Definitions of some common terms ...


Definitions:

Albury Local Internet
Internet Service Provider for Albury-Wodonga and surrounding area.
Back
Button available on browsers to allow easier navigation of the Internet.
Browser
A text or graphical interface that allows your computer to access the World Wide Web
Click
Activate or highlight by pressing the mouse button, or stylus, etc.
Cursor
A "movable reference point" - the icon, frequently flashing, that indicates where you may enter text.
Graphics
Pictures as used in Internet documents are normally in either GIF or JPEG format.
Hypertext documents do not actually contain the graphics seen on the page, rather the graphic is specified by filename (and optionally path) and loaded by the browser separately to the text of the document. Thus you can speed up your browsing by turning pictures off. The snag is that some pages use graphics extensively as important links or aspects of the page and give no text alternatives.
There are various symbols used to indicate where a graphic should appear but for some reason does not, and sometimes the author of the page supplies a text alternative describing what the graphic should contain.
Home
The page that has been set up in your configuration as your start page. For Albury Local Internet Subscribers this should be set to http://www.albury.net.au When you click on the Home icon, your browser should contact and load Albury Local Internet's Home Page.
Hypertext Links
"Clickable" text or graphic that links to another part of the same document, or to another document.
HTML
HyperText Mark-up Language - consisting of tags and attributes that describe WWW documents, and is recognised, interpreted and displayed by your browser.
Internet
Includes the WWW; e-mail; file transfer; Internet Relay Chat; Video and audio services including video-conferencing; numerous information services (Gophers, Archies, Veronicas etc); Virtual Reality environments; Newsgroups; on-line games; etc. Many of these services overlap.
Key words
Selected words to use in a search. For example, if you wanted to look for information on Blue Heelers, key words could be blue heeler, dogs, breeders, Australia etc. You can use as many key words as necessary to limit your search. In the above example, entering just the word "dogs" could return thousands of references, whereas "blue heeler dogs" may only return a few links. At the other extreme, being too specific eg "blue heeler dogs Kane" may not return any hits.
Location, address or site
The address of the document you select.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer
A major WWW browser developed by Microsoft.
Netscape
A major WWW browser developed by the Netscape Corporation.
Netscape Help: Please note that the Netscape Help button will get the current help information from Netscape in the US. This means the help SHOULD always be current, but also means you have to be on-line to get Help.
Newbies
Slang term used to describe new users. Newbies newsgroups, chat channels and www sites are usually sympathetic and helpful towards the new user.
Pointing Device
Commonly a "mouse", but can be a stylus, light pen, track-ball, joy-stick, or any of a number of special aids developed for the disabled.
Server
A computer that keeps or "serves" documents, programs and data to other computers.
In the context of the Internet servers are normally permanently connected to the net and (in theory) always accessible.
URL
Uniform Resource Locators (URL). The location or address of an Internet resource.
Web Page
A Web Page (sometimes known as a Home Page) may consist of text, perhaps with pictures (graphics) or occasionally only graphics.
World Wide Web
Abbreviated to WWW, or the Web. Generally refers to the global information and entertainment "data base" that can be browsed (or surfed) using Web Browsers.

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