CONNECT: NYU ON THE WORLD-WIDE WEB

Alphabet Soup: A Guide to Web Terms

by David Frederickson

[Ed: Links to web pages and/or e-mail addresses which have become inactive since the publication of this article have been enclosed in curly brackets { }. Replacement links have been provided where possible.]

What do all those World-Wide Web acronyms mean? Do I really need to know? Not most of them, but some...

FTP (File Transfer Protocol): A set of conventions and programs allowing a user to retrieve files from a distant host computer. Anonymous FTP is a procedure that allows the user to type anonymous as the username at log-in, and to give his or her e-mail address as the password; this provides access to public directories and permits files to be copied to the user's computer.

Gopher: A protocol and set of programs to allow rapid navigation, by means of menus, from computer to computer and through branching directories to target documents.

hypertext: Electronic text in which certain words, usually highlighted or underlined, may be selected by the reader; that action will call other material -- footnotes, related passages, images, sound, whatever -- to the screen.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): With a markup language, it's possible to mark an electronic text with tags that are not themselves displayed, but which affect the way the text is displayed or printed. HTML goes beyond affecting the display, since the tags can also include instructions about making network connections, calling up helper applications, and so forth.

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol): An evolving set of conventions governing the preparation, presentation, and display of material on the World-Wide Web.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The address where a specific electronic file can be found. The URL http://www.nyu.edu/acf/pubs/connect/index.html locates the home page of the online version of this publication; it indicates

  • the type of server program that will make the file available (http),
  • the computer that holds the file (www.nyu.edu),
  • the directory path of the file (acf/pubs/connect),
  • the name of the file (index),
  • and the file type (html).

    • If you're hungry for some more alphabet soup, of the definitely optional variety, try "Shrcts on the Info Hiway..."[ C ]

    David Frederickson was the editor of Connect at the time of this article's publication.
    {david.frederickson@nyu.edu}

    Posted 18 October 1995. Revised 30 January 2004.