Glossary: N - Z
Navigation Bar
The navigation system on a website most often takes the form of a bar but it is the part of the website used to find your way around the information and various pages contained within the site. As a result it is an extremely imortant part of the website and must be functional, intuitive as well as aesthetically pleasing.
Open Source
When you buy a computer application or an operating system it is usually closed source. This means that the programming behind the product is set and inaccessible- what you buy is what you get. Unless the original programmers wish to change or update the program, it will stay as is.
Open Source lies in opposition to this. Any programmer can get a copy of the code and attempt to rewrite, expand, improve upon the original. In many cases it is free to access the raw code and many programmers will make their changes for free too.
Perl
Originally developed for UNIX, Perl is a fairly heavyweight information retrieval language. As a result of its information handling capabilities it can prove very useful when dealing with content management on dynamic websites.
PHP
PHP is a server-side scripting language. In other words it is a language used to enable servers to carry out the functions you require of it. For example you may require information sitting in a database on your server; you would use a PHP script to go and get that piece of information.
Platforms
Platforms is the title given to different operating systems. The most well known examples are Microsoft's Windows and Mac OS however, there are many more operating systems designed to specialise in different functions.
Server
The server is a computer which stores the information and programs required to run/generate your website. Servers are also used to manage email accounts which run alongside the companies website.
Servers can be located locally or remotely which generally speaking refers to where they are situated- in the office location (local) or outside the company's offices (remote).
Standards Compliant Programming
The internet doesn't adhere to any official standards commision or body. This is a blessing in one sense as the Internet is one of the greatest modern bastions of free speech and accessibility. However there is a downside: sites not working; browser incompatibility; and a general lack of quality.
www.w3c.com will automatically check the programming of a site's HTML and CSS to evalutate its quality. A well-written site should valid to w3c's standards. Fuse Internet, as a mark of quality, tests its programming on all major browsers, including the notoriously idiosyncratic Internet Explorer (read: yep, it's the most widely used browser but ask any programmer about its compatibility issues and watch them turn red!).
Static
This is a fairly literal term and refers to an item that has been programmed to be displayed in a certain fashion and will remain so unless further programming is used to change its format. This term is used mainly in opposition to dynamic which is an item displayed and formatted in real time. Furthermore a dynamic item can be controlled and changed through a CMS and lends a much greater flexibility to a website.
Typo3
A Content Management Framework system. This is discussed in much greater depth and detail in the Typo3 section. However, Typo3 is basically a standard framework designed to be used to control and manage a website's content.
UNIX
UNIX are commercial versions of LINUX. As such UNIX differs from LINUX insofar as its code is closed to the public and is available for sale. UNIX are operating systems, predominantly geared towards large mainframe servers. So, in much the same way that Windows keeps your PC ticking over, UNIX tend to keep the big machines going.
Webmail
Webmail is what it says it is. If you do not have access to your computer but still want to send and view your emails you can use webmail. In a manner similar to hotmail, you can use a browser to access the server holding your emails and view them directly.