Glossary: A

February 29th, 2008

Active Channel - An Active Channel is a frequently updated information residing on a Web server. Users can subscribe to the channel if they have a CDF (Channel Definition Language) capable browser (e.g. Internet Explorer)

Active X - ActiveX is a set of technologies from Microsoft that enables interactive content for the World Wide Web. Before ActiveX, Web content was static, 2-dimensional text and graphics. With ActiveX, Web sites come alive using multimedia effects, interactive objects, and sophisticated applications that create a user experience comparable to that of high-quality CD-ROM titles. ActiveX provides the glue that ties together a wide assortment of technology building blocks to enable these “active” Web sites.

Address - Unique identifier of a web page. URL (Uniformed Resource Locator) is more frequently used for this purpose.

AND - (Advanced Digital Network). A 56kbps dedicated communication line.

ADO - Microsoft Data Access Component Used primarily as a scripting language interface to OLE DB or ODBC data access ActiveX or Active Data Objects.

ADSL - (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop). High speed Internet access using the telephone line. It uses line-adaptive modulation and provides data speeds from 384kbps to 1.5 Mbps (upstream and downstream speeds are usually different). Unlike the dial up, it doesn’t block the telephone line.

Alt Tag - HTML tag used to display alternative text for an image. This is useful if your visitor does not have images enabled in their browser or is using software to assist with the reading of your web pages.

Anonymous FTP (Anon FTP) - A method for downloading and uploading files using FTP protocol without having a username or a password. In place of a username, word “anonymous” is used, and in place of a password, email address is usually used. If a hosting plan offers this service, your users will be able to download or upload files with FTP without having their own account.

Anonymous re-mailer - A SMTP server that allows sending anonymous email messages. It removes or changes the “From” field of all messages that it processes.

ANSI - American National Standards Institute. The U.S. standards organization.

Apache - Apache is an open-source HTTP Web server software. It is usually run on Unix operating system versions like Linux or BSD, but it can also be run on Windows. It is a full-featured server with many powerful add-ons freely available. Apache’s major competitor is Microsoft’s IIS.

Applet - A program written in the Java to run within a web browser. Java applets begin execution with a series of init(), start(), and paint() methods. ;stop(), and destroy() methods are available. Every Java applet should extend either class Japplet or class Applet.

Archie - An online database of anonymous ftp sites and their contents. It allows to search the ftp repositories using file name queries.

ARJ - One of the most popular compression formats.

ARPA - (Advanced Research Projects Agency) US governmental organization responsible for creating the ancestor of today’s Internet.

ARPAnet - Network created by ARPA in 1969. The precursor to the Internet. Landmark packet-switching network established in 1969 by the US Department of Defense as an experiment in wide-area-networking that would survive a nuclear war.

ASCII – (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). A standard for coding text files. Every character has an associated number and any text can be represented by a sequence of numbers.

ASP - A proprietary Microsoft NT scripting language which may be used to enable web pages to interact with online databases. ASP files, which provide Web developers with an easier, faster, and more powerful way to build Web applications, are regular HTML pages with embedded scripts. These scripts can be written in any language and processed by the server when the file’s URL is requested.

Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) - Asynchronous Transfer Mode. International standard for cell relay in which multiple service types (such as voice, video, or data) are conveyed in fixed-length (53-byte) cells. Fixed-length cells allow cell processing to occur in hardware, thereby reducing transit delays. ATM is designed to take advantage of high-speed transmission media such as E3, SONET, and T3.

Audio Streaming - The delivery of audio files from a server to a web browser in a continuous stream of small packets rather than one large file.

AU - Audio file format for Unix systems.

Authentication - The process of identifying an individual, usually based on a username and password.

Auto-responder - Auto-responders allow you to automatically return a pre-set message whenever a selected mailbox receives a message. It will also notify a selected mailbox of the receipt and response.

AVI - Audio/Video Interleave. Audio file format used by Microsoft Windows.

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