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:
Google
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.
