Most web pages are static documents with little interactivity. Microsoft has created a programing language, called ActiveX, to remedy this situation. ActiveX "controls" promise to make the web surfing experience comparable to that of highly produced CD-ROMS, where you can listen to music, watch animation and video clips and interact with the program.

An acronym for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line. ADSL is a method of transmitting data over traditional copper telephone lines at speeds higher than are currently available. Data can be downloaded at speeds of up to 1.544 megabits per second and uploaded at speeds of 128 kilobits per second. (That's why it's termed asymmetric.) This technology is well suited to the Web, where much more data is sent from a server to your computer than you send to the server.

An agent is a type of software program that is instructed to go out onto the Internet and perform a specific function on behalf of a user. The most common type of agents are programs called spiders and worms, which roam the Internet, collecting and indexing its content and creating their own searchable databases of the content found. New and custom uses for agents are being developed that will let users do things such as searching online music sites to compare prices for a specific CD title.

The computer network system that gave birth to the Internet. ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Administration Network) began in 1969 as a U.S. Department of Defense experiment in packet-switched networking.

An acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. This 7-bit code represents the most basic letters of the Roman alphabet, numbers, and other characters used in computing. Computers cannot understand human languages such as English. They speak a language of their own called binary, which is made up of 0s and 1s.

Humans can communicate with computers using a set of characters called ASCII. Each character in the ASCII set is made up of 7 bits of information, which the computer sees as a combination of 0s and 1s. This allows us to type alphabetical characters and numbers, which look like English to us, but can be read, stored and manipulated by computers. ASCII files are also called text files.

Anyone who has participated in a web chat realizes that exchanging typed messages can get boring very quickly. But what if you could assume a visual identity, say a frog or a clown? An avatar is a graphic facsimile that you can use in chat rooms. It lets you role play and interact with people you meet online. The term was popularized in the novel Snow Crash written by Neal Stephenson.

The maximum amount of data that can travel a communications path in a given time, usually measured in seconds. If you think of the communications path as a pipe, then bandwidth represents the width of the pipe that determines how much data can flow through it all at once.

Abbreviation for bye for now. Used in various online communications such as e-mail messages or postings to newsgroups or BBSs, it usually appears in brackets like this: <BFN>.

Short for binary digit, a bit is the smallest unit of data a computer can handle. Bits are used in various combinations to represent different kinds of data. Each bit has a value of 0 or 1.

A bitmapped image is one made out of an array of dots rather than continuous lines or areas.

When you download a web page, the data is cached, meaning it is stored temporarily on your computer. The next time you want that page, instead of requesting the file from the web server, your web browser just accesses it from the cache. That way, the page loads quickly. But if the web page is updated frequently, as may be the case with news, sports scores or financial data, you won't get the most current information. By using the Reload button on your browser, this timely data is updated by downloading fresh data from the server.

A computer program created specifically to invade computers and networks and wreak havoc on them. The mischief caused can be very minor: it may cause a funny image or cryptic message to be displayed on your screen, or it can do some serious damage by altering or even destroying files.

A cookie is a file sent to a web browser by a web server that is used to record one's activities on a website. For instance, when you buy items from a site and place them in a so-called virtual shopping cart, that information is stored in the cookie. When the browser requests additional files, the cookie information is sent back to the server. Cookies can remember other kinds of personal information --your password, so you don't have to re-enter it each time you visit the site; your preferences, so the next time you return to a site, you can be presented with customized information. Some people regard cookies as an invasion of privacy; others think they are a harmless way to make websites more personal.

Most cookies have an expiration date and either reside in your computer's memory until you close your browser or they are saved to your hard drive. By the way, cookies cannot read information stored in your computer.

You can use a text editor to view cookie files. Internet Explorer creates separate files for each cookie and stores them in folders named "Cookies" or "Temporary Internet Files."For Windows users of Navigator, the file is called cookies.txt and is located in the the same folder as Netscape.

The process of securing private information that is passed through public networks, by mathematically scrambling (i.e. encrypting) it in a way that makes it unreadable to anyone except the person or persons holding the mathematical "key" that can unscramble (decrypt) it. The two most common types of cryptography are "same-key" and "public-key". In same-key cryptography, a message is encrypted and decrypted using the same key, which is passed along from one party to another in a separate transmission. A more secure method is public-key cryptography which uses a pair of different keys (one public, one private) that have a particular relationship to one another, such that any message encrypted with one key can only be decrypted with the other key and vice-versa.

The unique name that identifies an Internet site. The Internet is made up of hundreds of thousands of computers and networks, all with their own domain name or unique address. Domain names always have two or more parts separated by dots. A given server may have more than one domain name, but a given domain name points to only one server.

Short for electronic mail, e-mail consists of messages, often just text, sent from one user to another via a network. E-mail can also be sent automatically to a number of addresses.

Another name for a smiley -- a sequence of keyboard characters used to punctuate a message or posting by expressing the writer's emotional state. For example:

a smile

:-)

sadness or consternation

:-(

a wink

;-)

A way of reducing the size of a file, or files, so that they don't take up a lot of space on a server or hard drive and can travel faster over a network. File compression is accomplished with software that uses mathematical equations (algorithms) to condense repeated data into smaller codes. You need another separate software program to decompress the data, and restore it to its original form.

Reacting to someone's newsgroup posting or e-mail in a hostile manner by publicly chastising the person or bombarding the person with nasty e-mail. Flaming may occur to users who ask stupid questions or who engage in behavior that violates what is considered proper online netiquette. A flame war occurs when two or more users flame each other in an escalating manner that threatens to continue unabated.

Forms are web pages comprised of text and "fields" for a user to fill in with information. They are an excellent way of collecting and processing information from people visiting a website, as well as allowing them to interact with web pages. Forms are written in HTML and processed by CGI programs. The output can be sent as an e-mail form, stored online, printed, and/or returned to the user as an HTML page. When you enter a keyword in the search field of an Internet directory, you are filling in a form. It is then processed by a CGI program, returning a list of possible matches with your keyword. Forms are also used for online catalogs, surveys, requests for information, and conferencing.

An acronym for File Transfer Protocol -- a very common method of transferring one or more files from one computer to another. FTP is a specific way to connect to another Internet site to retrieve and send files. FTP was developed in the early days of the Internet to copy files from computer to computer. With the advent of the World Wide Web, and web browser software, you no longer need to know arcane FTP commands to copy to and from other computers. In your browser, you can use FTP by typing the URL into the location box at the top of your screen. For example: ftp://name.of.site/directory/filename.zip will transfer filename.zip to your computer's hard disk. You can also use ftp://name.of.site/directory/ which will give you a listing of all the files available in that directory.

If you are using a web browser that doesn't have built-in FTP capability, or if you want to upload files to a remote computer, you will need to use an FTP client program to transfer files. To use FTP you need to know the name of the file, the computer where it resides, and the directory it's in. Most files are available via "anonymous FTP," which means you can log into the machine with the user name "anonymous" and use your e-mail address as your password.

Hardware or software that bridges the gap between two otherwise incompatible applications or networks so that data can be transferred among different computers. This is common with e-mail that gets sent back and forth between Internet sites and commercial online services which have their own internal e-mail systems.

Slang term for a technically sophisticated computer user who enjoys exploring computer systems and programs, sometimes to the point of obsession.

HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol -- the method by which hypertext files are transferred across the Internet. Letâs examine these terms one at a time. "Hypertext" was coined by Ted Nelson in 1965 to mean "text which is not constrained to be linear." When used with the web, it is text that is linked to something else. When you click on a word and you are shown another page (or a sound file or a picture), you are using hypertext. Hypertext allows you to jump around between files, following your own interests and train of thought. World Wide Web pages written in HTML use hypertext to link to other documents.

Hypertext transfer is simply the tranfer of hypertext files from computer to computer.

A small image, usually a symbol, used to graphically represent a software program, file, or function on a computer screen. Icons make it easier to recognize and locate these things.

Internet telephony is the conversion of analog speech signals used on current telephone systems into digital data, allowing calls to be sent over the Internet, bypassing long distance charges. While the Internet was first devised as a way of transmitting data, it is now being used to make voice calls. Internet telephony is projected to explode as the costs plummet.

An acronym for Internet Relay Chat, a program that allows you to carry on "live" conversations with people all over the world by typing messages back and forth across the Internet. You can talk in groups or in private with only one person. IRC consists of "channels," which usually are devoted to specific topics. Anyone can create a "channel" and any message typed in a given channel is seen by all others in the channel.

There is no limit to the number of people who can chat on a particular channel. Because of this unique feature, IRC channels have served as unofficial "news" sites during times of crisis, such as the Gulf War and the 1994 southern California earthquake. Mostly, though, you will find the same thing as on the Net - people talking about things they are interested in, from Aardvarks to Zombies.

To run IRC, you need to have an account on a server that is running an IRC client.

IRC can be difficult to get the hang of at first, but once you get past the initial learning curve you may come to love it. How else can you talk to someone in US for an hour without paying long-distance telephone charges?

Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc. to create executable content (i.e self-running applications) that can be easily distributed through networks like the Web. Developers use Java to create special programs called applets that can be incorporated in a web page to make it interactive. A Java-enabled web browser like Sun's HotJava is required to interpret and run the Java applets.

Java is activated by a special HTML tag on a web page. It enables developers to create content that can be delivered to and run by users on their computers. This software can support anything that programmers can dream up, from spreadsheets and tutorials to interactive games and animation.

The account name used to access a computer system. It is the way people identify themself to their online service or Internet access provider. Also called User ID, User Name, or Account Name.

A way of having a group discussion by electronic mail. Also used to distribute announcements to a large number of people. A mailing list is very much like a conference on a bulletin board system, except the conversation comes to you in your e-mail box. Each time you or any member of the list posts a reply to the conversation, it is distributed to the e-mail box of every member of the list. All of this traffic is automated and managed by programs called mailing list managers (MLM's) or mail servers. The two most frequently used programs are Listserv and Majordomo.

Mailing lists are the most basic form of Internet conferencing. They can be public or private and, unlike Usenet newsgroups, which require additional software to run, all you need to participate is an e-mail address.

A mailing list is said to be "unmoderated" if all of the messages sent to the list are automatically forwarded to each member of the list. In a "moderated" list, all messages are sent first to a list moderator, who makes decisions about which postings will or will not be sent to everyone on the list.

If many people are on a mailing list, the traffic in your e-mail box can be overwhelming. One way to deal with this is to subscribe to the "digest" version of the list (not all mailing lists have digest versions). In a digest version, postings are collected into a single file and distributed to the list on a regular basis (usually daily). In this way you receive only one big file at regular intervals rather than hundreds of small ones everyday.

You join a mailing list by subscribing to it. This doesn't mean you have to pay money, it just means you are asking to have your e-mail address added to the distribution list. To get off the mailing list, you have to unsubscribe from the list. You do both by sending an e-mail message to the list administrator with the following in the body of your message:

subscribe name-of-list your e-mail address

or

unsubscribe name-of-list your e-mail address

The exact way of doing this varies a little from list to list. It's best to request information about the list first and that will tell you exactly what you need to do. Once you've subscribed to a list you will receive an e-mail message with details about how the list works and how to unsubscribe.

Here are some tips for using mailing lists:

An FTP server that provides copies of the same files as another server. Used when an FTP site is so popular that the volume of users accessing it keeps others from getting through. A mirror site provides an alternate way to access the same files.

The term is short for Modulator/Demodulator. A device that allows remote computers to communicate, to transmit and receive data using telephone lines.

Acronym for Moving Pictures Experts Group, an industry committee that is developing a set of compression standards for moving images (i.e. film, video and animation) that can be downloaded and viewed on a computer.

Using more than one type of media simultaneously, like text with sound, moving or still images, music, etc.

Navigation tools allow users to find their way around a website or multimedia presentation. They can be hypertext links, clickable buttons, icons, or image maps. Navigation tools are usually present either at the bottom or top (sometimes both) of each page or screen and typically allow users to return to the previous page, move forward to the next page, jump to the top of the current page and return to the home page.

Two or more computers connected to each other so they can share resources. The Internet is a "network of networks," whereby anyone from an individual at a home with a PC to a large corporate multi-department system can freely and easily exchange information.

A software program that lets you subscribe to newsgroups as well as read and post messages to them. A newsreader is like a friendly librarian who keeps track of the articles posted to the newsgroups you like to read and locates them when you want to read them.

An addressable point on a network. A node can connect a computer system, a terminal, or various peripheral devices to the network. Each node on a network has a distinct name. On the Internet, a node is a host computer with a unique domain name and address that has been assigned to it by InterNIC.

A packet is a chunk of information sent over a network. Packet-switching is the process by which a carrier breaks up data into these chunks or "packets." Each packet contains the address of origin, the address of its destination, and information about how to reunite with other related packets. This process allows packets from many different locations to co-mingle on the same lines and be sorted and directed to different routes by special machines along the way.

A password is a code or word used to gain access to restricted data on a computer network. While passwords provide security against unauthorized users, the security system can only confirm that the password is legitimate, not whether the user is authorized to use the password. That's why it is important to safeguard passwords:

A pathname indicates the location of a particular file or directory by outlining the route or "path" from the host name (if the file resides on a remote server) through the directory structure to the desired filename or directory name. Each name in the series of names that define a path are separated by a slash. If the file is located in the current working directory on your computer, it is referred to only by its filename.

Pathnames can be absolute or relative. An absolute pathname provides the full path (address) of a file, including the computer system, directories, and subdirectories (if any) it resides in. Relative pathnames are used to describe a file or directory location on the user's system relative to the user's current location on the system (i.e. based on which level of the directory structure the user is in).

An acronym for Portable Document Format. A file type created by Adobe Systems Incorporated that allows fully formatted, high-resolution, postscript documents to be easily transmitted across the Internet and viewed on any computer that has Adobe Acrobat Reader software.

Ping tests the Internet to see what systems are working. Ping can also test and record the response time of accessing other companies. This provides a systems administrator with valuable information on what networks are overloaded so access times can be optimized.

A server using the Post Office Protocol, which holds users' incoming e-mail until they read or download it.

The process by which a web client requests specific information from a web server, based on a character string that is passed along. A query typically takes the form of a database search for a particular keyword or phrase. The keyword is entered into the search field of an Internet directory such as InfoSeek and then passed onto the web server.

Short for Red, Green, and Blue, it is a color model commonly used to display color in video systems, film recorders and computer monitors. It represents all colors as combinations of red, green and blue light. RGB mode is the most common color mode for viewing and working with digital images on a screen.

Programs that are designed to automatically go out and explore the Internet for a variety of purposes. Robots that record and index all of the contents of the network to create searchable databases are sometimes called Spiders or Worms. WebCrawler and Lycos are popular examples of this.

A type of program that consists of a set of instructions for another application or utility to use.

A search engine is a type of software that creates indexes of databases or Internet sites based on the titles of files, key words, or the full text of files. The search engine has an interface that allows you to type what you're looking for into a blank field. It then gives you a list of the results of the search. When you use a search engine on the Web, the results are presented to you in hypertext, which means you can click on any item in the list to get the actual file. If the file you select doesn't have what you're looking for, you can use the Back button on your browser to return to the list of search results and try something else.

Most search engines on the Web are very fast and powerful, hence redoing a search doesn't really take a lot of time. In fact, because the Web changes constantly, with new information being added all the time, it probably makes more sense to do a new search rather than rely on the results of an older one.

The other nice feature about search engines on the web is that if you have a website or page of your own, you can register it. When you submit key information about your page or site, it gets added to the index. This is a very good (but often overlooked) way to get people to visit your site.

Software that is freely distributed for a small fee paid on an "honor system." You are not required to pay the fee to try the program, but if you like the software enough to use it, you are expected to send the fee directly to the creator.

Shockwave is a set of programs that allow Macromedia Director animation files to be played over the Internet with a web browser. Possible uses for this type of animation on the Web include online advertising, games, training, and animated logos.

Text automatically included at the bottom of an e-mail message or newsgroup posting to personalize it. This can be anything from a clever quote to some additional information about the sender, like their title, company name and additional e-mail addresses they may have. Netiquette suggests that signatures be four lines or fewer.

An acronym for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, SMTP is the protocol used for routing e-mail across the Internet.

Syntax is the order in which words and phrases are put together, such as a URL (web address) which consists of several phrases that are strung together to define a location or service on the Internet. A syntax error occurs when a user (or programmer) has put words in an order that a program does not understand. A syntax error while surfing the Web may be caused by a mistyped or inadvertently rearranged URL, making it incomprehensible to a web browser.

The set of descriptive formatting codes used in HTML documents that instruct a web browser how to display text and graphics on a web page. For example, to make text bold, the tag <B> is used at the beginning and end of the text.

A software program that allows you to log in to other remote computers on the Internet to which you have access. Once you are logged into the remote system, you can download files, engage in conferencing, and perform the same commands as if you were directly connected by computer. You need an Internet account to be able to use a telnet program.

An upgrade is a later release of a software program. Most software companies work to improve their existing software by upgrading it periodically by adding new features and functions.

Often confused with download, uploading a file means loading it from your computer onto a remote one. Most people do a lot more downloading than uploading.

Usenet refers to the collection of newsgroups (sometimes called the Big Eight hierarchies) and a set of agreed-upon rules for distributing and maintaining them. More than 13,000 newsgroups exist around the world and the majority of them are a part of Usenet. However, a fairly large number of alternative newsgroups have emerged outside of Usenet.

Usenet newsgroups are arranged hierarchically first by the name of the group, followed by the name of the subgroups. Each name in the hierarchy is separated by a period. For example, the discussion group about rose gardening is rec.gardens.roses. This means the conversation is in the general grouping of rec. (which stands for recreation), and a subgroup of recreation called gardens. In this particular case, an additional subgroup of gardens has been created for roses. Each additional subgroup in a hierarchy defines how narrow or specialized the discussion topic is. It's not uncommon to find newsgroups with several subgroups.

The Usenet Big Eight hierarchies are:

An acronym for Very Easy Rodent Oriented Netwide Index to Computerized Archives. Veronica is a network utility that lets you search all of the world's gopher server (which is where the "rodent" part figures in) by key words. This amounts to over 10 million items from over 6,000 gopher servers. You can then display a list of Gopher menus and articles containing the search text. Use Veronica if you don't know which Gopher server has the information you need.

Veronica can also search some World Wide Web pages, Usenet newsgroups, and ftp directories. To use Veronica, you enter your search request in a gopher search form, and the results of a veronica search are presented as a gopher menu of items, each of which is a direct pointer to a gopher data source. You can then navigate that list like you do any other gopher directory.

Searching with Veronica is as simple as entering a word and hitting return. Veronica searches for keywords in gopher server menu titles, but it does not do a full-text search of the documents' contents, the way other search engines do.

Wherever you find a Veronica search form, you will usually also find many server sites listed. You can choose any of these to search from. If you get a message that the server is busy, simply choose another one and do the search again.

Veronica searches understand the logical operators AND, NOT, OR. Use "and" between multiple word searches if you only want results that find all the words. Using "or" is usually not recommended. An asterisk (*) at the END of a word will match anything. For example, the search "dead*" will find dead, deadlines, deadhead, etc.

A software application or tool designed to display a specific type of file (usually one that contains something other than text) that your web browser normally can't display on its own. There are viewers to display graphics files, and to play sound or video files.

Computer simulations of real-world "environments" that use 3-D graphics and external devices like a dataglove or helmet to allow users to interact with the simulation. Users move through virtual reality (VR) environments as though they were navigating in the real worlds -- walking through structures and interacting with objects in the environment.

WAIS is an acronym for Wide Area Information Servers. It is a network information retrieval service that you can use to search for key words or phrases in specially indexed files. Unlike Gopher, which searches files by their titles, WAIS engines search the full text of files and return a list of documents that contain the key word you are searching for. Most search engines on the Web use the WAIS method of search and retrieval.

Although the name "wide area" implies the use of large networks such as the Internet, WAIS is frequently used to index and retrieve documents on only one machine or on a local area network.