Glossary

browser

A program that allows a person to view web pages and navigate between pages.

cache

A fast memory holding recently accessed data, designed to speed up subsequent access to the same data. Often applied to a local copy of data accessible over the Web.

domain

A networked group of computers whose hostnames share a common suffix—the domain name.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)

A client-server protocol which allows a user on one computer to transfer files to and from another computer over a TCP/IP network.

history

A record of visited web pages over a period of time, affecting the coloring of the links.

host

A system connected to a network.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

A Hypertext document language format used on the Web, and built on top of SGML (Standard Generalized markup Language).

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)

The client-server TCP/IP protocol used on the Web for the exchange of HTML documents.

HTTPS (Hypertext Transmission Protocol, Secure)

A variant of HTTP for handling secure transactions.

IP (Internet Protocol) address

The host address defined by the Internet Protocol. It is usually represented in dotted decimal notation.

JavaScript

A general-purpose programming standalone language that creates animation and other object-oriented functions on web pages.

protocol

A set of rules describing how to transmit data across a network. Low-level protocols define the electrical and physical standards to be observed, while high-level protocols deal with data formatting.

proxy

A computer and associated software that provides clients behind a firewall with a trusted agent that can access the Web on their behalf, while not revealing their IP addresses.

proxies

A computer and associated software that provides clients behind a firewall with a trusted agent that can access the Web on their behalf, while not revealing their IP addresses.

socks

A security package that allows a host behind a firewall to access resources outside the firewall while maintaining security requirements.

server

A network device that provides service to network users by managing shared resources.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

A standard for specifying an object on the Web, such as a file or a newsgroup. URLs are used extensively on the Web in HTML documents for specifying the target of a hyperlink.