B       Glossary



This glossary briefly defines some terms that are used in this 
guide. Additional information may be found online in the 
hyperlinks and the menus.

        anchor  the highlighted text or graphic in a file that, 
when clicked, moves to the linked file

        anonymous FTP   a process for document retrieval using the 
File Transfer Protocol (FTP); user logs on (as 
anonymous) but does not need a pass-
word to access documents on the server

        annotation      feature of NCSA Mosaic that lets you add a 
comment to a document being viewed

        Archie  search device for documents on anonymous 
FTP server machines; the search matches 
filenames (Archie is to anonymous FTP serv-
ers as Veronica is to Gopher servers)

        .au     common extension for audio files (myaudio-
clip.au)

        browser another term for viewerthat is, a software 
package that permits you to look around the 
World Wide Web (Web); NCSA Mosaic is a 
browser

        CERN    particle physics institute located in Geneva, 
Switzerland, and home of the World Wide 
Web

        client  a computer running client software that 
connects to server machines holding infor-
mation; the client makes requests to a 
server for documents and is responsible for 
displaying the information; NCSA Mosaic is 
an example of client software

        document        unit of information sent from servers to cli-
ents; a document may contain plain or for-
matted text, inlined graphics, sound, other 
multimedia data, or hyperlinks to other doc-
uments; often also referred to as a file

        FAQ     Frequently Asked Question; a direct link to 
the NCSA Mosaic FAQ list is on the Help 
menu

        FTP     File Transfer Protocol

        .gif    the CompuServe Graphics Interchange For-
matcommon extension for a graphics file 
(mygraphic.gif)

        Gopher  menu-driven system on a server machine 
that presents the files available for retrieval 
in a hierarchical fashion; Gopher is consid-
ered particularly easy to use because of the 
menu system

        Gopherspace     term for the interconnected Gopher servers

        Home Page       start-up document that serves as home base 
for Internet explorations

        hotlist a personalized online reference of impor-
tant documents as developed and main-
tained by the user; a hotlist can be shared by 
mailing the file to another NCSA Mosaic user

        HTML    HyperText Markup Language, the collection 
of styles used to define the various compo-
nents (e.g., bulleted list, citation, emphasis) 
of a hypertext document

        .html   the extension used on a file that is coded 
using HTML (myfile.html)

        HTTP    Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the protocol 
used by Web servers

        hyperlink       a word or graphic in a file displayed on-
screen with some form of highlighting (color 
or underlining or both); the word or graphic 
represents hidden text containing the URL 
information of another document, which is 
displayed when you click on the highlighted 
word or graphic

        hypermedia      richly formatted documents containing 
hyperlinks

        inlined a graphic image that is displayed along with 
text in a NCSA Mosaic Document View win-
dow (versus an image that opens in a sepa-
rate window using an external viewing 
program)

        Internet        the interconnected network of networks 
providing easy, reliable connections to com-
puters virtually anywhere in the world

        JPEG    Joint Photographic Expert Group, a com-
pression/decompression standard

        link    see hyperlink

        MIME    Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension, a 
sndard for specifying and describing the 
format of Internet message bodies

        NCSA    National Center for Supercomputing Appli-
cations on the campus of the University of 
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the home 
of NCSA Mosaic

        NCSA Mosaic     distributed hypermedia system developed 
at NCSA by staff in the Software Develop-
ment Group; designed for information dis-
covery and retrieval using the global 
Internet

        QuickTime       Macintosh-supported format for movies

        server  a computer that provides services (docu-
ments, software) to other machines that run 
specific software (called clients) and request 
those services

        SGML    Standard Generalized Markup Language, a 
language that defines the structure of a doc-
ument and the logical relationship of its 
parts

        source file     the file that is formatted for display in your 
Document View window

        tags    codes used in HTML (e.g., <H1>, </H1>, <p>)

        TIFF    Tag Image File Format, a graphics format 
type that NCSA Mosaic can display using an 
image display utility

        UIUC    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

        URL     Uniform Resource Locator, server and path 
information used in an HTML-coded source 
file to locate another document; URL is 
inserted in a document in the following for-
mat: 

        scheme://host-domain[:port]/path/file-
name 

        more information is available on the Help 
menu in On URLs

        Veronica        search device that matches filenames on 
Gopher servers (Veronica is to Gopher serv-
ers as Archie is to anonymous FTP servers)

        viewer  see browser

        WAIS    Wide Area Information Server, an index and 
retrieval system; when you enter a keyword, 
a search is performed on indexed docu-
ments, which can then be retrieved

        Web     another name for the World Wide Web

        WWW     World Wide Web, a distributed hypertext-
based information system developed at 
CERN

        .xbm     X-bitmapped (composed of dots or pixels) 
file formatcommon extension for a 
graphic file (mygraphic.xbm)
