Can I catch a virus by looking at a web page?
NO, your computer can, of course, catch a virus if you download
an executable program from an untrustworthy site and then, of your own
free will, double-click on it in your file manager (or Mac desktop,
or...). This is the same risk you run when downloading programs from
bulletin board systems or via anonymous FTP.
Viewing images,
filling out forms and so on is harmless. So, most likely, is downloading
a program from a respectable source with a reputation to protect.
What
is a URL? (pronounced - you are ell)
uniform resource
locator
universal resource locator
URLs are the Internet equivalent of addresses. How do they work? Like
other types of addresses, they move from the general to the specific
(from zip code to recipient, so to speak). Take this URL, for example:
http://www.cnet.com/Resources/index.html
What are
SGML and HTML?
Documents on the World Wide Web are written in a simple "markup
language" called HTML, which stands for Hypertext Markup Language.
When you point your Web browser to a URL, the browser interprets the
HTML commands embedded in the page and uses them to format the page's
text and graphic elements. HTML commands cover many types of text
formatting (bold and italic text, lists, headline fonts in various
sizes, and so on), and also have the ability to include graphics and
other nontext elements.
How can I
search through ALL web sites?
Several people have written robots which create indexes of web sites
-- including sites which have not arranged to be mentioned in the
newspapers and catalogs above.
Here are a few
such automatic indexes you can search: Yahoo,
Hotbot, Lycos,
NBCI, Webcrawler,
to name just a few.
What is JavaScript?
JavaScript is a platform-independent, event-driven, interpreted programming
language developed by Netscape Communications Corp. and Sun Microsystems.
Originally called LiveScript (and still called LiveWireTM by Netscape
in its compiled, server-side incarnation), JavaScript is affiliated
with Sun's object-oriented programming language JavaTM primarily as
a marketing convenience. They interoperate well but are technically,
functionally and behaviorally very different.
JavaScript is
useful for adding interactivity to the World Wide Web because scripts
can be embedded in HTML files (i.e., web pages) simply by enclosing
code in a <SCRIPT> </SCRIPT> tag pair. All modern browsers
can interpret JavaScript -- albeit with some irritating caveats. (More
about them below.)
In practice,
JavaScript is a fairly universal extension to HTML that can enhance
the user experience through event handling and client-side execution,
while extending a web developer's control over the client's browser.
And that's worth a FAQ.
What is CSS?
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets and is a simple styling language
which allows attaching style to HTML elements. Every element type as
well as every occurance of a specific element within that type can be
declared an unique style, e.g. margins, positioning, color or size.
What is SMTP?
(simple mail transfer protocol)
When you're exchanging electronic mail on the Internet, SMTP is what
keeps the process orderly. It's a protocol that regulates what goes
on between the mail servers.
What is an
Intranet?
A play on the word Internet, an intranet is a restricted-access network
that works like the Web, but isn't on it. Usually owned and managed
by a corporation, an intranet enables a company to share its resources
with its employees without confidential information being made available
to everyone with Internet access.
What is an
Extranet?
Companies often use extranets to provide nonpublic information to
a select group of people, such as business partners or customers.
So while an extranet may look like an ordinary Web site, you have
to enter a password or use digital encryption to access it. For example,
Federal Express's customers can track packages on the company's extranet
by simply entering a tracking number. And Bank of America's extranet
lets users transfer funds or look up account balances online. Using
an extranet can help companies save money by allowing customers to
find information themselves, without having to call and talk to a
person.
What is an
ISP? (Internet service provider)
Once
upon a time, you could only connect to the Internet if you belonged
to a major university or had a note from the Pentagon. Not anymore:
ISPs have arrived to act as your (ideally) user-friendly front end
to all that the Internet offers. Most ISPs have a network of servers
(mail, news, Web, and the like), routers, and modems attached to a
permanent, high-speed Internet "backbone" connection. Subscribers
can then dial into the local network to gain Internet access--without
having to maintain servers, file for domain names, or learn Unix.
What is an
applet?
Applet is a diminutive form of app (application), and it refers to
simple, single-function programs that often ship with a larger product.
Programs such as Windows' Calculator, File Manager, and Notepad are
examples of applets.
What is bandwidth?
In a general sense,
this term describes information-carrying capacity. It can apply to
telephone or network wiring as well as system buses, radio frequency
signals, and monitors. On a more human level, the term can describe
a person's capacity for dealing with multiple projects ("I'd
like to update this database, but I don't have the bandwidth.").
Bandwidth is
most accurately measured in cycles per second, or hertz (Hz), which
is the difference between the lowest and highest frequencies transmitted.
But it's also common to use bits or bytes per second instead.
What is a browser?
If you can read this, it's highly likely that you're using a Web browser.
In brief, a browser is your interface to the World Wide Web; it interprets
hypertext links and lets you view sites and navigate from one Internet
node to another. Among the companies that produce browsers are NCSA
Mosaic, Netscape, and Microsoft, as well as commercial services like
CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online.
What is cache?
Caches come in many types, but they all work the same way: they store
information where you can get to it fast. A Web browser cache stores
the pages, graphics, sounds, and URLs of online places you visit on
your hard drive; that way, when you go back to the page, everything
doesn't have to be downloaded all over again. Since disk access is
much faster than Internet access, this speeds things up. Of course,
disk access is slower than RAM access, so there's also disk caching,
which stores information you might need from your hard disk in faster
RAM.
What is CGI?
(common gateway interface)
The CGI standard lays down the rules for running external programs
in a Web HTTP server. External programs are called gateways because
they open up an outside world of information to the server.
What is a cookie?
According to Netscape,
cookies are a "general mechanism which server side connections
can use to both store and retrieve information on the client side
of the connection." In English, that means cookies are small
data files written to your hard drive by some Web sites when you view
them in your browser. These data files contain information the site
can use to track such things as passwords, lists of pages you've visited,
and the date when you last looked at a certain page.
What is a database?
A database can be as simple as a shopping list or as complex as a
collection of thousands of sounds, graphics, and related text files.
Database software is designed to help users organize such information.
While early "flat" databases were limited to simple, searchable
rows and columns, modern relational databases allow users to access
and reorganize data in a variety of ways. Even more advanced databases
let users store and retrieve all kinds of nonstandard data, from sound
clips to video.
What is a domain
name?
Looking for a domain name? You'll find it to the right of the @ sign
in an email address, or about ten characters into a URL. Desert Web
Design's domain name is desertwebdesign.com. Domain names are issued
by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and they come with different
extensions based on whether the domain belongs to a commerical enterprise
(.com), an educational establishment (.edu), a government body (.gov),
the military (.mil), a network (.net), or a nonprofit organization
(.org).
What is DSL?
(digital
subscriber line)
Digital subscriber lines carry data at high speeds over standard copper
telephone wires. With DSL, data can be delivered at a rate of 1.5
mbps (around 30 times faster than through a 56-kbps modem). Also,
DSL users can receive voice and data simultaneously, so small offices
can leave computers plugged into the Net without interrupting phone
connections. Currently, DSL is expensive because specialized equipment--a
splitter--needs to be installed at the subscriber's location. DSL
Lite, the consumer-ready version of DSL, requires no such splitter,
and promises comparable access speeds at a cheaper rate. xDSL is the
collective term for different variations of DSL, such as ADSL and
HDSL.
What is FTP?
(file transfer protocol)
This Internet protocol is used to copy files between computers--usually
a client and an archive site. It's old-fashioned, it's a bit on the
slow side, it doesn't support compression, and it uses cryptic Unix
command parameters. But the good news is that you can download shareware
or freeware apps that shield you from the complexities of Unix, and
you can connect to FTP sites using a Web browser.
What is an
OS? (operating system)
A computer by itself is essentially dumb bits of wire and silicon.
An operating system knows how to talk to this hardware and can manage
a computer's functions, such as allocating memory, scheduling tasks,
accessing disk drives, and supplying a user interface. Without an
operating system, software developers would have to write programs
that directly accessed hardware--essentially reinventing the wheel
with every new program. With an operating system, such as Windows
NT or Mac OS 8, developers can write to a common set of programming
interfaces called APIs and let the operating system do the dirty work
of talking to the hardware.
What does
POP mean? (Post Office Protocol)
The current champ in Internet email mailbox access standards, but
its limitations--basically, you connect to a server and download all
your messages, which are then deleted from the server--discourage
flexibility. Of course, some clients let you leave all messages on
the server, and/or refuse to download messages above a certain size.
Still, as messages become longer--with multimedia (such as sound or
video) objects and the likes--we'll want some flexibility in what
we retrieve and when we retrieve it. That's where IMAP comes in. The
current version of POP is POP3.
What is SSL? (Secure
Sockets Layer)
SSL is a transaction security standard developed by Netscape Communications
to enable commercial transactions to take place over the otherwise
notoriously nonsecure Internet. It's one of a few competing security
standards.
What is TCP/IP?
(transmission control protocol/Internet protocol)
These two protocols were developed by the U.S. military to allow computers
to talk to each other over long distance networks. IP is responsible
for moving packets of data between nodes. TCP is responsible for verifying
delivery from client to server. TCP/IP forms the basis of the Internet,
and is built into every common modern operating system (including
all flavors of Unix, the Mac OS, and the latest versions of Windows).
What is Telnet?
Telnet is an application that lets you log on to a Unix computer.
Provided you have an account on that Telnet server, you can then use
its resources. A drawback of Telnet is that it's character-based,
so you need to speak Unix to the other computer.
*These facts
were brought to you by many resources but we would like to thank cnet.com
for their contribution.
