Glossary

browser

a World Wide Web client--that is, a software package that lets you to look around the World Wide Web

CERN

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

client

a computer running client software that connects to server machines running server software; 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

external viewer

a software program that a client calls upon to view file formats it does not support internally

HTML

HyperText Markup Language, the collection of styles used to define the various components of a hypertext document

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the protocol used by Web servers

hyperlink

a word or graphic in a document with some form of highlighting that links to another document; also called an anchor

hypermedia

online information with text, images, audio, and animation associated in a nonlinear web of associations

inlined image

a graphic image that is displayed along with text in a document window

Internet

an international computer network connecting universities, research institutions, government agencies, and businesses

NCSA Mosaic

Web client developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications; available on X Window System, Macintosh, and Microsoft Windows platforms

server

a computer running server software that provides information upon request to computers running client software

SGML

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

tags

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

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

World Wide Web

a distributed hypertext-based information system developed at CERN; also called the Web, WWW, or W3