Before you can learn how to use the Internet, you have to understand what the words associated with it mean. Terms are listed in alphabetical order. Most definitions were taken from www.whatis.com. Text in italics was added to the definitions from this site.
Browser: A browser is the program you use to interact with the Internet. This program allows you to access web pages and see the text and graphics stored there. The most common browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. You can learn how to use a browser in the Browsers section.
Clicking: Clicking means to place your mouse over a link (for a definition, see below) or image and pushing the left mouse button either once or twice.
Download: Downloading is the transmission of a file from one computer system to another, usually smaller computer system. From the Internet user's point-of-view, to download a file is to request it from another computer (or from a Web page on another computer) and to receive it.
E-mail: E-mail (electronic mail) is the exchange of computer-stored messages by telecommunication. E-mail messages are usually encoded in ASCII text. However, you can also send non-text files, such as graphic images and sound files, as attachments sent in binary streams. E-mail was one of the first uses of the Internet and is still the most popular use. Also spelled EMail, Email, email, and e-mail.
FTP: The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is the Internet facility for downloading and uploading files. (If you are downloading through a Web page, the FTP request is set up for you by the Web page. You are usually asked where you want the downloaded file placed on your hard disk, and then the downloading transmission takes place.)
HTML: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the set of "markup" symbols or codes inserted in a file intended for display on a World Wide Web browser. The markup tells the Web browser how to display a Web page's words and images for the user.
Internet: The Internet is basically a lot of computers connected to each other. Information is stored on larger computers (called "servers") and is accessed from a personal or business computer, like the one you're probably using now. Also called the Web, and the Net.
Link: Using hypertext,
a link is a selectable connection from one word, picture, or information object
to another. In a multimedia environment such as the World Wide Web, such
objects can include sound and motion video sequences. The most common form of
link is the highlighted word or picture that can be selected by the user (with
a mouse or in some other fashion), resulting in the
immediate delivery and
view of another file. Also called hypertext link and hyperlink.
Network: In information technology, a network is a series of points or nodes interconnected by communication paths. Networks can interconnect with other networks and contain subnetworks. It is basically one computer connected to serveral other computers, all of which are connected to each other. The first computer can access information on any of the other computers and any of the other computers can access information on it.
Netiquette: Netiquette is etiquette on the Internet. Since the Internet changes rapidly, its netiquette does too, but it's still usually based on the Golden Rule.
Search Engine: On the Internet, a search engine has three parts:
1. A spider (also called a "crawler" or a "bot") that goes to every page or representative pages on every Web site that wants to be searchable and reads it, using hypertext links on each page to discover and read a site's other pages
2. A program that creates a huge index (sometimes called a "catalog") from the pages that have been read
3. A program that receives your search request, compares it to the entries in the index, and returns results to you
Together these parts allow you to type in a word or phrase and have the search engine search every page it knows about for that word or phrase. Once it finds the best matches, it returns the web pages containing the information you are looking for.
Server: Specific to the Web, a Web server is the computer program (housed in a computer) that serves requested HTML pages or files. A Web client is the requesting program associated with the user. The Web browser in your computer is a client that requests HTML files from Web servers.
Upload: Uploading is transmission from one, usually smaller computer to another computer. From an Internet user's point-of-view, uploading is sending a file to a computer that is set up to receive it.
URL: A URL (Uniform Resource Locator) (pronounced YU-AHR-EHL or, in some quarters, UHRL) is the address of a file (resource) accessible on the Internet. The type of resource depends on the Internet application protocol. Using the World Wide Web's protocol, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) , the resource can be an HTML page (like the one you're reading), an image file, a program such as a CGI application or Java applet, or any other file supported by HTTP. TheURL contains the name of the protocol required to access the resource, a domain name that identifies a specific computer on the Internet, and a hierarchical description of a file location on the computer. On the Web (which uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol), an example of a URL is:
http://www.mhrcc.org/kingston
which describes a Web page to be accessed with an HTTP (Web browser) application that is located on a computer named www.mhrcc.org. The specific file is in the directory named /kingston and is the default page in that directory (which, on this computer, happens to be named index.html). An HTTP URL can be for any Web page, not just a home page, or any individual file.
Web Page: On the World Wide Web, a page is a file notated with the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Usually, it contains text and specifications about where image or other multimedia files are to be placed when the page is displayed. You can think of a Web site as a book (albeit a hypertext kind of book rather than a sequentially arranged kind of book) that arrives a page at a time as you request each one. Also known as a Page.
Web Site: A Web site is a related collection of Web 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.
Confusesd about a word we didn't define? Go to whatis.com and search for that word!
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