Glossary

Access

To "access" the Internet means you are "logging on" to the Internet in order to browse and retrieve data. "Access" also means connecting with a computer system (or a server) that enables you to get online. You can do this through a dial-up connection (ISP), or a network (such as an office LAN) via a modem.

Alias

On servers, aliases are a way of mapping an incoming request for a Web page. When an alias is found in a URL, the alias's value is substituted in place of the alias. For example, if you have Web pages on a server which you wish to be viewed on the Internet, the actual location of those files may be: c:/www/userpages/joesWebsite/index.html but with the use of an alias, the URL you use to access the site could be http://www.JoesWebsite.dom (providing it is on MegaBrowser).

Browser

A program used to view, download, upload, surf or otherwise access documents (pages) on the World Wide Web. Browsers can be text-based meaning they do not show graphics or images but most however are text and graphical based. Browsers read "marked up" or coded pages (usually HTML but not always) that reside on servers and interpret the coding into what we see "rendered" as a Web page. MegaBrowser, Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer are examples of Web browsers. The program you are using right now to view this information is called a browser.

CGI

Common Gateway Interface

A standard for running programs on a server from a web page. Gateway programs, or scripts, are executable programs that can be run independently. They were designed to be external programs in order to allow them to run under various (possibly very different) information servers interchangeably. Gateways conforming to this specification can be written in any language that produces an executable file. Some of the more popular languages to that use CGI include: C or C++, Perl, Python, TCL, shells, and many others. Some of the most common CGI scripts found on the Web are programs which process the information a user might enter on a form or whenever an image map is "clicked" on - although most image maps these days are done via a client side script which resides in the HTML file itself.

Domain Name

The "address" or URL of a particular website. For example, megabrowser.com is the domain name of the MegaBrowser website. There is an organization called InterNIC that registers top level domain names for a small fee and keeps people from registering the same name.

Download

To transfer a file(s) from another computer to your computer. There are a few methods of doing this on the Internet. HTTP, FTP and as E-mail attachments are the most common. When you "load" a Web page into your browser you are essentially "downloading" the page from the server it is hosted on. One of the most resourceful things about the Internet is that you can download almost any type of computer file or program.

HTTP

Short for HyperText Transfer Protocol, the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web. HTTP defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. For example, when you enter a URL in your browser, this actually sends an HTTP command to the Web server directing it to fetch and transmit the requested Web page.

The other main standard that controls how the World Wide Web works is HTML, which covers how Web pages are formatted and displayed.

HTTP is called a stateless protocol because each command is executed independently, without any knowledge of the commands that came before it. This is the main reason that it is difficult to implement Web sites that react intelligently to user input. This shortcoming of HTTP is being addressed in a number of new technologies, including ActiveX, Java, JavaScript and cookies.

Currently, most Web browsers and servers support HTTP 1.1. One of the main features of HTTP 1.1 is that it supports persistent connections. This means that once a browser connects to a Web server, it can receive multiple files through the same connection. This should improve performance by as much as 20%.

HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure)

A type of server software that provides the ability for "secure" transactions to take place on the World Wide Web. If a Web site is running off a HTTPS server you can type in HTTPS instead of HTTP in the URL section of your browser to enter into the "secured mode". MegaBrowser WWW Services, Windows NT HTTPS and Netscape Commerce server software support this protocol.

IP Address

An identifier for a computer or device on a TCP/IP network. Networks using the TCP/IP protocol route messages based on the IP address of the destination. The format of an IP address is a 32-bit numeric address written as four numbers separated by periods. Each number can be zero to 255. For example, 1.160.10.240 could be an IP address.

Within an isolated network, you can assign IP addresses at random as long as each one is unique. However, connecting a private network to the Internet requires using registered IP addresses (called Internet addresses) to avoid duplicates.

The four numbers in an IP address are used in different ways to identify a particular network and a host on that network. The InterNIC Registration Service assigns Internet addresses from the following three classes.

• Class A - supports 16 million hosts on each of 127 networks
• Class B - supports 65,000 hosts on each of 16,000 networks
• Class C - supports 254 hosts on each of 2 million networks

The number of unassigned Internet addresses is running out, so a new classless scheme called CIDR is gradually replacing the system based on classes A, B, and C and is tied to adoption of IPv6.

Javascript

A scripting language for Web pages. Scripts written with JavaScript can be embedded into HTML documents. With JavaScript you have many possibilities for enhancing your Web page with interesting elements. It makes it easy to respond to user-initiated events (such as form input). Some effects that are now possible with JavaScript were once only possible with CGI. JavaScript gives a developer the ability to create really sophisticated Web pages. Some computer languages are compiled, which means that you run your program through a compiler, and it performs a one-time translation of the human-readable program into a binary that the computer can execute. JavaScript is an interpreted language, which means that the computer must evaluate the program each time it is run. Java and JavaScript are not the same thing. JavaScript was designed to resemble Java, which in turn looks a lot like C and C++. The difference is that Java was built as a general-purpose object language, while JavaScript is intended to provide a quicker and simpler language for enhancing Web pages and servers.

Keyword

The word (or words) a user types in when presented with a search box. On a search engine, for example, a keyword is the term or phrase that you type in to begin an online search.

Offline

When a computer is not connected to a host system or the Net, it is offline. If your Megabrowser is not open or your computer is not connected to the Internet it will be considered "Offline" as far as Megabrowser is concerned.

Online

Being connected to the Internet via an Internet Service Provider. Used as an adjective, it describes a variety of activities that users do on the Internet, for example: placing your Megabrowser in an online state, online chat, online shopping, online games, online searching, online communities, and on and on.

Peer-To-Peer

Peer-to-peer is a communications model in which each party has the same capabilities and either party can initiate a communication session. In some cases, peer-to-peer communications is implemented by giving each communication node both server and client capabilities. In recent usage, peer-to-peer has come to describe applications in which users can use the Internet to exchange files with each other directly or through a mediating server. Megabrowser adds a new dimension to peer-to-peer as users can now transfer website pages and view them on their browser.

Search Engine

A program which acts as a card catalog for the Internet. Search engines attempt to index and locate desired information by searching for keywords in which a user specifies. The method for finding this information is usually done by maintaining indices of Web resources that can be queried for the keywords entered by the user. These lists are either built from specific resource lists (as is the case with a search directory) or created by Web programs, with insect names like bots, spiders, crawlers, and worms.

Server

A host computer on a network that holds information (e.g., Web sites) and responds to requests for information from it (e.g., links to another Web page). The term server is also used to refer to the software that makes the act of serving information possible. Commerce servers, for example, use software to run the main functions of an e-commerce Web site, such as product display, online ordering, and inventory management. Megabrowser acts as a commerce server.

Site

A place on the Internet or World Wide Web. It refers to a body of information as a whole, for a particular domain name. A Web site is a place made up of Web pages. These pages can contain graphics, text, audio, video and other dynamic and static materials. The word "site" can also refer to an FTP site or archive site, which is a directory on a computer somewhere (server) which has been set up to allow users to access by logging in and retrieving or uploading files to it.

SSL (secured sockets layer)

A protocol that delivers server authentication, data encryption, and message integrity. SSL is layered beneath application protocols such as HTTP, SMTP, Telnet, FTP, Gopher, and NNTP, and layered above the connection protocol TCP/IP. This strategy allows SSL to operate independently of the Internet application protocols. With SSL implemented on both the client and server, your Internet communications are transmitted in encrypted form. Information you send can be trusted to arrive privately and unaltered to the server you specify (and no other).

TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

This set of protocols makes TELNET, FTP, e-mail, and other services possible among computers that don't belong to the same network.

Toolbar

The name of the handy dandy group or strip of tools you usually can see at the top, bottom or side of the interface of an application or program. They are customarily arranged in the form of "buttons" and are readily available for a user to get to at any time.

Upload

To copy a file from your computer to a server or host system. The reverse process of download.

Username

The name that gets you access to things. A username is like a handle for a user on the Internet and is commonly left up to the user to decide what it is, although most Web sites or systems will NOT allow the same username to be assigned to two different people.

Web site

A home and/or location on the World Wide Web. A place made up of Web pages. These pages can contain graphics, text, audio, video and other dynamic and/or static materials. As with many Internet terms "Web site" is constantly used interchangeably with other terms, like home page and "web page". So you may hear someone refer to their "home page" when in fact they are talking about an entire "Web site". Some even refer to a Web site simply as a "Web page". When really a Web page is just a single piece of potentially hundreds of other pages making up the entire "site" and the home page is more correctly the "front door" or entrance to the "web" of other pages it is linked to on the site. The process of moving through a Web site is called navigation.

A Web site is also considered to be simply any computer hooked up to the Internet and available via a hostname, domain name or URL.

Whois

A means of looking up names in a remote database. Used initially as an aid for finding e-mail addresses for people at large institutions or companies.

World Wide Web

You're in it! -- the system by which you are viewing this document right now! Technically it is a global (Worldwide) hypertext system that uses the Internet as it's transport mechanism. In a hypertext system, you navigate by clicking hyperlinks, which display another document which also contains hyperlinks. What makes the Web such an exciting and useful medium is that the next document you see could be housed on a computer next door or half-way around the world. The Web makes the Internet easy to use. Created in 1989 at a research institute in Switzerland, the Web relies upon the hypertext transport protocol (http), an Internet standard that specifies how an application can locate and acquire resources stored on another computer on the Internet. Most Web documents are created using hypertext markup language (html), an easy to learn coding system for WWW documents. Incorporating hypermedia (graphics, sounds, animations, video), the Web has become the ideal medium for publishing information on the Internet. With the development of secured server protocol (https), the Web is quickly becoming an important commercial medium whereby consumers can browse online catalogs and purchase merchandise without worrying that their credit card information will be intercepted.