Web design glossary: definition of web design, animation, branding and SEO terms.

Accessibility
Website accessibility refers to a website's ease-of-use for people with disabilities, including people with physical, hearing or visual difficulties. Since 2002 under UK law website owners are required to take reasonable steps to make their websites accessible to disabled people. Many of the requirements of web accessibility overlap with general principles of good web design anyway

AdSense
AdSense is Google\'s PPC advertising model that allows website owners to buy advertising space on other relevant webpages (that are signed up with AdSense).

AdWords
AdWords is Google\'s flagship PPC advertising model, and allows website owners to buy advertising space next to relevant organic search engine results.

AJAX
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, AJAX is a group of programming techniques that allow for the design of faster, smoother web applications. For example, because AJAX allows asynchronous communication it is possible to update parts of web pages without having to reload the entire page. Because of these benefits many webmail providers such as Yahoo Mail now also provide an AJAX version of their webmail service.

Algorithm
Ranking algorithms are used by search engines to determine the order in which websites should be returned for a given query. Search engines regularly update their algorithms in order to prevent undeserving websites from gaining high rankings. Search engine algorithms change frequently.

Alt tag
An alt tag is a small piece of descriptive text attached to a non-textual web page element, such as an image file. Alt tags are an accessibility feature and are displayed or read aloud in place of the non-textual element in text-only browsers or screen reader software used by people with visual disabilities.

Animation
is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although several other forms of presenting animation also exist.

ASP
Short for Active Server Page - Microsoft technology similar to CGI that is used to create dynamic content for a web page. Pages using ASP are created with programming scripts (eg; JavaScript) and integrated with the HTML of a page. It is a server−side scripting language and is mostly used on Windows platforms.

Backlinks(or inbound links)
are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.

Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that can travel a communications path in a given time, usually measured in seconds. If you think of the communications path as a pipe, then bandwidth represents the width of the pipe that determines how much data can flow through it all at once.

Banner
Also referred to as a banner ad, A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. The advertisement is constructed from an image (GIF, JPEG, PNG), JavaScript program or multimedia object employing technologies such as Java, Shockwave or Flash, often employing animation, sound, or video to maximize presence. Images are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape (i.e. either wide and short, or tall and narrow) hence the reference to banners. These images are usually placed on web pages that have interesting content, such as a newspaper article or an opinion piece.

Black hat SEO
Black hat SEO is a set of unethical SEO tricks aimed at artificially search engine rankings for a website. An example of a black hat SEO trick is using hidden text to stuff hundreds of additional keywords into a page. The best argument against using black hat SEO techniques is that search engines regularly review their ranking algorithms to block these tricks from working, and they are also known to blacklist websites that are deemed to violate their terms and conditions.

Blacklist
Search engines can penalise websites that use black hat SEO tricks to artificially manipulate rankings. These sites are blacklisted for a period of time, meaning that their site is either heavily penalised or drops out of the rankings entirely. Upon removing the black hat SEO tricks a site can file for reinclusion into the main index, though this process is not immediate or guaranteed.

Blog (from web log)
A blog is an online journal, where one or more people post regular entries for the public to read. Blogs frequently contain personal thoughts or events, and are often written in a less formal tone than traditional websites. However blogs can also be used very effectively by businesses to improve communication with their customers.

Bounce rate
The bounce rate of a website is the proportion of visitors who quickly leave without clicking on any other page or spending more than 5 seconds browsing the site.

Browser
A Web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content.[1] Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to related resources. Although browsers are primarily intended to access the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by Web servers in private networks or files in file systems. The major web browsers are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Opera for Windows and Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Opera for Macintosh systems. Google Chrome, originally released for Windows and in the Fall of 2009 for Macintosh, is touted as an alternative browser the major players listed above.

CMS
Content Management System, A CMS is a piece of software which lets a person edit a website through a web browser, without knowledge of HTML or CSS. Two popular types of CMS are Drupal and Wordpress.

CMYK
Color model , referred to as process color or four color, is a subtractive color model, used in color printing, also used to describe the printing process itself. CMYK refers to the four inks used in most color printing: cyan, magenta, yellow, and key black. Though it varies by print house, press operator, press manufacturer and press run, ink is typically applied in the order of the abbreviation.

Conversion rate
The conversion rate of a website is the proportion of visitors who are converted into leads or sales, when they buy the product, sign up for your newsletter, pick up the phone or send an email. Conversion rate optimisation is the process of increasing the number of visitors who become customers. A website that has a poor conversion rate is not going to get the full benefit from good search engine rankings.

CSS
Cascading Style Sheets , CSS defines the layout and appearance of multiple web pages. CSS allows web designers to separate presentation from content, greatly increasing design flexibility while reducing the time needed to maintain a large website.

Database
A special way of organizing computer data. It looks like a table implemented columns and rows for fast accessing data from any of the cells in the table. There are many different types of databases but all of them work on the same principle. Databases are very useful for storing and organizing data for later retrieval. Very often used for managing accounts, managing user information, creating guest books and bulletin boards, even this page (dictionary) is implemented with database.

Directory
A database edited manually by Humans. Sites are indexed by category making this feature the main difference to a Search Engine. Users can navigate through the categories to locate documents or information. Most directories offer searching options (which is similar to searching from a Search Engine) within its database.

DNS
Domain Name System (Service), An Internet system/service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Domain names are alphabetic so they\\\'re easier to remember. The Internet however, is really based on IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name, therefore, a DNS service must translate the name into the corresponding IP address.

Domain Name
A unique name that identifies one or more IP addresses. For example, the domain name ukietech.com represents one IP address. Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages. Every web site that you visit is stored under domain name.

Domain Name Extension
Part after the dot in the domain name is a domain name extension. In the abacus.ca domain, domain extension is .ca . There are many other domain name extensions such as .com .net .org .gov .edu .mil .info .web .us .uk .cc .it .mx .ba and many others.

Dynamic website
A dynamic website is one which is driven by a database, meaning that pages can be readily created, deleted and edited through a web browser using a Content Management System.

E-Commerce
Electronic commerce, commonly known as (electronic marketing) e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction\\\'s lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.

Encryption
A way of coding the information in a file or e-mail message so that if it is intercepted by a third party as it travels over a network it cannot be read. Only the persons sending and receiving the information have the key and this makes it unreadable to anyone except those persons (your browser does it automatically).

EPS
Encapsulated PostScript, or EPS, is a DSC-conforming PostScript document with additional restrictions intended to make EPS files usable as a graphics file format. In other words, EPS files are more-or-less self-contained, reasonably predictable PostScript documents that describe an image or drawing, that can be placed within another PostScript document.

Filename extension - name.eps .epsf .epsi

Flash
Flash is the name of Adobe\'s animation software package, which produces Flash movie files. Flash animations can be used for introductory splash pages on websites.

Forums
Forums are publicly accessible online communities that are normally set up for the discussion of a particular topic of theme, such as sports or politics. Discussion forums can also be used by customers to praise or criticise a company\'s products, and when handled correctly can be a valuable way of interacting with your customer base.

Frames
An HTML technique for combining two or more separate HTML documents within a single web browser screen. A web site using frames often causes great problems for search engines, and may not be spidered and indexed correctly.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol, is a standard network protocol used to exchange and manipulate files over a TCP/IP based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server applications. Client applications were originally interactive command-line tools with a standardized command syntax, but graphical user interfaces have been developed for all desktop operating systems in use today. FTP is also often used as an application component to automatically transfer files for program internal functions. FTP can be used with user-based password authentication or with anonymous user access. The Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is a similar, but simplified, not interoperable, and unauthenticated version of FTP.

GIF
Graphics Interchange Format, it is a bit-mapped graphics file format used by the World Wide Web. GIF supports colour and various resolutions. But it is limited to 256 colors.

Filename extension - name.gif

Google Supplemental Index
Google\'s supplemental index is a list of pages deemed by Google to be of less importance or less trustworthy than pages on the main index.

Googlebot
Googlebot is a program used by Google to find and collect web pages for inclusion in the Google index. Important websites that are regularly updated will be checked frequently for updates by Googlebot.

Hits
In web statistics, hits refer to inbound connections made to a website. Websites receive one hit for every file downloaded, so counting hits alone is not a reliable measure of the number of visitors to a website.

Home Page
It is a first page (also referred as an opening page, start page or main page) of a Web site. This would technically be your index page or default page of your directory.

Hosting
Usually refers to a computer (or a network of servers) that stores the files of a web site which has web server software running on it, connected to the Internet. Your site is then said to be Hosted.

HTML
Hyper Text Markup Language, HTML is the computer language used to build web pages on the World Wide Web. HTML (and now XHTML) is used to define the content of a web page, while CSS is used to define the appearance of that content. You can view the source HTML of a web page from most web browsers.

Filename extension - .html, .htm

Hyperlink (Link)
An element in an electronic document that links to another place in the same document or to an entirely different document. Typically, you click on the hyperlink to follow the link. Hyperlinks are the most essential ingredient of all hypertext systems, including the World Wide Web.

Interactive
A Web page is interactive when it prompts a response from the user or in some way can interact with the user dynamically (eg; filling out a form or a poll etc).

Internet
A global network connecting millions of computers. Each Internet computer, called a host, is independent. The Internet is not synonymous with World Wide Web. The Internet and the Web are two related but separate things.

Intranet
A private network belonging to an organization, usually a corporation, accessible only by the organization\'s members, employees, or others with authorization.

IP Address
Internet Protocol, The method or protocol by which data is sent from one computer to another on the Internet. Each computer (known as a host) on the Internet has at least one IP address that uniquely identifies it from all other computers on the Internet.

Java applet
A short program written in Java (not JavaScript) that is attached to a World Wide Web page and executed by the browser machine. Often used for complicated web applications.

JavaScript
JavaScript is a client-side scripting language that allows dynamic behavior to be specified within HTML documents. JavaScript is an object-oriented scripting language used to enable programmatic access to objects within both the client application and other applications. It is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as an integrated component of the web browser, allowing the development of enhanced user interfaces and dynamic websites. JavaScript is a dialect of the ECMAScript standard and is characterized as a dynamic, weakly typed, prototype-based language with first-class functions.

JPEG (JPG)
Joint Photographic Experts Group, JPEG uses compression technique for color images and therefore some details are lost in the compression yet giving relatively good quality. It is widely used on the Internet and other digital applications.

Filename extension - name.jpg, .jpeg, .jpe .jif, .jfif, .jfi

Keyword research
Keyword research involves analysing the frequency with which people search for particular keywords or keyphrases. Keyword research is a vital first step when carrying out SEO on a website, as it lets you calculate the most effective keywords or keyphrases for your website to target.

Keywords
Keywords or keyphrases refer to the words used when someone queries a search engine. Search engines try and predict the most useful websites to return in response to the keywords used. An important

Meta tags
Meta tags are small pieces of descriptive text that contain extra information about your web pages. Meta tags are embedded in source HTML files and are not displayed in web browsers. Historically, search engines used meta tags to better understand the content of your website, though because of abuse the role of meta tags has been greatly reduced.

Mouseover
A JavaScript element that triggers a change on an item (typically a graphic change, such as making an image or hyperlink appear) in a Web page when the mouse pointer passes over it.

MP3
MP3 is the file extension for MPEG, audio layer 3. Layer 3 is one of three coding schemes (layer 1, layer 2 and layer 3) for the compression of audio signals. MP3 files could be embedded into web site providing music while visitors are viewing the site. MP3 files are relatively small comparing to other audio files and therefore are quite suitable for transferring over the Internet.

Filename extension - name.mp3

Navigation
Website navigation refers to the display of links to other parts of a website. Poor navigation systems can lead to people abandoning the site in frustration.

Organic search
Organic search refers to the main natural listings returned by search engines. Organic search is distinct to paid search, or pay-per-click advertising, whereby advertisers can pay to have their website promoted next to relevant organic search results.

PageRank
PageRank is Google\'s proprietary measure of webpage popularity, commonly visualised as a small green bar. Webpages can have a PageRank score between 0 and 10, and PageRank is recalculated every few months.

Pay Per Click (PPC)
PPC refers to the advertising model whereby an advert linking to your website is displayed on a search engine results page or on other website. You pay an agreed sum every time someone clicks on the link and is transferred to your website.

Perl
Practical Extraction and Report Language, Perl is a server−side, interpreted language that provides much of the web\'s interactivity.

PHP
JHypertext Preprocessor, PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is a server-side, HTML embedded scripting language used to create dynamic Web pages. Designed for Windows and Unix type platforms.

Pixel
Refers to how monitors divide the display screen into thousands or millions of individual dots to display an image. A pixel is one dot.

Protocol
A formal set of conventions that allow communication between two communicating functional units. Simply said it is a language that computers use to talk to each other. Of course there are many such languages. Most popular is TCP/IP used officially on the Internet.

PSD
Photoshop Document, Photoshop\'s native format, stores an image with support for most imaging options available in Photoshop. These include layers with masks, color spaces, ICC profiles, transparency, text, alpha channels and spot colors, clipping paths, and duotone settings. This is in contrast to many other file formats (e.g. .EPS or .GIF) that restrict content to provide streamlined, predictable functionality.

File extension - name.psd

Ranking
The number (order of ranking; ie 1 being the highest) that a web site is listed for a specific search term in a specific search engine. Search Engines utilize a ranking algorithm (mathematical formulas, variables, and set of weights) to determine a site\'s ranking for a particular keyword or keyword phrase.

Resolution
Resolution of an image - describes how fine the dots are that make up that image. The more dots, the higher the resolution. When displayed on a monitor, the dots are called pixels. A 640 x 480 screen (resolution) is capable of displaying 640 distinct dots on each of its 480 lines, or about 300,000 pixels.

RGB
Color model , is an additive color model in which red, green, and blue light are added together in various ways to reproduce a broad array of colors. The name of the model comes from the initials of the three additive primary colors, red, green, and blue. The main purpose of the RGB color model is for the sensing, representation, and display of images in electronic systems, such as televisions and computers, though it has also been used in conventional photography.

Script
A script is an executable list of commands created by a scripting language. Scripts that are executed on a web server (eg; Perl, PHP) are said to be server−side scripts. Scripts that execute on your own home PC (eg; JavaScript) are said to be client−side scripts. Scripts can be embed within HTML to produce a web page with dynamic actions.

Scripting Language
A scripting language is a simple programming language used to write an executable list of commands, called a script. JavaScript, Perl, VBscript are scripting languages rather than general-purpose programming languages.

Search Engine
A server (computer) or commonly a collection of servers dedicated to indexing internet web pages, storing the results in a giant database and returning lists of pages which match particular searched queries from within its database. The indexes are normally and automatically generated using spiders.

SEO
Search Engine Optimization, (SEO) is an act of of increasing the the number of visitors to a particular Web site by adding appropriate keywords and phrases, and such ranking high in the search results. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that your site will be found by a search user. For general and competitive web sites it takes a lot of professionalism to tweak the web site in order to be well optimized and search engine friendly.

SERP
Search Engine Results Pages, are the combination of organic search results and sponsored listings generated by search engines in response to a particular query.

Server
A computer, program or process which responds to requests for information from an user. On the internet, all web pages reside on servers (computers).

Sitemap
A sitemap is a comprehensive listing of all pages on a website. Sitemaps are used to ensure people and search engines can locate all information on a website.

Spam
Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs,wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social networking spam, and file sharing network spam.

SSI
Server−Side IncludesTells a server to include information (source from a separate file) in a document before sending it to the browser. A very effective method of producing the same information over many pages as one file can be altered to produce the changes over the many the pages that includes the SSI file.

Static website
A static website is one where the web pages are stored as HTML files and uploaded to the server in complete form. Static websites cannot be edited using a web browser.

Sub-Domain (Name)
A sub−domain is a domain that is part of a larger domain name. DNS hierarchy consists of the root-level domain at the top, underneath which are the top−level domains, followed by second−level domains and finally sub−domains.

Submission
Submission refers to the process of adding your website to a search engine\'s index. Search engines provide web forms to allow people to submit new websites.

Submission Forms
Forms are web pages \"fields\" for a user to fill in with information. They are an excellent way of collecting and processing information from people visiting a website, as well as allowing them to interact with web pages. Forms are written in HTML and processed by CGI programs. The output can be sent as an e-mail form, stored online, printed, and/or returned to the user as an HTML page.

Templates
Web templates are HTML and CSS files that can be readily edited to create web pages. Editing web templates requires some skill to do properly, but can dramatically reduce the time and effort required to build a website.

Thumbnail
A small version of a bigger image on a web page. Usually containing a hyperlink to a full-size version of the image.

TIFF
Tagged Image File Format, is a file format for storing images, including photographs and line art. It is as of 2009 under the control of Adobe Systems. Originally created by the company Aldus for use with what was then called \"desktop publishing\", the TIFF format is widely supported by image-manipulation applications, by publishing and page layout applications, by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical character recognition and other applications. Adobe Systems, which acquired Aldus, now holds the copyright to the TIFF specification.

Filename extension - name.tiff, .tif

Title tag
The title tag is an HTML element that produces the text at the top of a web browser. The title tag is also the clickable first line of each result returned by a search engine.

Traffic
Similar to a real−world sense of traffic on a road or freeway, traffic in a web−sense is a measurement of the amount of users that visit a Web site.

URI
Uniform Resource Identifier, The generic term for all types of names and addresses that refer to objects on the World Wide Web. A URL is one kind of URI.

URL
Uniform Resource Locator, which is a string that supplies the Internet address of a resource on the World Wide Web, along with the protocol by which the resource is accessed. The most common URL type is \"http,\" which gives the Internet address of a World Wide Web page. Some other URL types are gopher and ftp.

User agent
A user agent is a device used to access a website. The most common user agents are web browsers such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, though variant user agents include mobile phone browsers, text-only browsers such as Lynx, and screen reader software for blind users.

Vector graphics
is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon(s), which are all based on mathematical equations, to represent images in computer graphics.

Visitor
A visitor is another term for a user who accesses a website. When analysing website statistics it is important to differentiate between visitors and hits; a webpage that contains images will record an extra hit for each image downloaded.

W3C
World Wide Web Consortium, The World Wide Web Consortium is responsible for developing the technological standards and protocols that govern communication over the internet. For example, the W3C is responsible for maintaining the CSS and HTML standards.

Web Application
Web Applications are web programs or real programs designed to be used on the web site using a browser. Example of web application would be e-commerce web site, web banking, stock exchange on the web, web games and many others. Web applications are becoming very popular due to wide availability of the Internet access.

Web Based E-mail
Web based e-mail is a software on a POP3 server that allows you the luxury, if desired, to access your POP accounts by simply using a web-browser. It allows users to send and receive emails via any web-browser by viewing an HTML web page.

Web server
A web server refers to both the hardware and software that allows people to access websites over the internet. Web server hardware typically refers to Windows or Unix computers provided by hosting companies. Web server software typically refers to Apache or Microsoft IIS software.

Web site
A website (also spelled Web site or web site) is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address in an Internet Protocol-based network. A web site is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network.

WWW
World Wide Web,A system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a script called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web.

XHTML
Extensible Hypertext Markup Language, XHTML is a variation of HTML that has a more rigid structure, is less tolerant of errors in the HTML source code, and which yields a greater degree of cross-browser compatibility.

Filename extension - .xhtml, .xht, .xml, .html, .htm