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Contents
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Glossary
The following glossary contains definitions used in this work.
- •Anonymous FTP--Using the FTP function of the Internet anonymously by not logging in with an actual, secret login ID and password. Often permitted by large, host computers who are willing to share openly some of the files on their system to outside users who otherwise would not be able to log in.
- •E-Mail
--(Electronic mail) Messages transmitted over the Internet from user to user. E-mail can contain text, but also can carry with it files of any type as attachments.
- •FTP--(File Transfer Protocol) The basic Internet function that enables files to be transferred between computers. You can use it to download files from a remote, host computer, as well as to upload files from your computer to a remote, host computer. (See Anonymous FTP).
- •Gopher--A searching tool that was the primary tool for finding Internet resources before the World Wide Web became popular. Gopher now is buried under mountains of WWW pages--don't bother learning how to use this directly. You sometimes will find a Web link that takes you to a Gopher site, but at that point, if you're using Netscape, its usage will be obvious and actually will look a great deal like theWeb.
- •HTML--(Hypertext Markup Language) The basic language that is used to build hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It is used in basic, plain ASCII-text documents, but when those documents are interpreted (called rendering) by a Web browser such as Netscape, the document can display formatted text, colour, a variety of fonts, graphic images, special effects, hypertext jumps to other Internet locations and information forms.
- •Hypertext--Text in a document that contains a hidden link to other text. You can click a mouse on a hypertext word and it will take you to the text designated in the link. Hypertext is used in Windows help programs and CD encyclopaedias to jump to related references elsewhere within the same document. The wonderful thing about hypertext, however, is its ability to link--using http over the World WideWeb--to any Web document in the world, yet still require only a single mouse click to jump clear around the world
- •IRC--(Internet Relay Chat) Currently an Internet tool with a limited use that lets users join a "chat" channel and exchange typed, text messages. Few people have used IRC, but it is going to create a revolution in communication when the Internet can provide the bandwidth to carry full-colour, live-action video and audio. Once that occurs, the IRC will provide full video-conferencing. Even today, while limited for all practical purposes only to text, the IRC can be a valuable business conferencing tool, already providing adequate voice communication.
- •Mailing list--An e-mail based discussion group. Sending one e-mail message to the mailing list's list server sends mail to all other members of the group. Users join a mailing list by subscribing. Subscribers to a mailing list receive messages from all other members. Users have to unsubscribe from a mailing list to stop receiving messages forwarded from the group's members.
- •Protocols--Computer rules that provide uniform specifications so that computer hardware and operating systems can communicate. It’s similar to the way that mail, in countries around the world, is addressed in the same basic format so that postal workers know where to find the recipient's address, the sender's return address and the postage stamp. Regardless of the underlying language, the basic "protocols" remain the same.
- •TCP/IP--(Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) The basic programming foundation that carries computer messages around the globe via the Internet. Co-created by Vinton G. Cerf, former president of the Internet Society, and Robert E. Kahn.
- •UNIX--The computer operating system that was used to write most of the programs and protocols that built the Internet. The need for Unix is rapidly waning and mainstream users will never need to use a Unix command-line prompt. The name was created by the programmers who wrote the operating system because they realised that while they were developing the operating system they essentially had become eunuchs.
- •World Wide Web--(WWW) (W3) (the Web) An Internet client-server distributed information and retrieval system based upon the hypertext transfer protocol (http) that transfers hypertext documents across a varied array of computer systems. The Web was created by the CERN High-Energy Physics Laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland in 1991. CERN boosted the Web into international prominence on the Internet.
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