Glossary of Terms
Provided below are clear and well thought out definitions on this
page for the commonly used internet jargon found in web pages and user
manuals. This page is provided as a help to our customer's only and
is not intended as a definitive technical glossary. However, if you think
you have a better, or clearer definition of any of these terms we would
be glad to hear about it so we can improve this glossary.
Please note that this page must cater for both experts and novices alike,
hopefully the two different audiences will tend to look at different words
within it. So please don't be
offended or put off by any
definition that seems either patronising or overly technical.
Select the first letter of the word from the list above to jump to appropriate
section of the glossary. If the term you are looking for starts with a
digit or symbol, choose the '#' link.
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- B -
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browser
The program that you use to view World Wide Web pages and do other
internet related tasks.
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e.g. Netscape, Internet Explorer etc.
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client
Refers to the program or machine that connects to a server. A client
would normally only take in information or give out information that it
had created, such as an email message. It would not distribute information
like a server would.
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e.g. An email client such as Pegasus Mail connects to an email server to
read or send mail, a news client would connect to a news server to read
internet news articles.
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hyperlink or link
Any piece of text or image which when clicked on with the mouse takes
or links you to another web page or section within a web page. They are
normally represented by underlined text and a blue font if you haven't
clicked on them before.
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Hint: hold your mouse over a link and your browser will probably indicate
in the bottom message bar where it is going to take you if you click on
it.
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eg http://www.scikids.com is a text
hyperlink that when clicked on will point your browser at the page indicated
by the text, in this case Netwin's home page.
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POP or POP3
A POP3, or POP for short, server handles the distribution of incoming
mail. Email clients connect to a POP server to retrieve new mail messages.
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Your POP server is the part of an email server package which receives mail
addressed to you. Your mail is stored on the server until you log on to
the POP server and collect it. The POP server may reside on your local
network or on the network of your Internet Service Provider.
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eg The Netwin office uses DSMTP to receive incoming mail. A particular
staff member then uses and email client package which connects to DPOP
to retreive their new messages.
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server
Any machine that performs the role of a receiver/supplier or passer-on
of information to one or more clients and as such has a built in storage
facility.
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NB A server normally performs access checks to control the acces to the
information it stores.
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e.g. a POP server which performs the task of receiving email and storing
it untill a client connects to receive their messages.
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username
The name that an individual uses to specify uniquley who they are to
a computer, servers etc. Usually it is used to identify who you are when
logging in to some sort of server and is often accompanied by a password
to restrict access. Thus you might have several different usernames if
you have access to several machines but it might save confusion if you
are given the same username (and password) on each of the machines you
have access to. If your username is akshat on a particular machine then
noone else can have the username akshat on that machine.
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eg To read your email you may have to login to the email server with a
username. Arti Keshan might have the username a.keshan to uniquly identify
her.
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URL
Uniform Resource Locator is the name that you type into your browser
to point it at a specific location on the Internet. It gives the address
of the file that your browser tries to locate and identifies which Internet
service to use, eg WWW or FTP.
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eg The URL for our home page is: http://www.scikids.com
which says use the HTTP protocol on the file at the registered network
location www.scikids.com.
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