Internet Jargon Buster

A B C D E / F G H I J / K L M N O / P Q R S T / U V W X Y Z

Often described as PDF files (Portable Document Format) allow you to read all kinds of documents at high resolution. Used widely by large companies, detailed data, for example an annual report, can be e-mailed anywhere in the world, be read in a high-quality presentation, and be printed. For further reading: ww.adobe.com

A technology created by Microsoft to help you see dynamic content on the World Wide Web. It is also used in many games and other multimedia to enhance the user experience.

An Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line providing high-speed Internet access up to 20 times faster than ordinary modems. It offers broad bandwidth access to the Internet and because it runs alongside your existing telephone line, you can always make phone calls while using the Internet.

Individual PCs can be put behind firewalls but the more popular option is to install anti-virus software - it is perhaps unlikely that a hacker would target an individual PC, but viruses can be spread all too easily. You can see a list of anti-virus software in our Computing Channel.

These are documents, pictures, music, spreadsheets and other files that can be ‘attached’ and sent along with an e-mail. Provided you open them with compatible software, they can be viewed immediately, or saved to your computer to be opened at a later date. Attachments can contain viruses, so be careful when opening those from an unknown source.

An AVI (Audio Video Interleaved) file is a sound and motion picture file that conforms to the Microsoft Windows Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) specification. AVI files (which end with an .avi extension) require a special player that may be included with your Web browser or may require downloading. If you do not have the software that can play an AVI, try downloading Microsoft's Windows Media Player, and give a real boost to your enjoyment of the web.

The "@" symbol means ‘at’ and is used to separate a user name from a domain name when using e-mail. E-mail essentially works on the same principle as a letter sent in the post. You have a name, and then an address.

Web adverts come in different sizes, and for ease of understanding in the industry the differing sizes are given different names. ‘Banners’ are advertisements that tend to appear at the top, and sometimes at the bottom, of a web page. They are short and wide rectangular images, and usually change every time you refresh a page or visit a new page.

This is the fuzzy hissing and high-pitched tones you hear when your modem dials up to the web or dials in to a network. What you are hearing is the data signal changing hundreds of times a second.

This is the smallest piece of data on your computer.  A bit represents a boolean state, ON or OFF.

A Browser is a piece of software that you use to visit pages on the World Wide Web. You are already using a browser to read this page - it's the display onscreen that surrounds any given web page. We recommend the latest version of Internet Explorer when using MSN services

An area of computer memory reserved for temporarily holding data before that data is used on the receiving computer. Buffering protects against the interruption of data flow. Buffered data is instantly available to computer programs running on the computer where the buffer is located.

A gremlin in the works, which causes the machine to crash or perform poorly. When you 'submit a bug' you contact a help/support centre and inform them in as much detail as possible the problems you are encountering (bugs are often quite small).

A contraction of World Wide Web Logging, a blog is information posted onto a specially created site by either a single user or on behalf of a company or organisation. Think of it as a sort of online diary, which allows readers to open links, post comments and read archived and related posts.

Like a radio button, typically found on forms or other web pages where the users opinion or preference is being sought. Check boxes allow multiple fields to be accepted in the results data, and will display a tick when selected.

• You have limited bandwidth on your telephone line. 56k modems on analogue lines connect anywhere between 28 - 56 KBPS - compared to ISDN (3 times quicker) or ADSL (10+ times quicker) this is very slow.
• An individual website’s ability to serve its pages quickly: slow computers, pages containing too many graphics or badly created pages will take longer to download.
• The quality of your own computer. Older computers are unable to cope as well as the latest machines.
• The number of people on the World Wide Web at any one time. At peak times, systems slow down because of the amount of stress placed by fulfilling billions of data requests.
  

This is simply a matter of being connected to the Internet.

• Highlight the area you wish to copy using your mouse.
• Press the ‘Control’ key and the ‘C’ key at the same time.
• Put your cursor where you want it moved, and then press the ‘Control’ Key and the ‘V’ key at the same time.

Compressing a file reduces the data in a file without erasing the information. It can therefore be transmitted faster. The standard for compressing files in windows is to Zip them. A Jpeg is a compressed image file, as is a Gif.

Just as you may keep items that you use frequently on top of your desk – equally you can store popular programs on your computer’s Desktop. Essentially the desktop is the computer screen. You can clear it up by deleting items that you do not wish to see there, or clutter it up by adding shortcuts to the programs and features you frequently use. The actual program is not stored on your desktop, only its icon or shortcut, so deleting items from your desktop will not actually remove the programs.

A modem will 'Dial Up' an assigned number of an ISP to connect to the Internet.

Short for Domain Name System. When you are looking for an Internet site, you type in its domain name (e.g.msn.co.uk) which is the public address used to find that site.

When you buy a mouse for your PC, you get the physical item that sits on your desk and you also get some software that is loaded on to your computer. The driver is simply a computer program that links the two together and makes the click of a mouse, click on the screen.

It is a phrase that in reality only means content changing often. If a website changes only month to month, it is hardly dynamic. Truly dynamic sites, like MSN.co.uk, are driven by huge databases, which constantly store, refresh, and update the information within.

The emoticon is a visualisation of a face created by using punctuation marks characters on your keyboard – they are also known as ‘Smilies’. Some find them endearing, others find them frustrating ;-).

Because the Internet is accessible by so many people, sensitive material is ‘encoded’ in order to keep it from prying eyes. Most surfers encounter encryption when paying for goods online. It’s the process of translating the data into a form unreadable by anyone other than a recipient who had the software that will decode the data.

An abbreviation of 'executable'; it is a file that will open and run, or execute, a program on your machine. Be wary of email attachments that contain .exe files as they may contain viruses.