
<I> This text will appear in italics </I>
<U> This text will be underlined </U>
<TT> This text will look like typewriter text </TT>
<PRE> This text will keep all spaces and tabs </PRE>
(Unfortunately, it will also be monospaced.)

List Tags:


Ordered (i.e., Numbered) List:

<OL>
<LI> first item</LI>
<LI> next item </LI>
...
</OL>

Unordered (i.e. Bullet) List:

<UL>
<LI> first item</LI>
<LI> next item</LI>
...
</UL>

Definition List:

<DL>
<DT> First item</DT>
<DD> First definition</DD>
<DT> Second item</DT>
<DD> Second definition</DD>
...
</DL>

 


 

Table Tags:

<TABLE BORDER>
<CAPTION ALIGN=TOP|BOTTOM>Caption text</CAPTION> [opt.]
<TR>
<TH> Col1Header </TH> <TH>Col 2 Header</TH> ... [optional]
</TR>
<TR>
<TD> Col 1</TD> <TD> Col 2 </TD ...
</TR>
<TR>
<TD> Col 1</TD> <TD> Col 2 </TD ...
</TR>
</TABLE>

TABLE (continued)

any <TD> or <TH> can contain:
 
ALIGN=LEFT|CENTER|RIGHT
VALIGN=TOP|MIDDLE|BOTTOM
COLSPAN=2
ROWSPAN=2
horizontal alignment
vertical alignment
2 or more -- column spanning
2 or more -- row spanning

In the <TABLE> tag:
 
<TABLE BORDER=0>
<TABLE BORDER=5>
means no border, default is 2
means heavier border

<TABLE> can also contain:

CELLSPACING=10 CELLPADDING=10 WIDTH=75%

BGCOLOR=#CCCCCC
 
 

Colors:


#000000
#FFFFFF
#FF0000
#00FF00

#0000FF
#FF00FF
#00FFFF
#FFFF00

Black
White
Red
Green

Blue
Magenta
Cyan
Yellow

You will discover an awkward aspect of coding HTML by hand if you want to use any of the symbols (<), (>), (") or (&) in your text since these have special meanings in HTML. You must substitute the entity references: (<) is (&lt;), (>) is (&gt;), (") is (&quot;) and (&) is (&amp;)

Note that they all begin with (&) and end with (;).

Link Tags:


External link:
Anchor:
Internal link:
Email:
FTP (file):
FTP (directory):
Gopher:
Usenet:
Telnet:
<A HREF="URL">Link text</A>
<A NAME="AnchorName">Anchor text</A>
<A HREF="#AnchorName">Link text</A>
<A HREF="mailto:YourEmailAddress">Link text</A>
<A HREF="ftp://host/directory/filename">Link text</A>
<A HREF="ftp://host/directory/">Link text</A>
<A HREF="gopher://host/">Link text</A>
<A HREF="news:newsgroup.name/">Link text</A>
<A HREF="telnet://host">Link text</A>

URL -- Universal Resource Locator has the form:
 
http://host/directory/filename 
../images/bkgnd.gif
an "absolute" link -- or, e.g.:
a relative path to a file for a relative link

 

Internet (transfer protocols):

http -- HyperText Transfer Protocol

ftp -- File Transfer Protocol -- most ftp hosts allow "anonymous" login, i.e., it accepts the user name= anonymous, with password= the user's email address.

mailto -- sends mail to addressee:

gopher -- a text interface protocol for accessing databases on gopher hosts.

Usenet -- accesses the network of newsgroups posted on Usenet hosts.

telnet -- remote login protocol. You must have an account on the remote machine to use telnet.

Including Multimedia Elements

Image tags:

<IMG SRC="filename"> -- Basic image tag

<IMG SRC="filename" ALIGN=TOP> -- Align image with top of text

<IMG SRC="filename" ALIGN=MIDDLE> -- Align with middle

<IMG SRC="filename" ALIGN=BOTTOM> -- Align with bottom

<IMG SRC="filename" ALT="Alternative text"> -- Alternative text

Audio:

clickable sound:

<A HREF="filename.wav">Click here for sound</A>

or background sound:

<BGSOUND SRC="filename.wav" LOOP="10"> -- will loop 10 times

use "-1" for continuous looping.

Video: (beware, video files are large!):

Video:

<IMG DYNSCR="File" CONTROLS LOOP=Times START=When>

Filename extensions are:

MOV -- QuickTime format

AVI -- standard for Windows 95

MPG -- compressed format use less space, require more processing.

Frames

Frames can divide a page, e.g., into a left "index" and right "contents" :

<FRAMESET COLS 25%, 75%>
<FRAME SRC="myindex.htm" NAME="left">
<FRAME SRC="contents.htm" NAME="right">
</FRAMESET>
<NOFRAMES> Alternate page info here </NOFRAMES>

The <FRAMESET> tag is used in place of the <BODY> tag.

This arrangement is used in most of the consult-LI.com pages.

Frames can be nested to create whatever arrangement you wish, eg :

<FRAMESET COLS 25%, 75%>
<FRAMESET ROWS 50%, 50%>
<FRAME SRC="skills.htm" NAME="upper">
<FRAME SRC="skillgrp.htm" NAME="lower">
</FRAMESET>
<FRAME SRC="listings.htm" NAME="right">
</FRAMESET>
<NOFRAMES> Alternate page info here </NOFRAMES>

This arrangement was used for the Search by Skills page on our web site.

JavaScripts and Java Applets

JavaScripts and Java Applets can be used to make Web pages more dynamic and to reduce the processing load on the web server by shifting the processing to the client. For example, if the contents of a form are checked on the client, it is much more efficient than transmitting the form contents to the server, checking it there and transmitting error/correction messages back to the client.

Note: JavaScript belongs to Netscape and is completely separate (except for the name) from Java which was developed and is owned by Sun. JavaScript is an interpreted language quite similar in capabilities to VBScript, the Microsoft equivalent. Java is compiled to byte code that is executed by the Java Virtual Machine (the Java Runtime Environment) that is included with all popular web browsers. The same browsers also execute both JavaScript and VBScript.

Java can be used to produce standalone programs that are called Java applications. A Java applet lacks a main method so it can't run standalone; it only runs in within the browser runtime environment. Ii is included in an HTML page with the tags:

<APPLET CODEBASE="" CODE="PLB.class" ARCHIVE="PLB.jar" WIDTH=740 HEIGHT=480>

A Java aware browser would show the PLB Financial Calculator here

</APPLET>

CODEBASE contain the path to the code directory.

PLB.class contains the Java byte code

PLB.jar is a Java ARchive file that can contain compressed byte code and data files to lessen the download time. Also, a JAR file can be signed for security purposes.