Gatt Design have compiled a glossary of jargon terms used in the website design industry. These words are used regularly throughout website development documentation and books.
If you like to discuss any aspects of web design technology or strategies before committing to have a website designed, please feel free to contact Gatt Design online, or call 07866 361286.
Accessibility: Accessibility in the context of a website is the degree to which that Web site is usable by people with disabilities.
Blog: Blog is short for weblog and is a web page that has short, frequent updates made to it. Similar to a "what's new" page.
Browser: a computer program to view and interact with Internet web pages.
CMS: CMS (Content Management System) is a tool for managing content on a web site.
CSS: CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language for the web to used to define the style (layout, fonts, etc.) of a web page.
Domain: On the Internet a domain is the name by which a computer is identified.
Element: An element indicates structure in a web page and a way of hierarchically arranging content.
FTP: FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a method of transferring files from your computer to a web server.
GIF: GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is a type of graphic file suited for flat colour images and drawings.
Google: A popular Internet search engine.
HTML: HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the language used to write web pages.
Hyperlink: An image or portion of text that is highlighted in some way and connects the current document to another.
Image Map: An image that has different clickable elements within the same single image.
JPEG: JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is a type of graphic file suited for photographs and images with lots of colours.
Kerning: The adjustment of spacing between pairs of letters in words.
Liquid Layout: Layouts that are based on percentages of the current browser window's size.
Meta Tag: Specific HTML tags used to define meta data (keywords, description, etc.) on your web pages.
Nesting: Placing one element inside another. When two tags are opened, they must be closed in the reverse order.
Organic Searching: An organic search is a search that generates results that were not paid advertisements.
PNG: PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a type of graphic file used for highly compressed raster images.
Query: A word or group of words used to form a search to locate specific information (i.e. from a database).
Resolution: The number of dots per inch on a computer monitor.
Search Engines: An information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system.
SEO: SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a technique used to make your web pages more understandable to search engines.
Tag: The characters that indicate the start or end of an element - but not the element content itself.
URL: URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of a document or other resource on the Internet.
Vector Graphics: a technique for representing an image as points, lines and other geometric entities.
W3C: W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is the main international standards organisation for the World Wide Web.
Web Server: a computer that is set up with software and networking capabilities to deliver web pages on the Internet.
XHTML: XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language) is standard HTML rewritten to be compliant with XML rules.
XML: XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a general purpose specification for creating custom markup languages.
Yahoo!: A popular Internet search engine.
ZIP: A file format for compressing and archiving several files into one.