Design Definitions
Learn what Design words mean and how to use them
Splash
Page
This is an intro page on a site's main page that either consists
of nothing but an enter button or some ill concieved graphic rich
flash intro that one has to sit through before one can actually
visit the content of a site. Splash pages just waste time.
Meta Redirect
This is a type of redirect done via meta tags. Upon initial entry
to a page a meta redirect will send you to another page or site.
Meta Redirects are frequently used to route one to advertising pages
or to route one to another site after the old site is no more.
Meta Refresh
This is a way of locking a visit into a site by making their back
button not work. A meta refresh will automatically refresh the page
a person is on when one tries to leave the site by pressing the
back button. This makes it not possible to leave the site in this
usual manner. The only way to leave a meta refresh site is to type
in another url directly or go under your internet browser selecting
view and then goto and selecting the previous page you were on.
Sometimes by pressing the back button very rapidly you can get away
too. Meta refreshes are not popular with internet users.
Java Redirect
This is similar to a meta redirect except it it done via javascript.
In essence upon visit to a given webpage the user is instantly redirected
to another page.
Meta Tags
These are code snippets that are used either for keywords which
are displayed on a few search engines or to refresh the page via
meta refresh and prevent an internet user from being able to use
their back button to leave a site.
Title Tag
This is the piece of code that determines a page's title in many
search engine results and the title seen by internet users when
they visit a given page.
Font
This is the term for the type of text style used on a webpage. A
larger font or smaller font would also mean to use smaller or larger
versions of a given font.
Frames and
Noframes
Frames are a way to create a website such that certain elements
remain visible at all time. In essence you can combine multiple
page elements together which remain on every page a person visits
via frames to in theory create a more user friendly site experience.
In reality frames make it harder for internet users to bookmark
the exact webpage they want and hinder search engine indexability
of a webpage. No frames is the use of traditional html webpages
that allow the exact html page to be bookmarked. Many sites that
use frames have a frame or no frame option because a lot of people
hate frames.
Favicon.ico
A file that modern Internet Explorer browsers look for when a user
bookmarks a site. The ico extension is for a graphic format known
as icon, and if one has a favico.ico file set up the graphic will
appear next to the webpage title in a user's Internet Explorer bookmarks.
You can see how many Internet Explorer users are bookmarking a given
site based on the requests for favico.ico rather the site has the
file set up or not. This term is sometimes referred to simply as
favico.
Java
A type of computer language sometimes used on webpages to allow
for interactivity. Short snippets of java are javascripts.
Javascript
A type of script found on webpages that allows things like popups,
popunders, and interactive elements on a webpage.
GIF
A graphic format first made popular by Compuserve. GIF stands for
graphic interlaced format. GIF is not nearly as compressed of an
image format as JPEG but it works well for graphics with few colors
such as found in web icons and buttons.
Jpg or Jpeg
A very popular compressed image format that is often used for photographs
or images with many colors. JPEG stands for Joint Picture Expert
Group.
BMP or Bitmap
An uncompressed graphic format that is utilized for high quality
image work for photography and desktop publishing. Bitmaps take
up far more hardrive space than Jpegs and are usually not appropriate
for inclusion on websites.
PDF File
A text file format invented by the Adobe graphic publishing company.
PDF format allows a text brochere or document to be presented in
the exact same format as it was when in printed form. Including
links to PDF formats exclusively on a website is not a good idea
though as not everyone has a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat.
Cookie
A small file placed on internet user's hardrives after visiting
websites or after viewing ads from some online adnetworks. The purpose
of a cookie it to keep track of user preferences, limit exposure
of intrusive type ads, or keep track of login and password information
for certain sites.
Html
Acronym for Hypertext Markup Language which is the dominant file
format in use on webpages today. Html is the page itself so if one
views www.ebay.com.com/index.html then this webpage would be an
html webpage.
Hyperlink
or Link
Term for an embedded html code that allows an internet user to go
from webpage to webpage and website to website. Hyperlinks are often
used as underlined blue text that changes color after the hyperlink
is clicked. A graphic can be a hyperlink to another webpage as well.
Default Page
Term for the page that is presented when one types in something
like domain.com without indicating a given html to view. Usually
the file saved as index.htm or index.html are the default pages
presented under such a situation.
Attribute
Contains additional information about an element.
Browser
A program that runs on your local computer that can access and
display HTML pages.
Cell Padding
The space between the border of a cell and the data inside it.
Cell Spacing
The space between the outer border of two adjacent cells.
ColSpan
Colspan, or column-spanning, is a cell that stretches horizontally
across several columns, or even the whole width of a table.
Comments
A way to add your own notes or explanations to a document. Comment
sections are not processed and do not appear as part of the displayed
document.
Content
The second attribute in a meta tag; it describes the data or information
stored in the meta tag. Also, the term content is often used to
describe the information presented in a web page as opposed to
the mark-up or code used to control the presentation.
Delimiter
Marks the beginning or end of a tag or a data field. In HTML the
opening delimiter of an element or tag is the less than symbol,
<, and the closing delimiter is greater than symbol, >.
DIV
Short for DIVISION, a block-level element, like P, but completely
definable by the designer via Style Sheets. The DIV element also
lends itself to scripting (via JavaScript) and to absolute or
relative positioning (via CSS and the DOM).
Document Object Model
An approach that treats your document as a collection of individually
addressable objects, rather than a single solid unit. This gives
developers programmatic access to the components to enable dynamic
display of web page contents. The W3C DOM is a set of rules for
doing this in a standard way within a web browser.
Element
A component of a document. Each use of the element in the document
is noted by the use of the elements tag. For example, <p>
might mark the beginning of a paragraph element.
HTTP-Equiv
The first attribute in a meta tag. It describes what this meta
tags role is. The first attribute can be either this tag, or the
name tag. Use the Http-Equiv tag is you are creating data that
you want a server to process. The value you enter after Http-Equiv
is an action the server will perform.
Hyperlink
Text or an image that perform a specific function. When the reader
clicks on the hyper linked text or graphics, the appropriate action
happens.Hypertext is text that links to other information, such
as another web page, or another section of the same web page.
Name
Attribute in an HTML element (such as the META element or a FORM
element) that provides a unique identifier for the element. However,
in recent versions of HTML, the name attribute has been deprecated
in favor of the 'id' attribute in most cases.
HTML entity that refers to non-breaking space. If it is used in
place of a regular space character in a line of text, the web
browsers will not break a line at that point. The entity is also
often used to add spacing to web page content for design purposes
since it doesn't display, but the browsers will still allow space
for it.
Nowrap
An attribute in html that tells the browser not to break a line.
Refresh
A meta element attribute that automatically refreshes your page
after a specified number of seconds.
Rowspan
Attribute of tables that allow multiple rows within one column
to be treated as a single cell.
Rules
Lines or dividers between elements in a web page. The element
renders a horizontal rule in a page. You can also present vertical
rules through the use of graphic images.
Target
The window or frame which will display the requested web page
or results output. The default target is the same window the request
is made from. Target is an attribute of an anchor element.
Value
The data you assign to an attribute. For example, the value for
the align attribute is "center": <p align="center">
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