Web Terms – Need-to-Know

World-Wide-Words

In the fast-paced world of technology, it’s not always easy to stay up-to-date with all the terms you should know to live in a high-speed world. Here’s a list of some standard terms to help get you started.

BROWSER

A browser is a free tool that allows you to view web pages and other online content on your computer, tablet or mobile. Guess what? It’s what you’re using right now to read this blog post.  Cool huh? Popular browsers are Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.

DOMAIN

A domain name or domain is the Internet address of a specific website you wish to visit. It’s what you typed into your browser to visit this page: ur-eekah.co.za

A website address must be unique, and therefore you have to purchase and register your domain name with an authorised domain provider like domains.co.za

More web terms

DNS

DNS stands for Domain Name System. It is the equivalent of a phonebook. They keep an updated list of all the domain names and translate them back into IP addresses. This is important because although domain names are easy for humans to remember, computers don’t work the same way. They need IP addresses to keep track and access websites.

IP ADDRESS

An IP address is a special address that identifies a computer, tablet or mobile on the internet. IP stands for “Internet Protocol,” which is the set of rules that manage the format of info sent via the internet. Every computer has its IP address when logged into the internet.

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDER

An ISP is what they’re called for short! These companies like Mweb, Afrihost and WebAfrica to, name a few, supply subscribers with the internet for a monthly fee.

COOKIES

Now don’t go getting too excited. We don’t mean the chocolate chip kind, although that would be yummy right about now. We’re talking about internet cookies. Cookies are bits of data or information that gets saved by your web browser onto your computer. It helps identify you and how often you visit a specific website and what parts of the site you visit the most. It tracks what you love to read.

NAVIGATION

This is also better known as a menu. This is how visitors get to different parts of your website. If you look up at the top of your screen, you’ll see ours sitting there just waiting to be visited too.

HTML

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and is used to identify the different elements on a page, such as paragraphs, titles, images, and links to other articles or websites. We will also be talking about this in an upcoming article about the father of the internet himself.

CSS

CSS means  Cascading Style Sheet. It’s what gives websites their cool or boring style, depending on which ones you visit, of course. Fonts, sizes, colours, spacing, borders, backgrounds and even shadows are just some examples of what can be changed using CSS.  What do you think of our CSS?

So, you might not be walking away from this blog post feeling like Bill Gates, but at least you’re on the right track to better understanding what you interact with every day. Knowledge is power after all!

“We are all now connected by the Internet, like neurons in a giant brain.” – Stephen Hawking

Resource:

circlesstudio.com

web terms you need to know