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@
The symbol on the computer keyboard representing the word “at” in an email
address. It is used to separate the person’s name from the domain name
in an email address (eg: dot@missdot.com my name dot is separated from
my domain name missdot.com or your name billcom is separated by @ in your
email address, so it reads billcom@doggydos.com – doggydos.com is your
domain address)
Attachment
A file which is sent with an email message. It could be a document you
have written, a picture or a spreadsheet. When you have written your email
message you will see the symbol of a paper clip and you can click on the
paper clip and it will allow you to attach any file you chose before you
click on send.
Browser A
program which translates HTML code into a page shown on your computer
monitor or T.V. so that you can read and understand. It allows code to
be translated into human language (for example you have Internet Explorer
on your computer Dad, but you could chose a different browser like Netscape
Navigator instead if you wanted to.)
Click To
press down once and then release the left hand button of the mouse.
Double-click
To quickly press and release the left hand button of the mouse twice.
Right-click To
press and quickly release the right-hand button of the computer mouse.
(By the way if you were left-handed Dad, you could change your mouse to
work the other way round!)
Cursor The
little arrow on the screen which you can move around. You can move it
by moving the mouse and when you want it to stay in one place to begin
working in that area you simply click the mouse. The cursor sometimes
changes, for example, when the computer is busy doing something you have
asked it to do, the cursor changes into an hourglass shape. When the task
is done the cursor changes back to being an arrow. Some computers can
have cursors in different shapes for example changed into a rocket or
an animal.
Dial-up A
connection to the Internet via a telephone line.
Don’t forget Double-click
To quickly press and release the left hand button of the mouse. (Left-handed
people can reverse their mouse buttons if they wish.)
Domain Name
the part of your email address which gives information about the person
or company. It tells you where it is, (for example .co.uk or for Poland
it would be .co.pl) and whether it is part of a commercial organisation
(.com) or government (.gov) or educational (.edu) or even a charity (.org)
So the domain in your email address is www.doggydos.com because it is
commercial
Download
To copy information or files from the Internet onto your own computer.
Upload is to send information the other way from your computer to another
computer on the Internet (the Net).
Email Electronic
mail – this is a message sent between two computers over the Internet.
Your email address has to be unique to you -nobody else in the world can
have the same address. That is why people sometimes put a hyphen or a
dash or an underscore in their name to make it different from somebody
else. So if there was another billcom@doggydos.com, he might want to make
his address bill-com@doggydos.com
so there would be no confusion with mail. An email address is usually
written without capital letters, all in lower case. There are no spaces
in email addresses because it would confuse the computers, so people put
dots in between words to separate them. So you could be billcom or bill.com
@doggydos.com, but I thought plain billcom was simpler!
IP Adress
Every computer connected to the Internet has, or is given at the time
of connection, an IP address which is written in dots and numbers. The
computer reads the code, but it is converted to words for people to understand
on the screen. So when you are seeing words that you type onto the screen
those words are read by the computer as a number like this ..193.164.167.140
this means in human language missdorothy.com.
It's like a kind of temporary telephone number but for computers so that
the servers know where to send the information for pages you read.
ISP
– Internet Service Provider - a company that sells connection services
for the Internet
Free ISP
– Free Internet Service Provider – some companies give you a CD Rom to
put in your computer and that allows you free dial-up access to the Internet.
But remember you sometimes still have to pay for the phone call while
you are connected to the Internet. These companies get their money from
a share of the telephone charges and sometimes from advertising.
File
Anything you save in the computer such as a software program, or a document
or a picture. It is the electronic version of the paper file that Mavis
used to put in the filing cabinet!
Hard disk
The part of a computer which stores software programs and files. It is
like your filing cabinet. Its a tiny metal disk that spins very fast with
lots of tiny arms that listen to the magnetic pulses on it which, really,
is all computers understand.
HTML
(Hyper Text Mark Up Language) Nearly everything on the World Wide Web
is written in HTML. It was invented so computers all over the world could
write in the same computer language and could then share information.
HTML is a programing language which we don’t see directly on our screens.
The software programs on our computers convert the computer code into
our own languages so we can read it easily. The doggydos web page on the
world wide web is an HTML web page – that means it is written in that
particular code so it can be read by computers all over the world.
HTTP
(Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) This is the protocol (or set of codes)
which allows the hypertext document to be sent over the Internet. That
is why all web page addresses start http:// so the full doggydos website
address is http://www.doggydos.com
Home page The
first page or the opening page of a web site or the first page you see
when your browser takes you to the Internet. This is called index.html
normally.
Internet The
Internet is the network which is the transport system connecting a group
of computers in different places all over the world. They are all linked
to each and can share information available on the world wide web, they
can communicate using electronic mail (email) and they can form a discussion
group (news group). Once you add your computer to this network, you can
share all these advantages and every computer linked to the Internet has
a unique address. Nobody else in the world can have the same address.
Link(Hypertext
link)A piece of text or a picture you can click on to go to
another web page. When you click on a link, that document will be displayed,
played or downloaded depending on what it is. You know when you have found
a hypertext link because the cursor changes from an arrow to a hand with
the index finger extended ready to click the mouse.
Modem A
device which allows a computer to communicate with another computer over
a standard telephone line. It changes the signals so they understand each
other. (You have a modem in your computer Dad so it can connect to the
Internet, but some people have to buy a modem and attach it to their computer).
It converts the digital information of the computer into soundwaves (MODulates
– MOD) to allow it to be carried across the analogue phone lines. At the
other end another modem converts the analogue soundwaves back to digital
information (DEModulates - DEM) for the computer to understand so MODulate/DEModulate
or MODEM …neat eh?
Online
is when you are connected to the Internet
Offline is
when you are not connected to the Internet
Right-click
To press and quickly release the right-hand button of the computer mouse
Router
If you think of the Internet rather like a rail network – the points on
the railway track are like the routers sending data in various directions
and the computers are like the stations on the track. The data (or information
in packets) moves around with a label on it, a bit like the name on the
front of the train, and the routers know where the data has come from
and where it is going. The passengers inside the train would be like bytes
of data inside the packets. The routers route or direct the flow of information.
Search Engine
A specialist website which allows you to look for information on the web.
It is like a catalogue which displays items in categories such as education,
entertainment etc or you can use key words to find information eg type
in biscuit and it will find you sites with references to biscuits. Some
of the better know search engines are Yahoo, AltaVista, Excite and Lycos.
There are safe search engines too for example Yahooligans or Ask Jeeves
for Kids which stop kids like me looking at sites that aren’t good for
me!
Server a
computer which contains programs/information which can be used/accessed
by other computers elsewhere on the Internet or the network.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator – the address which describes your page or your
site on the World Wide Web. So the URL for the Doggydos website is www.doggydos.com
Web World Wide
Web – the name given to pictures and information that are all
available in the same computer language and are connected to each other
by clickthrough links. You can view these pages of information by connecting
to the Internet.
Webpage This
is one page of information on the World Wide Web
Website This
is a collection of pages usually connected to one company or organisation.
For example the Doggydos website has a number of pages – pages of information
about the company, pages for ordering products and pages of information
about animal welfare. So the collection of those pages is called a website.
Window An
area of a the screen containing boxes or buttons |
