Web Studio 01 - Lesson 09

DEFINITION OF TERMS


GIF

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is an 8-bit-per-pixel bitmap image format and has come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability.

The format uses a palette of up to 256 distinct colors from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame. The color limitation makes the GIF format unsuitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with continuous color, but it is well-suited for more simple images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color.

GIF images are compressed using the LZW lossless data compression technique to reduce the file size without degrading the visual quality.

JPEG

In computing, JPEG is a commonly used standard method of compression for photographic images. The name JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group.

JPEG is the format most used for storing and transmitting photographs on the World Wide Web. For this application, it is preferred to formats such as GIF, which has a limit of 256 distinct colors that is insufficient for color photographs, and PNG, which produces much larger image files for this type of image. The compression algorithm is not as well suited for line drawings and other textual or iconic graphics, and thus the PNG and GIF formats are preferred for these types of images.

TABLE

Grids and rows and columns that can either be used to hold tabular data on a Web page or as a basic design tool for page layout.

CELL

Small boxes within a table that are used to hold text or images. Cells are arranged horizontally in rows and vertically in columns.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets. A file used to assign sets of common formatting characteristics to page elements such as text, objects and tables.

FTP

Stands for File Transfer Protocol, the process for uploading and down loading files to and from a remote site.

ROOT

Root is the name of a folder that holds all the files and folders for a Web site.

ASSETS

Files that are not Web pages, such as images, audio files and video clips.

OBJECTS

Web page content such as tables, images, forms and layers.

BEHAVIOUR

A behavior is a combination of an event with an action triggered by that event. In the Behaviors panel, you add a behavior to a page by specifying an action and then specifying the event that triggers that action. For example, if you want a Web page to open in a new browser window when your user clicks a link, you can use a behavior to achieve this effect.

ABSOLUTE URL

A path containing an external link that references a link on a Web page, and includes the protocol "http", and the URL, or address of the Web page.

RELATIVE URL

A path used with an internal link to reference a Web page or image file within the Web site.

TEMPLATE

A web page that contains the basic layout for similar pages in a Web site.

EXTENSION

Is an acronym such as .html, that describes the language used to create the web page.

NAVIGATION

A set of text or image links that browsers use to navigate among the pages of a Web site.

HOTSPOT

A clickable area on an image that, when clicked, links to different location on the page, or to another Web page.

IMAGE MAP

An image that has a clickable areas defined that, when clicked, serve as a link that will take the viewer to another location.

DIRECTORY

A list of files and folders that contain Web pages and other items that make up the Web site.



References: Adobe, Wikipedia & Sherry Bishop's MacroMedia Dreamweaver 8.