Glossary

This glossary briefly defines some terms that are used in this guide. Additional information may be found online in the hyperlinks and the menus.

anchor

the highlighted text or graphic in a file that, when clicked, moves to the linked file

anonymous FTP

a process for document retrieval using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP); user logs on (as ``anonymous'') but does not need a password to access documents on the server

annotation

feature of NCSA Mosaic that lets you add a comment to a document being viewed

Archie

search device for documents on anonymous FTP server machines; the search matches filenames (Archie is to anonymous FTP servers as Veronica is to Gopher servers)

.au

common extension for audio files (myaudioclip.au)

browser

another term for viewer -- that is, a software package that permits you to look around the World Wide Web (Web); NCSA Mosaic is a browser

CERN

particle physics institute located in Geneva, Switzerland, and home of the World Wide Web

client

a computer running client software that connects to server machines holding information; the client makes requests to a server for documents and is responsible for displaying the information; NCSA Mosaic is an example of client software

document

unit of information sent from servers to clients; a document may contain plain or formatted text, inlined graphics, sound, other multimedia data, or hyperlinks to other documents; often also referred to as a file

FAQ

Frequently Asked Question; a direct link to the NCSA Mosaic FAQ list is on the Help menu

FTP

File Transfer Protocol

.gif

the CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format -- common extension for a graphics file (mygraphic.gif)

Gopher

menu-driven system on a server machine that presents the files available for retrieval in a hierarchical fashion; Gopher is considered particularly easy to use because of the menu system

Gopherspace

term for the interconnected Gopher servers

Home Page

start-up document that serves as home base for Internet explorations

hotlist

a personalized online reference of important documents as developed and maintained by the user; a hotlist can be shared by mailing the file to another NCSA Mosaic user

HTML

HyperText Markup Language, the collection of styles used to define the various components (e.g., bulleted list, citation, emphasis) of a hypertext document

.html

the extension used on a file that is coded using HTML (myfile.html)

HTTP

Hypertext Transport Protocol, the protocol used by Web servers

hyperlink

a word or graphic in a file displayed on-screen with some form of highlighting (color or underlining or both); the word or graphic represents hidden text containing the URL information of another document, which is displayed when you click on the highlighted word or graphic

hypermedia

richly formatted documents containing hyperlinks

inlined

a graphic image that is displayed along with text in a NCSA Mosaic Document View window (versus an image that opens in a separate window using an external viewing program)

Internet

the interconnected network of networks providing easy, reliable connections to computers virtually anywhere in the world

JPEG

Joint Photographic Expert Group, a compression/decompression standard

link

see hyperlink

NCSA

National Center for Supercomputing Applications on the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the home of NCSA Mosaic

NCSA Mosaic

distributed hypermedia system developed at NCSA by staff in the Software Development Group; designed for information discovery and retrieval using the global Internet

QuickTime

Macintosh-supported format for movies

server

a computer that provides services (documents, software) to other machines that run specific software (called clients) and request those services

SGML

Standard Generalized Markup Language, a language that defines the structure of a document and the logical relationship of its parts

source file

the file that is formatted for display in your Document View window

tags

codes used in HTML (e.g., <H1>, </H1>, <p>)

TIFF

Tag Image File Format, a graphics format type that NCSA Mosaic can display using an image display utility

UIUC

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

URL

Uniform Resource Locator, server and path information used in an HTML-coded source file to locate another document; URL is inserted in a document in the following format:

scheme://host-domain[:port]/path/filename

more information is available on the Help menu in On URLs

Veronica

search device that matches filenames on Gopher servers (Veronica is to Gopher servers as Archie is to anonymous FTP servers)

viewer

see browser

WAIS

Wide Area Information Server, an index and retrieval system; when you enter a keyword, a search is performed on indexed documents, which can then be retrieved

Web

another name for the World Wide Web

WWW

World Wide Web, a distributed hypertext-based information system developed at CERN

.xbm

X-bitmapped (composed of dots or pixels) file format -- common extension for a graphic file (mygraphic.xbm)