NCSA Mosaic for the X Window System User's Guide

# 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)