Letter: S Script
A script is an executable list of commands created by a scripting language. On the Web, script typically means an alternative to the common gateway interface, or CGI. A CGI program could be written in any programming language, including C, Perl, Java, or Visual Basic, and runs on a server that can be accessed by the user agent. Scripts, on the other hand, are programs that run on the user's machine rather than the Web server. Because they run on the client, scripts are considered to be "client-side solutions," while CGI programs are considered to be "server-side solutions."
Scripting Language
A scripting language is a simple programming language used to write an executable list of commands, called a script. A scripting language is a high-level command language that is interpreted rather than compiled, and is translated on the fly rather than first translated entirely. JavaScript, Perl, VBscript, and AppleScript are scripting languages rather than general-purpose programming languages.
Scroll
To look at the parts of the page that fall below (or above) what you see on your screen. The long bar at the far right of this screen is a scroll bar. The small square in it will allow you to scroll through the rest of this page. Just place your mouse pointer over the square, hold down the left click button on the mouse and slide the square up or down. You will see this page move. You are now scrolling.
search engine
A WWW site that serves as an index to other sites on the Web. Some of the more popular search engines are "Starting Point", "Yahoo", and "Lycos". Search engines are relatively easy to use. Normally, they contain references to common subject areas that you can point-and-click to connect to other links, that connect to other links, and so on. They also give you the opportunity to type in key words (by themselves, or in combination) to begin a search. Click here for an example of how a search works.
Security
In computing, security means protecting data against unauthorized access. To prevent eavesdropping over networks, data can be secured by encryption, which is the scrambling of data into a form that is unintelligible without some type of decoder.
Security Certificate
A chunk of information (often stored as a text file) that is used by the SSL protocol to establish a secure connection.
Security Certificates contain information about who it belongs to, who it was issued by, a unique serial number or other unique identification, valid dates, and an encrypted “fingerprint” that can be used to verify the contents of the certificate.
In order for an SSL connection to be created both sides must have a valid Security Certificate.
Segmentation
Akin to the notion "divide and conquer," segmentation is marketingspeak for breaking your audience down into definable subcategories. For instance, Coca-Cola may segment its audience based on frequency (one can a month or five cans a day), location (Bangkok or Bangladesh), and many other criteria. On the Web, segmentation is useful not just to marketers but to site designers as well, since the segments we track - IE vs. Netscape, first-timer vs. repeat visitor, domestic vs. international - shape the way we develop and deploy our Web sites.
Serif/Sans Serif
There are two general categories of typefaces: Serif and Sans Serif. Serif typefaces use small decorative marks to embellish characters and make them easier to read. Typefaces without these are called Sans Serif ("sans" is French for "without"). Helvetica is a Sans Serif typeface and Times is a Serif typeface.
Server
A computer, or a software package, that provides a specific kind of service to client software running on other computers. The term can refer to a particular piece of software, such as a WWW server, or to the machine on which the software is running, e.g.Our mail server is down today, that’s why e-mail isn’t getting out. A single server machine could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to clients on the network.
Server
A computer that hosts information available to anyone accessing the Internet.
Server Error
An error occurring at the server. Web server errors have codes in the 500 range.
Service Provider
(or Internet Service Provider, ISP) A business that provides connections to a part of the Internet
shareware
Software that is sold by individuals or companies for a nominal fee (compare "freeware"). Typically the software is downloaded and tried out before buying and registering it.
Sharpen
Sharpen is a tool in Photoshop that increases the focus of an image. Keep in mind, though, that Photoshop can't work miracles. Your image will only be as focused as the negative. If you use sharpen more than once, the image will become jagged.
Shockwave
Shockwave is a proprietary technology that enables Web pages to deliver multimedia objects. Macromedia developed Shockwave as a Web-sized way to view the products of its popular authoring tool, Director. Once the object is made in Director and compressed using Macromedia's AfterBurner, that object can be embedded in an HTML file. To see a Shockwave object, your Web browser must have the Shockwave helper application, an extra doodad that can be freely downloaded as either a Netscape Navigator plug-in or an ActiveX control. The problem with Shockwave, however, is the problem that plagues all plug-ins: A Web experience is greatly degraded when you're told that you can't see or hear something because you need another component for your browser. But as plug-ins go, Shockwave is excellent. Recent versions support not only video, animation, and audio, but can also process user events like clicks and keystrokes.
signature
A 3- or 4-line message, used to identify the sender of an e-mail message or Usenet article, that appears at the end of either communication. Signatures longer than 5 lines are generally frowned upon, and should be avoided).
Site
A place on the Internet. Every web page has a location where it resides which is called it's site. And, every site has an address usually beginning with "http://."
Sitemaps
Until recently, sitemaps were hand-drawn or script-drawn tree diagrams. Now browsers that support eXtensible markup language (XML) offer more elaborate sitemaps as a special feature. The newer sitemaps provide a hierarchical description of a site, written in the resource description framework (RDF), an XML application still being developed as a standard by the World Wide Web Consortium. For example, Netscape's Mozilla finds RDF sitemaps by looking for tags in your Web pages. This tag tells Mozilla to open the sitemap and then render the site diagram as part of the graphical display of the user agent. While sitemaps themselves may not be the niftiest things in the world, they do occupy a noteworthy position on the Web's timeline as one of the first implementations of RDF.
SLIP
(Serial Line Internet Protocol) -- A standard for using a regular telephone line (a serial line) and a modem to connect a computer as a real Internet site. SLIP is gradually being replaced by PPP.
SLIP
(Serial Line Internet Protocol). One way computers can communicate with each other over the Internet (compare "PPP"). SLIP connections let you communicate directly with other computers on the network using TCP/IP connections
Smart Quotes
Smart quotes are a feature found in many popular word processing programs. They're smart because they automatically insert open quotation marks at the beginning of a word and closed quotation marks at the end. Unfortunately, HTML is not smart enough for smart quotes since they aren't plain ASCII, so if you have smart quotes in your code, you'll end up with some strange characters on your Web page. Be sure to have smart quotes turned off whenever writing HTML code.
SMDS
(Switched Multimegabit Data Service) -- A new standard for very high-speed data transfer.
SMTP
(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) -- The main protocol used to send electronic mail on the Internet.
SMTP consists of a set of rules for how a program sending mail and a program receiving mail should interact.
Almost all Internet email is sent and received by clients and servers using SMTP, thus if one wanted to set up an email server on the Internet one would look for email server software that supports SMTP.
SMTP
(Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). Set of explicit steps that must be used by one Internet computer to connect to another computer to transmit a message to its next stop. The standard protocol on the Internet for transferring electronic mail messages.
SNMP
(Simple Network Management Protocol) -- A set of standards for communication with devices connected to a TCP/IP network. Examples of these devices include routers, hubs, and switches.
A device is said to be “SNMP compatible” if it can be monitored and/or controlled using SNMP messages. SNMP messages are known as “PDU’s” - Protocol Data Units.
Devices that are SNMP compatible contain SNMP “agent” software to receive, send, and act upon SNMP messages.
Software for managing devices via SNMP are available for every kind of commonly used computer and are often bundled along with the device they are designed to manage. Some SNMP software is designed to handle a wide variety of devices.
Solaris/SunOS
A popular and widely-used flavor of Unix, Solaris (formerly named SunOS) is used for large-scale enterprise networks with tens of thousands of active nodes. Solaris is capable of distributed computing (using multiple computers' processors to complete a single task) and symmetrical multi-processing (running two or more processors in one computer). The OS ships on Sun's Sparc workstations along with graphical interfaces to increase user-friendliness.
Spam (or Spamming)
An inappropriate attempt to use a mailing list, or USENET or other networked communications facility as if it was a broadcast medium (which it is not) by sending the same message to a large number of people who didn’t ask for it. The term probably comes from a famous Monty Python skit which featured the word spam repeated over and over. The term may also have come from someone’s low opinion of the food product with the same name, which is generally perceived as a generic content-free waste of resources. (Spam is a registered trademark of Hormel Corporation, for its processed meat product.)
E.g. Mary spammed 50 USENET groups by posting the same message to each.
spider
An automated program which searches the internet.
Spiders
An automated program which searches the internet.
SQL
(Structured Query Language) Pronounce it "see-quell" (not "S - Q - L") if you want any respect from programmers. A standardized language that is used to define and manipulate data in a database server. SQL is a standardized query language for requesting information from a database. The original version called SEQUEL (structured English query language) was designed by an IBM research center in 1974 and 1975. Oracle Corporation first introduced SQL as a commercial database system in 1979. SQL is used to extract specified data from a relational database.
SQL
(Structured Query Language) -- A specialized programming language for sending queries to databases. Most industrial-strength and many smaller database applications can be addressed using SQL. Each specific application will have its own version of SQL implementing features unique to that application, but all SQL-capable databases support a common subset of SQL.
SRI
A research institute, based in California, that runs the Network Information Systems Center.
SSI
Server-side includes (SSI) tell a server to include information in a document before sending it to the browser. All directives to the server are formatted as SGML comments within the document. In case the document should find its way to the client unparsed, it will harmlessly remain unrendered. Each server-side include is written in the format !--#command tag1="value1" tag2="value2" --. The simplest kind of SSI is a virtual include, which can use one command to pull HTML fragments, such as navigation bars, into all the pages of a site without having to hand code each page.
(see eXtended Server-Side Inc
SSL
(Secure Sockets Layer) -- A protocol designed by Netscape Communications to enable encrypted, authenticated communications across the Internet.
SSL used mostly (but not exclusively) in communications between web browsers and web servers. URL’s that begin with “https” indicate that an SSL connection will be used.
SSL provides 3 important things: Privacy, Authentication, and Message Integrity.
In an SSL connection each side of the connection must have a Security Certificate, which each side’s software sends to the other. Each side then encrypts what it sends using information from both its own and the other side’s Certificate, ensuring that only the intended recipient can de-crypt it, and that the other side can be sure the data came from the place it claims to have come from, and that the message has not been tampered with.
SSL
Secure Socket Layer) An open protocol for securing data communications across computer networks. The broad support for this protocol will promote interoperability between products from many organizations and will speed the growth of electronic commerce on the Internet and private TCP/IP networks.
Statement
JavaScript statements make things happen. Every JavaScript program can be broken down into a series of statements, with each statement like an English sentence, except in JavaScript you end a sentence with a semicolon instead of a period. In fact, JavaScript is made up of sentences, phrases, and words. The sentences are statements, the phrases are expressions in which the elements of the action can be expressed and put together to make a statement, and the words are JavaScript operators, which are used to act upon the data passed to them.
Streaming
Rather than download a big, chunky audio/video file all at once, streaming allows you to see and hear an audio/video file as it's transferred. Windows Media, RealNetworks, and QuickTime are currently the three most popular streaming media platforms. A player program (which are available for free) must be downloaded for each of these technologies in order to decompress audio/video files, which you can then listen to or view. Streaming video is usually sent from prerecorded video files, but they can be broadcast live as well. The FezGuys can tell you more about streaming media.
Stylesheets
Stylesheets are a concept taken from the world of print, creating a way to separate the form from the structure of a document. In your newspaper publishing enterprise, you might use stylesheets to set the headlines and body copy. If you've created a stylesheet for the sports section, for example, you could simply invoke the style "sports" and easily refer the typesetters to the stylesheet for a section that has not only headlines and body copy, but also small type for statistics. In 1996, stylesheets appeared as a way to enhance HTML's limited visual design capabilities. Also known as cascading stylesheets (CSS), CSS became a simple mechanism for controlling the style of a Web document without compromising its structure. By separating visual design elements (fonts, colors, margins, etc.) from the structural logic of a Web page, CSS gave Web designers the control they craved without sacrificing the integrity of the data.
Subscriptions
While a few sites rely on subscriptions for their primary revenue stream (see the Wall Street Journal and, um, Slate), most content providers use subscriptions as a supplementary revenue stream (i.e., a way to eke out a little more money). Usually, these "all the extras" subscriptions offer users such exciting baubles as a free email or special discounts from advertisers. (Oooh! Aaah!)
suffix
The three digit suffix of a domain can be used to identify the type of organization.
Possible "Suffixes" are:
.com = Commercial
.edu = Educational
.int = International
.gov = Government
.mil = Military
.net = Network
.org = Organization
Suffix (Domain Name)
The three digit suffix of a domain can be used to identify the type of organization.
Possible "Suffixes" are:
.com = Commercial
.edu = Educational
.int = International
.gov = Government
.mil = Military
.net = Network
.org = Organization
Surfing
The process of "looking around" the Internet. You're doing it now.
switched access
A network connection that can be created and eliminated as necessary.
Sysop
(System Operator) -- Anyone responsible for the physical operations of a computer system or network resource. A System Administrator decides how often backups and maintenance should be performed and the System Operator performs those tasks.
