* The included definitions were adapted from those published in the manual Getting Started with Microsoft FrontPage 97, Document No. 92482-1096.
Internet: The Internet is a computer network that connects millions of computers globally and provides world-wide communications to business, homes, schools and governments.
Examples of Internet Services
World Wide Web: This is the most powerful and fastest growing Internet service. It uses hypertext links to locate and retrieve pages from servers. World Wide Web pages combine sound, graphics, animation, text, and software programs into dynamic documents.
FTP: This service allows a user to transfer files from one computer to another.
Gopher: This is an Internet browsing service organized as a series of menus. Gopher documents are generally text based.
Bulletin Boards: Bulletin boards, also called newsgroups or discussion groups, work similarly to electronic mail. However, instead of writing messages to individual users, participants in a bulletin board post messages to a news server. These messages can be read and responded to by many users.
E-Mail: Electronic mail is the postal system of the Internet. It lets you send messages to one or many recipients, as long as they have e-mail addresses. To get a free e-mail account go to HotMail.
URL: A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is the address of the file or page you are viewing on the World Wide Web. These are generally displayed in a window near the top of your browser. The URL for this page is http://members.tripod.com/sorensenteach/web_scavenge/terms.htm.
Browser: The software you are using right now to view this document is a browser. It is capable of reading and interpreting HTML. Some examples are Internet Explorer and Netscape.
Server: Also called a host, this is a computer which stores information which can be requested and viewed by browsers.
HTML: HyperText Markup Language is the programming language in which Web Pages are written.
Pages: The basic document of the World Wide Web is a page. Pages are written in an evolving language called HTML.
Search Engine: This is a type of page which can be used to find specific information or other pages on the Internet. These are similar to the card catalog of a library. A few examples are Yahoo, which can be found at: http://www.yahoo.com. and Web Crawler at http://www.webcrawler.com.
Hyperlinks: A hyperlink is a connection from a World Wide Web page to another file on the World Wide Web. Browsers usually underline text hyperlinks an display them in a specific color. Hyperlinks in images are invisible. However, users can tell when the pointer is over a hyperlink because it changes appearance, usually to a pointing hand.