W X Y and Z of Digital Media - Wikis XML Yahoo and Zip Archives
World Wide Web
“The above image illustrates in 3-D the actual domains and connections of the world wide web. Colors have been added to represent .edu, .gov, .com, etc. domains. I’ve always seen the web as bubbles - some large, some small - and vectors - thick or thin. This is the best graphic device I’ve seen to show that connectivity.” George Laughead Jr. I actually think this picture is really beautiful 
The world wide web is a system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a markup language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web.
There are several applications called Web browsers that make it easy to access the World Wide Web; Two of the most popular being Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
World Wide Web is not synonymous with the Internet.
Web Robots or Spiders (also known as crawlers)
A web crawler (also known as a web spider or web robot or - especially in the FOAF community - web scutter) is a program or automated script which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. Other less frequently used names for web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, and worms.
This process is called web crawling or spidering. Many sites, in particular search engines, use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a website, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, crawlers can be used to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for spam).
A web crawler is one type of bot, or software agent. In general, it starts with a list of URLs to visit, called the seeds. As the crawler visits these URLs, it identifies all the hyperlinks in the page and adds them to the list of URLs to visit, called the crawl frontier. URLs from the frontier are recursively visited according to a set of policies.
Wiki
Image from http://evan.prodromou.name
A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. For example, the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets and for Knowledge Management. Ward Cunningham, developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described it as “the simplest online database that could possibly work”.
Web 2
Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies. The term became notable after the first O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web, it does not refer to an update to any technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use the Web.
WiFi
The above image is a Wifi Shirt you can buy from various “nerdy ned” shops. It actually detects WiFi networks and flashes when it has found one - that is pretty cool!
Wi-Fi, which stands for wireless fidelity, in a play on the older term Hi-Fi, is a wireless networking technology used across the globe. Wi-Fi refers to any system that uses the 802.11 standard, which was developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and released in 1997. The term Wi-Fi, which is alternatively spelled WiFi, Wi-fi, Wifi, or wifi, was pushed by the Wi-Fi Alliance, a trade group that pioneered commercialisation of the technology.
In a Wi-Fi network, computers with wifi network cards connect wirelessly to a wireless router. The router is connected to the Internet by means of a modem, typically a cable or DSL modem. Any user within 200 feet or so (about 61 meters) of the access point can then connect to the Internet, though for good transfer rates, distances of 100 feet (30.5 meters) or less are more common. Retailers also sell wireless signal boosters that extend the range of a wireless network.
Wifi networks can either be “open”, such that anyone can use them, or “closed”, in which case a password is needed. An area blanketed in wireless access is often called a wireless hotspot.
Wifi technology uses radio for communication, typically operating at a frequency of 2.4GHz. Electronics that are “WiFi Certified” are guaranteed to interoperate with each other regardless of brand. Wifi is technology designed to cater to the lightweight computing systems of the future, which are mobile and designed to consume minimal power. PDAs, laptops, and various accessories are designed to be wifi-compatible. There are even phones under development that would switch seamlessly from mobile phone networks to wifi networks without dropping a call.
New wifi technologies will extend range from 300 feet (91.5 meters) to 600 feet (183 meters) and beyond, while boosting data transfer rates. Most new laptops nowadays come equipped with internal wireless networking cards.
Web programmer
I actually know a bit about Web Programmers - I am married to one!!
A Web programmer translates the requirements of end-users and internal clients into a functional product. In other words, a programmer knows how to make a computer do what people want it to do. Usually, that product is an application which allows an end-user to do something on the Web-order a pizza, make a stock trade, or buy an airline ticket, for example. The programmer assesses the technical parameters of a project, decides how to approach the work, and then carries it out. The terms for this job often vary from one Web company to the next as the Internet changes; sometimes this job will bear the title of software engineer, developer, or programmer. On a daily basis, a programmer will modify pre-existing code, design new products and applications, create and test those products, and discuss how a design is going to flow. The number of applications that a programmer can develop is virtually endless; basically, anything that can be done in real life can be translated into an application for the Web. A programmer will often simultaneously work on two very diverse projects. Programming requires highly creative, perceptual thinking-an ability to see what people want and generate a conceptual solution without seeing the actual product. If a client says, “I want it to look like this and I want it to do that,” a programmer has to be able to imagine that without actually seeing it.
Webmaster
A webmaster is the designation given to the person responsible for designing and maintaining the coding and proper functioning of a website. In the case of a personal website, the webmaster is most often the person who owns the domain. Small businesses often employ someone in-house to be the webmaster, or they might hire an independent contractor who works part-time on the project from his or her home or office. Large companies might contract a third party to handle their online presence. In these cases the webmaster is not responsible for content, only for design and function.
Web Artist
A Web Arist is a person creating art exclusively for the Web - and such art is often shown in Web Art Museums such as:
http://www.mowa.org/enter.html
The above piece of Web Art is on show in the Web Gallery listed underneath it, but it is one example of the many types of Web Art out there!
The art can take on many forms - but it is all applicable to the Web only.
WYSIWYG Editors
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors are HTML editors that attempt to display the Web page as it will show on the browser. They are visual editors, and you don’t maniulate the code directly. Some HTML WYSIWYG editors also include a text editor, while others are purely WYSIWYG. This is my list of the best HTML WYSIWYG editors for Windows.
Dreamweaver is one of the most popular professional Web development software packages available. It offers power and flexibility to create pages that meet your needs. I use it for everything from JSP, XHTML, PHP, and XML development. It is a good choice for professional Web designers and developers, but if you’re working as a solitary freelancer, you might want to look at one of the CS suites like Web or Design to get graphics editing capability as well.
(WAI) Web Accessibility Initiative
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is an effort to improve the accessibility of the World Wide Web (WWW or Web) for people using a wide range of user agent devices, not just standard web browsers. This is especially important for people with physical disabilities which require such devices to access the Web.
The W3C was founded in 1994 to advance the Web. It is responsible for the development of uniform protocols to assure the interoperability of the Web. The WAI, part of the W3C, has developed a number of guidelines that can help to make Web sites more accessible, especially from the view of physically disabled people.
Web Safe Palette
From Wikipedia
Another set of 216 color values is commonly considered to be the “web-safe” color palette, developed at a time when many computer displays were only capable of displaying 256 colors. A set of colors was needed that could be shown without dithering on 256-color displays; the number 216 was chosen partly because computer operating systems customarily reserved sixteen to twenty colors for their own use; it was also selected because it allows exactly six shades each of red, green, and blue (6 × 6 × 6 = 216).
The list of colors is often presented as if it has special properties that render them immune to dithering. In fact, on 256-color displays applications can set a palette of any selection of colors that they choose, dithering the rest. These colors were chosen specifically because they matched the palettes selected by the then leading browser applications. Fortunately, there were not radically different palettes in use in different popular browsers.
“Web-safe” colors had a flaw in that, on systems such as X11 where the palette is shared between applications, smaller color cubes (5×5x5 or 4×4x4) were often allocated by browsers — thus, the “web safe” colors would actually dither on such systems. Better results were obtained by providing an image with a larger range of colors and allowing the browser to quantize the color space if needed, rather than suffer the quality loss of a double quantization.
As of 2007, personal computers typically have at least 16-bit color and usually 24-bit (TrueColor). Even mobile devices have at least 16-bit color, driven by the inclusion of cameras on cellphones. The use of “web-safe” colors has fallen into practical disuse, but persisted in culture.
The web-safe palette system persists as being the palette with the greatest number of distinct colors, where each color can be distinguished individually by human eyes. This led to the use of web-safe colors in anti-phishing systems. [8]
The “web-safe” colors do not all have names, but each can be specified by an RGB triplet. Below are the values for the 6 shades of each color out of 256 possible color shades.
Please see below for the actual palette:
Windows Media
Windows Media Video (WMV) is a compressed video file format for several proprietary codecs developed by Microsoft. The original codec, known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other codecs, such as WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater for specialized content. Through standardization from the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), WMV has gained adoption for physical-delivery formats such as HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.
Web Banner info from Wikipedia
Example Web Banner from http://www.ology.com.au/banner_design.htm
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. The advertisement is constructed from an image (GIF, JPEG, PNG), JavaScript program or multimedia object employing technologies such as Silverlight, Java, Shockwave or Flash, often employing animation or sound to maximize presence. Images are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape (i.e. either wide and short, or tall and narrow) hence the reference to banners. These images are usually placed on web pages that have interesting content, such as a newspaper article or an opinion piece.
The web banner is displayed when a web page that references the banner is loaded into a web browser. This event is known as an “impression”. When the viewer clicks on the banner, the viewer is directed to the website advertised in the banner. This event is known as a “click through”. In many cases, banners are delivered by a central ad server.
When the advertiser scans their logfiles and detects that a web user has visited the advertiser’s site from the content site by clicking on the banner ad, the advertiser sends the content provider some small amount of money (usually around five to ten US cents). This payback system is often how the content provider is able to pay for the Internet access to supply the content in the first place.
Web banners function the same way as traditional advertisements are intended to function: notifying consumers of the product or service and presenting reasons why the consumer should choose the product in question, although web banners differ in that the results for advertisement campaigns may be monitored real-time and may be targeted to the viewer’s interests.
Many web surfers regard these advertisements as highly annoying because they distract from a web page’s actual content or waste bandwidth. (Of course, the purpose of the banner ad is to attract attention and many advertisers try to get attention to the advert by making them annoying. Without attracting attention it would provide no revenue for the advertiser or for the content provider.) Newer web browsers often include options to disable pop-ups or block images from selected websites. Another way of avoiding banners is to use a proxy server that blocks them, such as Privoxy.
XHTML
Short for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language, a hybrid between HTML and XML specifically designed for Net device displays.
XHTML is a markup language written in XML; therefore, it is an XML application.
XHTML uses three XML namespaces (used to qualify element and attributes names by associating them with namespaces identified by URI references. Namespaces prevent identically custom-named tags that may be used in different XML documents from being read the same way), which correspond to three HTML 4.0 DTDs: Strict, Transitional, and Frameset.
XHTML markup must conform to the markup standards defined in a HTML DTD.
When applied to Net devices, XHTML must go through a modularization process. This enables XHTML pages to be read by many different platforms.
A device designer, using standard building blocks, will specify which elements are supported. Content creators will then target these building blocks–or modules.
Because these modules conform to certain standards, XHTML’s extensibility ensures that layout and presentation stay true-to-form over any platform.
XML
- XML stands for EXtensible Markup Language
- XML is a markup language much like HTML
- XML was designed to carry data, not to display data
- XML tags are not predefined. You must define your own tags
- XML is designed to be self-descriptive
- XML is a W3C Recommendation
The Difference Between XML and HTML
XML is not a replacement for HTML - XML and HTML were designed with different goals:
XML was designed to transport and store data, with focus on what data is.
HTML was designed to display data, with focus on how data looks. HTML is about displaying information, while XML is about carrying information.
Yahoo
Short for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, Yahoo! is a World Wide Web directory started by David Filo and Jerry Yang at Stanford University. The two began compiling and categorizing Web pages in 1994. By 1996, they had one of the most popular Web sites and a very valuable commodity.
Zip Archive
The ZIP file format is a popular lossless data compression and archival format. A ZIP file contains one or more files that have been compressed, to reduce their file size, or stored as-is. A number of compression algorithms are permitted in zip files but as of 2008 only DEFLATE is widely used and supported.
The format was originally evolved by Phil Katz for PKZIP from the previous ARC compression format by Thom Henderson. However, many software utilities other than PKZIP itself are now available to create, modify, or open (unzip, decompress) ZIP files, notably WinZip, BOMArchiveHelper, KGB Archiver, PicoZip, Info-ZIP, WinRAR, IZArc, 7-Zip, ALZip, TUGZip, PeaZip, Universal Extractor and Zip Genius. Microsoft has included built-in ZIP support (under the name “compressed folders”) in later versions of its Windows operating system. Apple has included built-in ZIP support in Mac OS X 10.3 and later via the BOMArchiveHelper utility.
ZIP files generally use the file extensions “.zip” or “.ZIP” and the MIME media type application/zip. Some software uses the ZIP file format as a wrapper for a large number of small items in a specific structure. Generally when this is done a different file extension is used. Examples of this usage are Java JAR files, id Software .pk3/.pk4 files, package files for StepMania and Winamp/Windows Media Player skins, XPInstall, as well as OpenDocument and Office Open XML office formats. Both OpenDocument and Office Open XML formats use the JAR file format internally, so files can be easily uncompressed and compressed using tools for ZIP files. Google Earth makes use of KMZ files, which are just KML files in ZIP format. Mozilla Firefox Add-ons are zip files with extension “xpi”.
Hi Ally
I bet you were pleased to get to the end !
You’re still 22 letters and a voddie ahead of me.
Congratulations !!
Lyn