Website Construction for Visual Artists
Glossary
Application
An end-user program. Programs intended for consumer-level use would be applications.
Block-level elements
HTML elements in which a "carriage-return" is forced. These elements create space around themselves, and disrupt the flow of the page by starting on a new line. After the closing tag, proceeding text/objects will begin on a new line. Common block-level elements are <div>, <h>, <p> and <table>.
Box-properties
A stack of CSS rules applied to an element that can give it a border, a width, a background color, a margin and padding.
Browser
An application, generally using a GUI (graphical user interface), that allows the user to access the Web, and to
see its content at the same time. This is different than accessing files/folders on the Internet via FTP, in which they simply look like files and folders.
Compression
Using algorithms to reduce the number of bits in a piece of information, to reduce its size but more-or-less retain its integrity. In Photoshop, redundant and unnecessary information is thrown out of gigantic Photoshop files (.psd) so that the compressed JPG's and GIF's may be a mere fraction of the original weight, thus making them suitable for the Web. If too much information is thrown out, and the quality of the image is compromised, then they have become
overcompressed
Content
Anything that is meant to be visualized (read, "shared with others") in a browser window. HTML and CSS are the markup, while text/images/links/decoration are the content.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets. A scripting/markup language for formatting HTML and other textfile documents. This was introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium to give designers better control over the appearances of their HTML pages, and to extract inferior HTML formatting tags. It took popular browsers a while to catch on to this, however.
CSS declaration
A set of rules for an HTML element that will be manipulated by CSS.
CSS rule
A single property+value in CSS. For example:
font-size:14px;
CSS selector
Selectors correspond with HTML elements in order to manipulate them. For example: with
p { margin:10px }, the selector
p defines all of the <p> tags, making sure they all have 10-pixel margins. Selectors are not used in
inline CSS, since this form of CSS script is written as an
attribute of an HTML element.
CYMK
Cyan, yellow, magenta, black (k). A color model used in printing, based on ink mixtures. CYMK images in Photoshop should be converted to RGB before you attempt to save them as Web-images.
Digitize
To translate something into binary information (1's and 0's). This happens via sampling, at a particular sample-rate.
Domain name
A quasi-English URL that can point to one or more IP addresses. My URL
http://www.ecbrown.org/default.htm is represented by the domain name
www.ecbrown.org, which is a name that I purchased. Domain names are linked to IP addresses via domain name servers (DNS).
Document
Originally, a file created by a word-processor. In common-usage, it is a file created by an application. Here, I refer to HTML files as "documents" since they are typed with text-editors.
Document-level CSS
CSS that is written in the <head> of an HTML document, which creates formatting rules for the entire page.
DPI
"Dots per inch" -- a resolution rate. A 300 DPI scan means that each square inch in 300 dots tall and 300 dots wide (therefore, it consists of 90,000 dots). This is a printing term, but in common usage it also stands for "pixels per inch".
Embedding
Inserting one object into another of a different type. Like embedding script to play a video inside of standard HTML script.
External stylesheet
A pure CSS document (with the .css suffix), that can control the presentation of an entire website. HTML pages must link to this document within the <head> tags in order to be affected.
File
A collection of data: text files, image files, directory files, etc.
Flash
A popular Macromedia application that allows designers to render animations, websites and other goodies as vector-graphics. The lingering problem with Flash sites is that their content is not actual text (ASCII) so search engines are unable to read them. They also generally prevent users from downloading images.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol. The transfer of files from one computer to another using an Internet connection. This is different than using the Web to transfer files, as the Web involves a browser. Here, I refer to FTP applications that allow website owners to upload files to their server accounts.
GIF
Graphics Interchange Format. An image-compression format best suited for flat colors and hard edges, but not always effective with photographic images. GIF's and JPEG's are standards for the Web.
Hexidecimal color code
A 6-digit code used to access a Web-safe color, which is read and generated by the browser.
Check em out.
HTML
Hyper-Text Markup Language. A scripting/markup language created to allow the easy manipulation of text-files. HTML is the basic language of the Web.
HTML attribute
The additional information added to an HTML tag. An HTML element can often have multiple attributes. Attributes are quantified by a value in quotes, such as <img
src="pic.jpg"> and <table
border="1">
HTML element
A particular type of HTML tag, as designated by the identifier typed after the first < bracket. For example: <a>, <table>, and <br>.
HTML tag
Script that is enclosed between < > brackets, which prevents that text from explicitly appearing the browser window -- the browser can instead read the tag and commit the actions that the tag refers to. Most tags also have
closing tags -- exceptions to this are the <img> and <br> tags.
Inline CSS
CSS injected into the HTML tags of a document. In this case, the CSS is contained within the
style="" attribute, not within { } moustache brackets (as with external stylesheets).
Inline elements
HTML elements that can be introduced into the content without creating disruptions (line-breaks). For example: <i>, <b> <img>, <a> and <span>.
Internet
A decentralized network of computers. This was originally a military invention to overcome vulnerabilities created by centralized computer networks. The Internet is not the same as the Web (an application that utilizes the Internet), and allows communications beyond the scope of the Web, such as email, newsgroups, instant messaging and FTP.
IP address
Every machine on the Internet has a unique IP address (a series of numbers). IP addresses of server accounts are linked to domain names via domain name servers (DNS)
ISO character entities
5-digits codes for text-characters that are non-alphanumeric and might not be rendered correctly by the browser. Most punctuation symbols are safe in practice (although & and # can be tricky in some browsers). These entities can also be used to create non-English characters.
Here's a chart
JPEG
Joint Photographic Experts Group. An image-compression format best suited for images with gradations and photographic details. JPEG's and GIF's are standards for the Web.
Link
An object (text or image) nested within HTML that allows a browser to create a connection to another webpage, website or specific file.
Relative links are links within a system, and have a shortened URL (within the <a href=""> </a> tags) -- they are often used among documents/files withing the same website. In other words, they only have as much information in the pathname that the browser actually needs to find the target object.
Absolute links have the full URL (including the http:// part) and must access the Web in order to locate the desired document/file.
Hot links are links to specific files, generally bypassing the particular webpage that is presenting the file.
Margin
The space between an element and surrounding elements.
Markup
HTML and CSS are markup languages, meaning that they are writing that presents and formats the content meant to be shared with an audience. The unseen support-structure for content, in other words.
Navigation
The method by which different pages of a website are accessed from any given point. In HTML sites, navigation is handled with links (either hypertext or image links).
Nesting
Inserting an object into another object of the same type. I use nesting here to refer to nested HTML tags -- where an opening/closing tag of one type is properly contained withing the opening/closing tags of another type. Example:
<b><i>hello</i>
</b>
Padding
The space between an element's border (or outermost boundary) and its contents. A <body> with a padding value of 25px with push content 25 pixels away from the browser's window-edge.
Pathway
Aka: pathname. A directory for how a system may find a target document/file/address from a given point. URL's are pathways. Links between webpages and even specific files (such as images linked with an <img> tag) must use correct pathways to function properly.
PNG
Portable Network Graphics. A non-patented replacement for GIF's that has become acceptable to browsers lately. While GIF's allow transparent pixels, PNG's allow variations in that transparency. They do tend to make heavier files, though.
RGB
Red, green blue. A color model used by computer monitors, based on additive light effects.
RGB values
In CSS, you can select colors by giving each of the three a number between 0-255. Designers usually consult the Photoshop color-picker to do this.
Server
A computer/device on a network to manage network resources. Server companies will rent out server (memory) space to clients so that they may upload their files, via FTP, and have them available on the Web. Generally, servers are dedicated -- meaning that they have no other function than this.
Script
I refer to HTML and CSS as scripting languages and not programming languages, as these scripts simply refer to the preprogrammed functions of browsers. In this case, it's really better referred to as "markup language", since scripts have a different definition when referring to programming.
Source code
A term that refers to the scripting that creates a webpage (which can be viewed with a browser). The term isn't really correct -- there is no programming code in either HTML or CSS.
Table
Tables are popular, grid-like structures created by HTML. They were intended for tabular data, but have been "misused" to create visual structures. Tables consist of vertical
rows and horizontal
columns, and are broken down into specific
cells. Table cells may contain text, imagery, or background elements. Among professional web-designers, tables are considered outdated, but they are extremely handy for beginning designers.
Template
I refer to templates here as HTML/CSS documents that only contain data that will be common to multiple pages, once this template is copied and renamed multiple times. Creating a good template is beneficial, since it will reduce typing in the future.
Text-editor
Applications that encode text as simple ASCII characters, without formatting (formatting occurs as a result of the application used to view the text -- the "eye of the beholder", so to speak). Text-editors are much simpler than word-processors, because the latter will encode data with lots of formatting information (margins, spaces, fonts, etc). HTML is written with text-editors so that the text will be universally acceptable, rather than only readable to certain applications (like MicroSoft Word documents, or OpenOffice documents).
URL
Uniform Resource Locator. A specific pathway to a Web address. My domain name is www.ecbrown.org, but this glossary page has a URL of http://www.ecbrown.org/tutorial/glossary.htm. In common usage, URL and domain names are often interchangeable, but URL still tend to refer to very specific pages in a website.
Web
Also: World Wide Web, or WWW. A network on top of a more extensive network (the Internet). The basic language of the Web is HTML, and it is accessed through Web-browsers. The Internet preceded the Web, but the Web made Internet connections easy to use by the general public.
More terms can be found at
Webopedia
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