Web Design Glossary Page – Essential Jargon Explained

TPG Design have put together an ever growing and changing web design glossary page.  It’s an organic document so always growing, but if there are any words that aren’t here you’d like explained – let us know!

A

Above the fold

This term was original used in Newspapers and other forms of print to refer the upper part of the front page. This is the area they display big head lines to catch the attention of people, as this was the first thing people would see. In web design it refers to what people see when they first reach a webpage.So anything see with scrolling down is known as ‘Above the Fold’.

Anchor Text

This is the name for the text visible on a web link. For example – THIS TEXT IS ANCHOR TEXT

B

Back End

The back end of a website is the part of the website which is hidden from regular of the website. In this part of the website you are able to control the website by adding things like pages,post and images to your site. Generally you will need account details to access the back end.

Back Links

Back links or some times referred to as pingback are links to your website for other websites.

Below The Fold

This is the opposite of Above the fold. Below the fold is part of a webpage that can’t be seen without scrolling down.

Bread Crumb

This is the hierarchical structure of a website pages which is generally shown near the top of the pages displaying where you are currently located on the site. Here is a example of a bread crumb – Home page > Blog(Section page) > Post(Subsection page).

Browser

A browser is a program used to access and navigate the internet to view websites. There are alot of browsers available but here a the most common. Google Chrome, Internet Explorer , FireFox , Safari and Opera.
browser-773215_640

Bing

Bing is a search engine created and owned by Microsoft.

Bounce Rate

This is the amount of visitors that arrive to a website but navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.

C

Cache/Caching

Caching is when files are save or downloaded by the web browser, so the next time a user visits the site it loads the cache files which makes the web page load faster.

Category/Categories

A category is a way of grouping content such as pages,posts and images into groups of similarity. Example A Food category would have content that relates to food.

Client Side

Client Side refers to functions that can be run from the clients web browser. For example JavaScript is Client Side since it can be run in the browsers with out having to communicate with the server.

CMS/Content Management System

A Content Management System is a web system that allows a user to manage/manipulate easily through a central user interface. CMS have the ability to publish, edit, manage, delete, and structure content generally without the need of having to code it. The most used of these are Word Press, Joomla and Drupal.

Compression

Compression is the act of making something smaller/compact . In web design this refers to making something a smaller in file size. This can be done to almost every file type available on the web.

Content

Content is anything that is going to be used on a website, such as images, text , videos and other forms of media.

CSS

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS gives tells the browsers how to style the html is supposed to be displayed on screen. CSS can be used both Internally + Externally.

D

Database

A database is system designed to hold data(information) so that it can be easily editable.

Deprecated

This is often used in programming to refer to methods/functions that are now obsolete.Deprecated means something that it either no longer available or it should not be used(not safe) as newer function or features has replaced it.

Domain

This refers to the part of a website URL. Example https://www.tpg-design.com/ – tpg-design.co.uk is the domain of the url.

DNS

Stands for Domain Name System. This system allows users to visits websites for by typing in the website url instead of typing the websites IP Address which is alot easier for people to remember than a sites IP Address. For example when you www.google.co.uk the domain name system coverts it to it’s ip which is 173.194.116.127 , go ahead try for your self.

Doctype

Doctype is a term used in HTML to declare to the browsers what document type is being used.

Drupal

Drupal is one of the most popular Content Management System.

E

E-Commerce

E-Commerce stands for Electronic Commerce, it is the buying and selling of products and services done on the Internet (electronic commerce).

Embed

Embed/Embedding is when you place insert/place any type of media onto a webpage. This includes videos, pictures and sounds.

Encryption

Encryption is the process of encoding information, making it harder to simply read without knowledge of how it was encrypted.

External CSS

This when CSS is being used externally from another file on a website.

F

Fav Icon

A Favorite Icon(Fav Icon) is the icon displayed when you bookmark/Favorite a website, also it displays in the tab of the browser.

Font Family

Font Family is used in HTML to tell the browser what font should be displayed on a site. Example ‘font-family: ‘Ubuntu’, sans-serif;’. It is best to put the font you want to use first and then end with a generic font family. This allows the browser pick a similar font in the generic family, if your chosen font is unavailable.

Front end

Front end or Front end design is site development that is focus on the what is see on screen which is the ‘Front End’ of the site. This development is predominantly done using HTML, CSS and JavaScript which focuses on the design and layout of the site.

File Extension

A file extension is three characters seen after the dot at the end of the file name. This tells your computer what type of file/format it is and what software it will need to open the file.
For example – image.jpg the ‘jpg’ at the end of the file tells your computer that this file is a jpeg.

File Format

A file format is used to tell your computer what type of data is being stored in a file. It specifies how the data has been stored along with what program is needed to us the file.

File Size

This determines how much space will be allocated for a file to be stored. The more information stored in a file, the larger it will be. See the table below of the list of file sizes and how they are measured.

SizeEqual to
8 bits1 byte
1024 bytes1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes1 megabyte
1024 megabytes1 gigabyte
1024 gigabytes1 terabyte

Flash

Adobe Flash (previouly called Macromedia Flash and Shockwave Flash) is a multimedia program used to various forms of interactive media. It allows the creation of vector graphics, animation, browser games and other forms of media. It now obsolete and has been replaced with HTML 5.

G

GIF

A GIF is an image file type known for it’s ability of having image animation.

Google

Google is search engine created and owned by Google.

H

htaccess

.htaccess(hypertext access) file is a server configuration file that is place within the directory of a website, which allows you to added certain controls fuctions like : password protecting folders, block certain ips from access and others.

HTML

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. Its the web standard language used to create webpage. HTML uses a variety of tags that the web browser then interprets and displays. The Current version of HTML is HTML 5

HTML Tags

Here are a few simple HTML Tags

TagResult
<strong>Strong
<em>Italic
<U>Underline
<strike>Strike

HTTP

HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, it is the web protocol used on the World Wide Web. It is a form of communication used by your browser to communicate with a server.

HTTPS

HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP. The ‘S’ in HTTPS stands for Secure. It works in the same ways HTTP but it has secure conntection which encrypts data.

HyperLink

A Hyper Link is a element used to link to take you from place to another. It could be used to take you to a different page on a site or to another site entirely. It is one of the most common ways to surf the internet.

I

Iframe

A Iframe is a HTML tag used to embed a html page within a html page. Now the Iframe tag is now deprecated in HTML 5.

Inline CSS

Inline CSS is CSS that is directly applied with a HTML tag. Example – <p style=”color:red;” > TEXT </p > . This example is directly applying red to the text.

Internet Explorer

Is a internet browser created by Microsoft.

IP Address

An IP Address is a unique series numbers given to every devices that can connect to a network. This includes computers and printers.

J

JavaScript

JavaScript is a front end programming language, that

Joomla

Joomla is one of the most popular Content Management System.

K

Keyword

A keyword is a word or phrase people search for using Search Engines.

L

Lamp

Lamp is a combined package of software used as a complete web solution. It combines Linux((L)) operating system, the Apache(A) HTTP Server, the MySQL(M) relational database management system (RDBMS), and the PHP(P) programming language.

Landing page

A landing page is a web page that is used as the entry point for a website or a particular section of a website.

M

Meta Data

Metadata is data about data. Its is used to describe other data.

Meta Tags

There are four types meta tags:

    • Meta Keywords Attribute – A series of keywords you deem relevant to the page in question.
    • Title Tag – This is the text you’ll see at the top of your browser. Search engines view this text as the “title” of your page.
    • Meta Description Attribute – A brief description of the page.
    • Meta Robots Attribute – An indication to search engine crawlers (robots or “bots”) as to what they should do with the page.

Minify

Minify or Minifcation is a form of compression used on HTML, CSS and JavaScript to compression the code and remove any unneeded characters, such as white space and comments. It helps makes files smaller and faster to run but harder to read, as all the text is all bunched together.

Mircosoft Edge

Edge is the latest version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

N

Network

A network is group of computers and systems that are connected together which allow them to communicate and share information .

O

Open Source

Open Source refers to the licence on a certain software or product. Open Source software is for general public for use and/or modification. This allows the product to be developed as collaborative effort.

Permalinks

Permalinks are permanent static hyperlink to a web page.

Plug-in

A Plug-in refers to plug-in software that is used to add additional features and functionality to a another another piece of software. “Plugins extend and expand the functionality of WordPress. 43,288 plugins with 1,194,161,702” – WordPress.org

PHP

PHP stands for PHP Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP is a server-side programming language used in web development. Its a very common programming language used in open source software

Q

QA

QA or Quality Assurance & Testing refers to testing a product to find any mistakes, defects or issues. This is often done before a product is released to the public to avoid/ fix as much problems.

QR Codes

QR Codes are a type of barcode that is need to be scanned to see what information it contains.QR codes are becoming a very popular form of barcode used in the IT industry. This is largely due to smart phones being able to easily scan QR code also how it easy it the generate QR code.


Scanning the QR code above will take you English Wikipedia Mobile page.

R

RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is the general web standard for a web feed. RSS feeds are constantly being updated as a site adds new content. If you subscribe to a RSS feed you wont have to visist the site to see if it has any new updates as your computer will constantly check if the feed has been updated.
Here is our sites RSS – https://www.tpg-design.com/feed/

Responsive

Responsive used in web design refers to how a website reacts are certain screen/display size such a desk top computer, tablet or mobile. Here is a example of a responsive website.
fl-nutrition
A resopnsive site will adapt it content and layout so that it fits neatly on the device. Having a responsive site now a requirement in the web design as more people are viewing website with mobile devices.

Script

A script is a set of instructions written using a scripting language such as PHP.

Server-Side

Server-Side refers to functions that are performed by the server in a client–server.

Search Engine

A Search Engine is a web system used to search the internet using keywords and phrases to find related information. Google, Bing and Yahoo are the most popular Search Engines.

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, meaning that you optimise your site content and layout to help improve search ranking and site traffic.

Safari

Safari is the web browser created by Apple.

U

URL

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator which is also know as a web address. Here is our site URL – https://www.tpg-design.com/

V

Vistors

Vistors is the term used for someone who ‘visits’ your website.

Vector

Vector graphics refers to an image that is mathematically created so that it can be enlarged or shrunk to any size without losing any fidelity. It also makes it possible to edit each part separately. So you can easily change the shape, colour and size.

W

Web Feed

A Web Feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content, most feed are generated in XML. RSS is the most popular web feed.

W3C – Web Standards

“The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.” – W3C About

XML

Extensible Markup Language(XML) is a format that is used to store information which can is both human-readable and machine-readable.

Y

Yahoo

Yahoo is a search engine created by Yahoo.

Z

Zip

A Zip is a form of compression. It can contain one or more files which compresses them into a single zip file.

Z-index

Z-index is a CSS tag used to control the layers of html which allows items to stack.