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Action Script

ActionScript is a scripting language based on ECMAScript, primarily used to develop software for the Adobe Flash Player.

Applications developed using Adobe Flash or Adobe Flex will often use ActionScript for runtime manipulation of data and content. Other platforms, such as ColdFusion also support scripting with the ActionScript language.

ActionScript first appeared in its current syntax with the release of Flash 5, which was the first thoroughly programmable version of Flash. This ActionScript release was named ActionScript 1.0. Flash 6 (MX) then further broadened the utility of the programming environment by adding a number of built-in functions and allowing better programmatic control of movie elements. Flash 7 (MX 2004) introduced ActionScript 2.0, which added strong typing and class-based programming features such as explicit class declarations, inheritance, interfaces, and Strict Data Typing. ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0 share the same compiled form within Flash SWFs.

Administrative contact

The contact responsible for any administrative issues pertaining to the domain-name account. Any administrative changes to the domain must be approved by the administrative contact. The registrar will use this contact for any non-technical questions it may have regarding the domain name.

.aero

.aero (aeroplane) is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System. It is the first gTLD based on a single industry, and is reserved for aviation-related businesses. It was created in 2002 and is operated by SITA. There is also a Dot Aero Council created and controlled by SITA, which SITA supposedly consults on .aero policies.

The .aero domain is reserved for companies, organizations, associations, government agencies, and individuals in aviation and related industries.

Currently, two-letter codes under .aero are reserved for airlines according to the IATA Airline Designators, while three-letter codes are reserved for airports, according to the IATA airport codes.

Registrations are processed via accredited registrars.

The .aero domain name was approved for a 5-year term expiring December 17, 2006 as part of a "proof of concept" of new TLD's. SITA has applied for renewal of this agreement. That application is pending.

AJAX (Programming)

Ajax, shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, is a web development technique for creating interactive web applications. The intent is to make web pages feel more responsive by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so that the entire web page does not have to be reloaded each time the user requests a change. This is meant to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, and usability.

The Ajax technique uses a combination of:

• XHTML (or HTML) and CSS, for marking up and styling information.
• The DOM accessed with a client-side scripting language, especially ECMAScript implementations such as JavaScript and JScript, to dynamically display and interact with the information presented.
• The XMLHttpRequest object is used to exchange data asynchronously with the web server. In some Ajax frameworks and in certain situations, an IFrame object is used instead of the XMLHttpRequest object to exchange data with the web server, and in other implementations, dynamically added script, /script tags may be used.
• XML is sometimes used as the format for transferring data between the server and client, although any format will work, including preformatted HTML, plain text, JSON and even EBML. These files may be created dynamically by some form of server-side scripting.

Like DHTML, LAMP and SPA, Ajax is not a technology in itself, but a term that refers to the use of a group of technologies.

Billing Contact

The contact responsible for all billing information relating to the domain name. This person will also receive any invoices, charges or billing questions related to the domain name.

.biz

.biz is a generic top-level domain (TLD) intended for domains to be used by businesses; the name is a phonetic spelling of the first syllable of "business." It was created to relieve some of the demand for the good domain names available in the .com top-level domain, and to provide an alternative to businesses whose preferred .com domain name had already been registered by another party. There are no specific legal or geographic qualifications to register a .biz domain name, except that it must be for "bona fide business or commercial use" (i.e. no personal or "soap box" sites, and no cybersquatting), and the usual legal remedies for trademark infringement are applicable. It was created in 2001 along with several others as the first batch of new gTLDs approved by ICANN following the boom in interest in the internet in the 1990s. It is administered by Neulevel.

In contrast to the sunrise period of .info, .biz did not grant trademark owners first chance at registration, but instead used a procedure whereby they could file intellectual property claims in advance and then challenge any eventual registrant through a policy named "STOP" (Startup Trademark Opposition Policy). A number of domains were successfully obtained by trademark owners from other registrants through this policy; some of the more controversial cases, where generic words were taken over based on trademark claims in a process deemed "reverse hijacking" by critics, included that of paint.biz and canadian.biz, the latter of which was reversed by a court decision.

Although intended to be a restricted domain aimed at businesses, in reality the .biz domain is run as an unrestricted domain, available to anyone for any use. No enforcement mechanisms are planned or intended, at least directly by the registry or registrars, though it is in theory possible for third parties to challenge noncompliant registrations through a dispute resolution policy.

Although many .biz registrations have taken place (second only to .info among the new TLDs), critics note that it still has low name recognition with the general public, little use by major reputable businesses, and much use in spam, scams, and porn.

Registrations are processed via accredited registrars.

Browser (Web Browser)

A web browser is a software application that enables a user to display and interact with text, images, and other information typically located on a web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network. Text and images on a web page can contain hyperlinks to other web pages at the same or different website. Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many web pages at many websites by traversing these links. Web browsers format HTML information for display, so the appearance of a web page may differ between browsers.

Some of the web browsers available for personal computers include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Netscape, and Opera in order of descending popularity (as of August 2006). Web browsers are the most commonly used type of HTTP user agent. Although browsers are typically used to access the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by web servers in private networks or content in file systems.

.co

.co is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Colombia. It is administered by Los Andes University.

"co" is also frequently used as a second-level domain within other country-code domains, in which registrants (usually companies) may register second-level domains of the form .co.xx, where xx is the ccTLD. Israel (.co.il), United Kingdom (.co.uk), New Zealand (.co.nz), Japan (.co.jp), South Korea (.co.kr) and Cook Islands (.co.ck) are all examples. Some other country codes use "com" instead, such as Australia (.com.au) and Mexico (.com.mx); this includes .co itself, which uses .com.co.

Around the year 2000 when many country-code domains were being remarketed as worldwide generic domains, there was some talk of allowing second-level registrations in .co for registrants worldwide in order to capitalize on the similarity of this name to .com and to the above-noted use of "co" as a second-level domain in other country codes. However, a Court order prohibited Andes University from doing so, and registration remains limited to third-level domains and to Colombian registrants.

.com

.com (commercial) is a generic top-level domain (gTLD) used on the Internet's Domain Name System. It was one of the original top-level domains, established in January 1985, and has grown to be the largest TLD in use. It is currently operated by VeriSign. It is consistently pronounced as a word, dot-com, and has entered the common language this way.

Although .com domains are officially intended to designate commercial entities (others such as government agencies or educational institutions have different top-level domains assigned to them), there has been no restriction on who can register .com domains since the mid-1990s. The opening of the .com registry to the public coincided with the commercialization and popularization of the Internet, and .com quickly became the most common top-level domain for websites. Many companies which flourished in the period between 1997-2001 (the time known as the "dot-com bubble") went so far as to incorporate .com into the company name; these became known as dot-coms or dot-com companies. The introduction of .biz in 2001, which is restricted to businesses, has had little impact on the popularity of .com.

Although companies anywhere in the world can register .com domains, many countries have a second-level domain with a similar purpose under their own ccTLD. Such second-level domains are usually of the form .com.xx or .co.xx, where xx is the ccTLD. Argentina (.com.ar), Japan (.co.jp), New Zealand (.co.nz), India (.com.in), the People's Republic of China (.com.cn), and the United Kingdom (.co.uk) are all examples.

Many noncommercial sites, such as those of nonprofit organizations or governments, use .com addresses. Some consider this to be contrary to the domain's original purpose and might say that a .org, .gov, or other more specific TLD might be more appropriate for such sites. However, many organizations prefer the recognizability of a .com domain to a less familiar one. As well, the original purposes of many of the top level domains have become irrelevant without restrictions on registrations.

Registrations are processed via registrars accredited by ICANN; internationalized domain names are also accepted.

.coop

.coop is a generic top-level domain intended for the use of cooperatives. It was a part of ICANN's announcement in late 2000 of a phased release of seven new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) intended in part to take the pressure off the overcrowded .com domain. It was backed by a coalition of interest groups, was developed by Poptel in the UK and became operational on January 30, 2002.

.coop is sponsored top-level domain and restricted to those who meet specified criteria: cooperative-type organizations or a wholly owned subsidiary. Its sponsor is DotCooperation LLC (also known as dotCoop), which was created as a subsidiary of the American NCBA (National Cooperative Business Association) to operate the TLD.

Registrations are processed via accredited registrars.

Country-code top-level domain (ccTLD)

A country code top-level domain ccTLD is a top-level domain used and reserved for a country or a dependent territory. These are two letters long, and most of them correspond to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes.

There are over 243 ccTLDs. Most ccTLDs correspond to the two-letter ISO 3166-1 country codes, but there are several differences, explained below. Each country appoints managers for its ccTLD and sets the rules for allocating domains. Some countries allow anyone in the world to acquire a domain in their ccTLD, for example Austria (at) and Cocos (Keeling) Islands (cc). Other countries or dependent territories allow only citizens to acquire a domain in their ccTLD, for example Canada (ca).

DNS

On the Internet, the domain name system (DNS) stores and associates many types of information with domain names; most importantly, it translates domain names (computer hostnames) to IP addresses. It also lists mail exchange servers accepting e-mail for each domain. In providing a worldwide keyword-based redirection service, DNS is an essential component of contemporary Internet use.

Useful for several reasons, the DNS pre-eminently makes it possible to attach easy-to-remember domain names (such as "wikipedia.org") to hard-to-remember IP addresses (such as 66.230.200.100). People take advantage of this when they recite URLs and e-mail addresses. In a subsidiary function, the domain name system makes it possible for people to assign authoritative names without needing to communicate with a central registrar each time.

Document Object Model (DOM)

Document Object Model (DOM) is a platform- and language-independent standard object model for representing HTML or XML and related formats. Strictly speaking, one should refer to "the DOM", but in practice, the "the" article is usually dropped.

Because DOM supports navigation in any direction (e.g., parent and previous sibling) and allows for arbitrary modifications, an implementation must at least buffer the document that has been read so far (or some parsed form of it). Hence DOM is likely to be best suited for applications where the document must be accessed repeatedly or out of sequence order. If the application is strictly sequential and one-pass, the SAX model is likely to be faster and use less memory.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) developed the W3C Document Object Model[1] in response to the development of various proprietary models for HTML, particularly those used in web browsers. The existing vendor-specific interfaces were dubbed intermediate DOMs.

W3C began development in the mid-1990's, by October 1998 the first specification of DOM "DOM 1" was released. Although the W3C never produced a specification DOM 0 was a partially documented model, and included in the specification of HTML 4. DOM 2 was issued in November 2000, with specifics on the style sheet object model and style information manipulation. DOM 3 was released in April 2004 and is the current release of DOM.

The W3C DOM specifications are divided into levels, each of which contains required and optional modules. To claim to support a level, an application must implement all the requirements of the claimed level and the levels below it. An application may also support vendor-specific extensions which don't conflict with the W3C standards. As of 2005, Level 1, Level 2, and some modules of Level 3 are W3C Recommendations which means they have reached their final form.

Levels

Level 0

The application supports an intermediate DOM, which existed before the creation of DOM Level 1. Examples include the DHTML Object Model or the Netscape intermediate DOM. Level 0 is not a formal specification published by the W3C but rather a shorthand that refers to what existed before the standardization process.

Level 1

Navigation of DOM (HTML and XML) document (tree structure) and content manipulation (includes adding elements). HTML-specific elements are included as well.

Level 2

XML namespace support, filtered views and events.

Level 3

Consists of 6 different specifications:

1. DOM Level 3 Core;
2. DOM Level 3 Load and Save;
3. DOM Level 3 XPath;
4. DOM Level 3 Views and Formatting;
5. DOM Level 3 Requirements; and
6. DOM Level 3 Validation, which further enhances the DOM

Use in web browsers

DOM Inspector inspecting Wikipedia's main page. Since each web browser used to exclusively support its own intermediate DOM, interoperability problems were numerous. In order to be cross-browser compatible, that is, support multiple browsers, large parts of Dynamic HTML code had to be rewritten for each browser to be supported. A common DOM promised to greatly simplify the development of complex web applications.

W3C DOM Level 1 has been a recommendation since 1 October 1998. The standardization effort did not bring forth an immediate change, since non-conformant browsers such as Internet Explorer 4.x and Netscape 4.x were still widely used in 2000. As of 2005, large parts of W3C DOM are well-supported by common JavaScript-enabled web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer (version 5 (1999) and version 6 (2001)), Gecko-based browsers (like Mozilla and Firefox), Opera, Konqueror, and Safari. Web developers are starting to mostly or solely rely on W3C DOM, since it allows browser compatibility with a large audience.

The article Comparison of layout engines (DOM) shows which methods and attributes may be used safely given certain browser requirements.

Domain name

The term domain name has multiple related meanings:

• A name that is entered into a computer (e.g. as part of a Web site or other URL, or an e-mail address). These names are technically hostnames.
• The product that Domain name registrars provide to their customers. These names are often called registered domain names.
• A name which is not a hostname used for other purposes in the Domain Name System (DNS), for example the special names used by Session Initiation Protocol (VoIP) or DomainKeys.

They are sometimes colloquially (and incorrectly) referred to by marketers as "web addresses" and "domain name" and "host name" are often used interchangably.

This article will primarily discuss registered domain names. See the Domain Name System article for technical discussions about general domain names and the hostname article for further information about the most common type of domain name.

The following example illustrates the difference between a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and a domain name:

• URL: http://www.example.net/index.html
• Domain name: www.example.net
• Registered domain name: example.net

Dynamic HTML (DHTML)

Dynamic HTML or DHTML is a term used for a collection of technologies, used together to create interactive and animated web sites by using a combination of static markup language (such as HTML), a client-side scripting language (such as JavaScript), the presentation definition language (Cascading Style Sheets), and the Document Object Model.

Though the term "dynamic web page" can refer to any specific web page that is generated differently for each user, load occurrence, or per specific variable values, those pages with this type of "dynamic" content should not be confused for DHTML. Web pages with this type of dynamic content, though still dynamic web pages, are a result of either server-side scripting (such as PHP or Perl), which generates unique content prior to sending the page to the visitor; or as a result of client-side scripting that is run immediately upon page load, before the static page content is visually generated. DHTML, as described above, is a term specifically reserved for those pages which utilize client-side scripting (such as JavaScript) to effect changes in variables of the presentation definition language (such as CSS), which in turn will affect the look and function of otherwise "static" HTML page content, after the page has been fully loaded and during the viewing process. In effect, the dynamic characteristic of DHTML is found in how it acts and functions as each page is being viewed, not in its ability to generate a unique page with each specific page load.

Dynamic HTML is often used to make rollover or drop-down buttons on a web page. A less common use is to use DHTML to create browser based action games. During the late 1990s and early 2000s a number of game creators used DHTML to create games. Differences between browsers made this a difficult task. Many different techniques had to be implemented in code to enable the games to work across multiple platforms. Recently browsers have been converging towards the web standards, which has made the design of DHTML games more viable. Game designers such as Brent Silby (of Def-Logic) continue to create games with DHTML. The resulting games can be played on all major browsers and they can also be ported to Widgets for Mac OSX and Gadgets for Windows Vista, which are based on DHTML code.

The term has fallen out of use in recent years, as DHTML scripts often tended to not work well between various web browsers. Newer techniques, such as unobtrusive JavaScript coding, have led to similar results, but in an accessible, standards-compliant way.

Some disadvantages of DHTML are that it is difficult to develop and debug due to varying degrees of support among web browsers of the aforementioned technologies and that the variety of screen sizes means the end look can only be fine-tuned on a limited number of browser and screen-size combinations. Development for relatively recent browsers, such as Internet Explorer 5.0+, Netscape 6.0+, and Opera 7.0+, is aided by a shared Document Object Model.

.edu

Generic, restricted top-level domain. Available exclusively to degree-granting educational institutions of higher education that are accredited by one of the six U.S. regional accrediting agencies.

Extension

Top-level domain.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol. A standard Internet protocol, FTP is the simplest way to exchange files between computers on the Internet. FTP is commonly used to transfer Web page files from their creator to the computer that acts as their server for everyone on the Internet. As well, FTP is often used to download programs and other files to your computer from other servers. FTP transfers are made via an FTP software program such as WS_FTP or CuteFTP.

Fully-qualified domain name

A fully-qualified domain name (FQDN) is that portion of an Internet Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that fully identifies the server program that an Internet request is addressed to. The FQDN includes the top-level domain name, the second-level domain name and any other levels. An FQDN should be sufficient to determine a unique Internet address for any host on the Internet. The prefix "http://" added to the fully-qualified domain name completes the URL.

Generic top-level domain (gTLD)

A generic top-level domain (gTLD) is a top-level domain used (at least in theory) by a particular class of organization. These are three or more letters long, and are named for the type of organization that they represent (for example, .com for commercial organizations). The following gTLDs currently exist (as does .arpa, which is sometimes considered a gTLD):

• .aero - for the air transport industry
• .biz - for business use
• .cat - for Catalan language/culture
• .com - for commercial organizations, but unrestricted
• .coop - for cooperatives
• .edu - for post-secondary educational establishments
• .gov - for governments and their agencies in the United States
• .info - for informational sites, but unrestricted
• .int - for international organizations established by treaty
• .jobs - for employment-related sites
• .mil - for the US military
• .mobi - for sites catering to mobile devices
• .museum - for museums
• .name - for families and individuals
• .net - originally for network infrastructures, now unrestricted
• .org - originally for organizations not clearly falling within the other gTLDs, now unrestricted
• .pro - for certain professions
• .travel - for travel agents, airlines, hoteliers, tourism bureaus, etc.

The following gTLDs are in the process of being approved, and may be added to the root nameservers in the near future:

• .asia - for the Asian community
• .post - for postal services
• .tel - for services involving connections between the telephone network and the Internet
• .geo - for geographically related sites

.gov

Restricted, generic top-level domain. Available exclusively for the United States Government.

Host server

See name server

HTML

HTML, short for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for the creation of web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document — by denoting certain text as headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on — and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded images, and other objects. HTML is written in the form of labels, created by greater-than signs (>) and less-than signs (<). HTML can also describe, to some degree, the appearance and semantics of a document, and can include embedded scripting language code which can affect the behavior of web browsers and other HTML processors.

HTML is also often used to refer to content of the MIME type text/html or even more broadly as a generic term for HTML whether in its XML-descended form (such as XHTML 1.0 and later) or its form descended directly from SGML (such as HTML 4.01 and earlier).

HTTP

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a method used to transfer or convey information on the World Wide Web. Its original purpose was to provide a way to publish and retrieve HTML pages.

Development of HTTP was coordinated by the World Wide Web Consortium and the Internet Engineering Task Force, culminating in the publication of a series of RFCs, most notably RFC 2616 (1999), which defines HTTP/1.1, the version of HTTP in common use today.

HTTP is a request/response protocol between clients and servers. The originating client, such as a web browser, spider, or other end-user tool, is referred to as the user agent. The destination server, which stores or creates resources such as HTML files and images, is called the origin server. In between the user agent and origin server may be several intermediaries, such as proxies, gateways, and tunnels.

An HTTP client initiates a request by establishing a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) connection to a particular port on a remote host (port 80 by default; see List of TCP and UDP port numbers). An HTTP server listening on that port waits for the client to send a request message.

Upon receiving the request, the server sends back a status line, such as "HTTP/1.1 200 OK", and a message of its own, the body of which is perhaps the requested file, an error message, or some other information.

Resources to be accessed by HTTP are identified using Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) (or, more specifically, URLs) using the http: or https URI schemes.

ICANN

ICANN (pronounced "I can") is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Headquartered in Marina Del Rey, California, ICANN is a California non-profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. Government by other organizations, notably IANA.

The tasks of ICANN include managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses. To date, much of its work has concerned the introduction of new generic top-level domains. The technical work of ICANN is referred to as the IANA function; the rest of ICANN is mostly concerned with defining policy.

On September 29, 2006, ICANN signed a new agreement with the United States Department of Commerce (DOC) that is a step forward toward the full management of the Internet's system of centrally coordinated identifiers through the multi-stakeholder model of consultation that ICANN represents.

Paul Twomey is the President/CEO of ICANN, since March 27, 2003. Internet inventor Vint Cerf is currently Chairman of the ICANN Board of Trustees.

.info

Generic top-level domain. Unrestricted, but generally used for informative purposes.

InterNIC

A service established to provide the public information regarding Internet domain name registration services. InterNIC is a registered service mark of the U.S. Department of Commerce. It is licensed to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which operates the www.internic.net site.

IP address

The 32-bit numeric identification number that refers to a specific machine on the Internet.

ISP

Internet service provider. An ISP is a company that provides individuals and other companies access to the Internet and other related services such as Web site building and virtual hosting.

Java (Programming Language)

Java is an object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s. Java applications are compiled to bytecode, which at runtime is either interpreted or compiled to native machine code for execution.

The language itself derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities. JavaScript, a scripting language, shares a similar name and has similar syntax, but is not directly related to Java.

Sun Microsystems provides a GNU General Public License implementation of a Java compiler and Java virtual machine, in compliance with the specifications of the Java Community Process, although the class library that is required to run Java programs is not free software.

JavaScript

JavaScript is the name of Netscape Communications Corporation's and now the Mozilla Foundation's implementation of the ECMAScript standard, a scripting language based on the concept of prototype-based programming. The language is best known for its use in websites (as client-side JavaScript), but is also used to enable scripting access to objects embedded in other applications.

Despite the name, JavaScript is only distantly related to the Java programming language, the main similarity being their common debt to the C syntax. Semantically, JavaScript syntax has far more in common with the Self programming language.

JavaScript is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. It was used under license for technology invented and implemented by Netscape Communications and current entities such as the Mozilla Foundation.

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system family that uses the Linux kernel. A Linux system which includes system utilities and libraries from the GNU Project is sometimes referred to as GNU/Linux.

Most development from 1984 to 1991 was done by the GNU project. After 1991, the Linux kernel developers began working on it as well as other enthusiasts. From the late-90s onward Linux also gained the support of corporations such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and Novell.

Linux is a prominent example of free software and of open source development. Its underlying source code is available for anyone to use, modify, and redistribute freely, and in some instances the entire operating system consists of free/open source software.

.mil

Generic top-level domain operated exclusively by the United States Military.

.museum

Generic top-level domain reserved for museums.

.name

Generic top-level domain reserved exclusively for individuals.

Name server

The computer that organizes domain names to correspond to their IP addresses. Also called a host.

.net

Generic top-level domain. Unrestricted, but primarily used by Internet service providers (ISPs).

.org

Generic top-level domain. Unrestricted, but mainly used by nonprofit organizations.

Parking a domain

When a registered domain is parked, the domain is reserved but remains inactive. A temporary Web page is displayed until the site is unparked — or activated. Domain name parking is often used by registrants who do not yet have a hosting provider or who haven't yet built a site for the domain.

Perl (Programming Language)

Perl is a dynamic programming language created by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. Perl borrows features from a variety of other languages including C, shell scripting (sh), AWK, sed and Lisp.

Structurally, Perl is based on the brace-delimited block style of AWK and C, and was widely adopted for its strengths in string processing, and lack of the arbitrary limitations of many scripting languages at the time.

PHP

PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a reflective programming language originally designed for producing dynamic Web pages and remote application software. PHP is used mainly in server-side scripting, but can be used from a command line interface or in standalone graphical applications. Textual User Interfaces can also be created using ncurses.

The sole implementation is produced by The PHP Group and released under the PHP License. It is considered to be free software by the Free Software Foundation. This implementation serves to define a de facto standard for PHP, as there is no formal specification.

PHP was written as a set of CGI binaries in the C programming language by the Danish/Greenlandic programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1994, to replace a small set of Perl scripts he had been using to maintain his personal homepage. Lerdorf initially created PHP to display his resumé and to collect certain data, such as how much traffic his page was receiving. "Personal Home Page Tools" was publicly released on June 8, 1995 after Lerdorf combined it with his own Form Interpreter to create PHP/FI (this release is considered PHP version 2).

Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, two Israeli developers at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, rewrote the parser in 1997 and formed the base of PHP 3, changing the language's name to the recursive initialism "PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor". The development team officially released PHP/FI 2 in November 1997 after months of beta testing. Public testing of PHP 3 began immediately and the official launch came in June 1998. Suraski and Gutmans then started a new rewrite of PHP's core, producing the Zend Engine in 1999. They also founded Zend Technologies in Ramat Gan, Israel, which actively manages the development of PHP.

In May 2000, PHP 4, powered by the Zend Engine 1.0, was released. The latest version as of December 2006 is 4.4.4. PHP 4 is currently still supported by security updates for those applications that require it.

On July 13, 2004, PHP 5 was released powered by the new Zend Engine II. PHP 5 included new features such as:

• Robust support for Object-Oriented Programming
• The PHP Data Objects extension, which defines a lightweight and consistent interface for accessing databases
• Performance enhancements taking advantage of the new engine
• Better support for MySQL through a completely rewritten extension
• Embedded support for SQLite
• Integrated SOAP support
• Data iterators
• Error handling through Exceptions
• PHP 5.2.1 was released in February 2007

.pro

Soon-to-be-activated generic top-level domain. Once established, the domain will be available exclusively for certified professionals, such as accountants, lawyers and physicians.

Quirks Mode

Quirks mode refers to a technique used by some web browsers to maintain backwards compatibility with web pages designed for older browsers.

The structure and appearance of a web page are described by a combination of two standardized languages: HTML, a markup language designed for web use, describes the structure and content of the page, and CSS, a generalized stylesheet language, specifies how the page should be rendered in various media (visual styles for screen display, print styles to use when printing the page, aural styles to use when the page is read aloud by a screen reader, etc.). However, most older web browsers either did not fully implement the specifications for these languages or were developed prior to the finalization of the specifications (Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5.1 for the Macintosh platform, released in 2001, was the first major web browser with full support for CSS Level 1, for example. As a result, many older web pages were constructed to rely upon the older browsers' incomplete or incorrect implementations, and will only render as intended when handled by such a browser.

Support for standardized HTML and CSS in major web browsers has improved significantly, but the large body of legacy documents which rely on the quirks of older browsers represents an obstacle for browser developers, who wish to improve their support for standardized HTML and CSS, but also wish to maintain backward compatibility with older, non-standardized pages. Additionally, many new web pages continue to be created in the older fashion, since the compatibility workarounds introduced by browser developers mean that an understanding of standardized methods is not strictly necessary.

To maintain compatibility with the greatest possible number of web pages, modern web browsers are generally developed with multiple rendering modes: in "standards mode" pages are rendered according to the HTML and CSS specifications, while in "quirks mode" attempts are made to emulate the behavior of older browsers. Some browsers (those based on Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine, for example) also use an "almost standards" mode which attempts to compromise between the two, emulating some older quirks while mostly conforming to the specifications.

Registrant

The entity, organization or individual that registers a domain name. Once the domain name is registered, the registrant can use the domain name for the period of time the domain is registered.

Registrar

A registrar is an entity that registers domain names with the registry on behalf of registrants. The registrar is the entity which submits and maintains the registrants domain name with the registry database. Registrants are required to use a registrar to register a domain name.

Registration fee

The charge for registering a domain name. The registration fee covers the cost of processing the initial registration and maintaining the domain name record. Most top-level domain names can be registered for up to 10 years.

Registry

A central registry responsible for delegating Internet addresses, such as domain names, and keeping a record of those addresses and the information associated with their individual top-level domains.

Renewal of domain name

To continue the registration of the domain name after the original expiration date.

Restricted top-level domain name (rTLD)

A top-level domain, such as .biz, .gov, .museum, .name, and .pro, that is only available to registrants who meet certain criteria.

Root

The top of the domain name system hierarchy. Often referred to as the "dot."

Ruby (Programming Language)

Ruby is a reflective, dynamic, object-oriented programming language. It combines syntax inspired by Perl with Smalltalk-like object-oriented features, and also shares some features with Python, Lisp, Dylan and CLU. Ruby is a single-pass interpreted language. Its main implementation is free software.

The language was created by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, who started working on Ruby on February 24, 1993, and released it to the public in 1995. "Ruby" was named after a colleague's birthstone. As of October 2006, the latest stable version is 1.8.5. Ruby 1.9 (with some major changes) is also in development. Performance differences between the current Ruby implementation and other more entrenched programming languages has lead to the development of several virtual machines for Ruby. These include JRuby, an attempt to port Ruby to the Java platform, and Rubinius, an interpreter modelled after self-hosting Smalltalk virtual machines. The main developers have thrown their weight behind the virtual machine provided by the YARV project, which was merged into the Ruby source tree on 31 December 2006, and will be released as Ruby 2.0.

Second-level domain (SLD)

In the domain name system (DNS), the next-highest level of the hierarchy underneath the top-level domain. Located immediately to the left of the dot (" . "), the second-level domain is the "readable" part of the domain name. The second-level domain often refers to the organization or entity associated with the IP address. For example, in: yourdomain.com, "yourdomain" is a second-level domain.

Server

In general, a server is a computer or software package that provides services to other computer programs in the same or other computers. The term can refer to a particular piece of software, such as a World Wide Web server, or to the machine on which the software is running. A single server machine can have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different servers to clients on the network.

Technical contact

The contact responsible for providing technical domain name information, such as the name server. The registrar will contact the technical contact with any questions of a technical nature.

Third-level domain

In the domain name system (DNS), third level domains are the next-highest level of the hierarchy underneath the second level domains. In a domain name, it is that portion of the domain name that appears two segments to the left of the top-level domain. For example, the "sterling" in "sterling.va.us." In the case of the domain name "www.yourdomain.net", the third level domain is "www."

Top-level domain (TLD)

A top-level domain (TLD) is the last part of an Internet domain name; that is, the letters which follow the final dot of any domain name. For example, in the domain name www.website.com, the top-level domain is com (or COM, as domain names are not case-sensitive).

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) currently classifies top-level domains into three types:

• country code top-level domains (ccTLD): Used by a country or a dependent territory. It is two letters long, for example jp for Japan.
• generic top-level domains (gTLD): Used (at least in theory) by a particular class of organizations (for example, com for commercial organizations). It is three or more letters long. Most gTLDs are available for use worldwide, but for historical reasons mil (military) and gov (governmental) are restricted to use by the respective U.S. authorities. gTLDs are subclassified into sponsored top-level domains (sTLD), e.g. .aero, .coop and .museum, and unsponsored top-level domains (uTLD), e.g. .biz, .info, .name and .pro.
• infrastructure top-level domains: The top-level domain arpa is the only confirmed one. Root has been known to exist without reason.

Transfer

Most domain names can be sold to another individual or organization or the name of a company. Most registrars require a process by which permission from the old owner to hand over control to the new owner is authorized. The procedure for change of ownership is known as a transfer.

Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy

The Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) is a process established by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for the resolution of disputes regarding the registration of internet domain names. The UDRP policy currently applies to all .biz, .com, .info, .name, .net, and .org top-level domains, and some country code top-level domains.

When a registrant chooses a domain name, he or she must “represent and warrant,†among other things, that registering the name “will not infringe upon or otherwise violate the rights of any third party,†and agree to participate in an arbitration-like proceeding should any third party assert a claim.

In a UDRP proceeding, the panel will consider factors such as, whether the defendant registrant’s domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark in which the complainant has rights; whether the defendant has no rights or legitimate interests in a name; and whether the defendant registered and is using the name in bad faith. Trademark owners sometimes found it difficult to prove registration and use of a disputed domain name in bad faith, and therefore in other dispute resolution policies this last requirement has been relaxed to "or" (e.g. in the dispute resolution policies applicable to .us or .eu domain names).

The goal of the UDRP was to create a streamlined process for resolving such disputes, which would be quicker and cheaper than a standard legal challenge. However, a party dissatisfied by a UDRP decision may challenge the decision in court.

The UDRP process has already been used in a number of well-known cases, such as Madonna Ciccone, p/k/a Madonna v. Dan Parisi and "Madonna.com". There the panel found against the defendant registrant based on all three of the above factors, and ordered the domain name turned over to Madonna.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a technical, Web-related term used in two distinct meanings:

• in popular usage, it is a widespread synonym for Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) — many popular and technical texts will use the term "URL" when referring to URI;
• strictly, the idea of a uniform syntax for global identifiers of network-retrievable documents was the core idea of the World Wide Web. In the early times, these identifiers were variously called "document names", "Web addresses" and "Uniform Resource Locators". These names were misleading, however, because not all identifiers were locators, and even for those that were, this was not their defining characteristic. Nevertheless, by the time the RFC 1630 formally defined the term "URI" as a generic term best suited to the concept, the term "URL" had gained widespread popularity, which has continued to this day.

.us

.US is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the United States of America, established in 1985. Registrants of .us domains must be United States citizens, residents, or organizations, or a foreign entity with a presence in the United States. Most registrants in the country have registered for .com, .net, .org and other gTLDs, rather than .us, which has traditionally primarily been used by many state and local governments (although any entity had the option of registering a .us domain). In particular, the domains .gov and .mil have been reserved for US usage, and .edu is mostly limited to US entities (although a small number of non-United States educational institutions have managed to register there).

The original administrator of .us was Jon Postel of the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California. He administrated .us under a sub-contract USC/ISI had from SRI International (who held the .us and the Generic top-level domains contract with the United States Department of Defense) and later Network Solutions (who held the .us and the Generic top-level domains contract with the National Science Foundation.) Registrants could only register third-level domains or higher in a geographic and organizational hierarchy. The vast majority of the geographic sub-domains in .us were delegated to various private entities and .us registrants would register with the delegated administrator for the level they wished to register in (not directly with the .us administrator.) However, from April 2002, second-level domains became available for registration. The .us domain is currently administered by NeuStar Inc. under a United States Department of Commerce contract.

Since the official release of .us as a second-level domain, it has been adopted and developed by a number of private corporations and local citizenry. The .us country code is no longer in the exclusive realm of only governmental agencies.

Virtual host

A shared web hosting service or virtual hosting service is a form of web hosting service where more than one instance of the same web service is hosted on a single physical server. This is generally the most economical option for hosting as many people share the overall cost of server maintenance.

W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organisation for the World Wide Web (W3). It is arranged as a consortium where member organisations maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the W3. As of February 2007, the W3C had 433 members. It is always open for new organisations to join.

W3C also engages in education and outreach, develops software and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web.

The Consortium is headed by Tim Berners-Lee, the primary author of the original URL (Uniform Resource Locator), HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and HTML (HyperText Markup Language) specifications, the principal technologies that form the basis of the World Wide Web.

Web page

A web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext links.

Web pages may be retrieved from a local computer or from a remote web server. The web server may restrict access only to a private network, e.g. a corporate intranet, or it may publish pages on the World Wide Web. Web pages are requested and served from web servers using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Web pages may consist of files of static text stored within the web server's file system (static web pages), or the web server may construct the (X)HTML for each web page when it is requested by a browser (dynamic web pages). Client-side scripting can make web pages more responsive to user input once in the client browser.

A web page is a type of web document.

Website

A website (or Web site) is a collection of web pages, typically common to a particular domain name or subdomain on the World Wide Web on the Internet.

A web page is a document, typically written in HTML, that is almost always accessible via HTTP, a protocol that transfers information from the website's server to display in the user's web browser.

All publicly accessible websites are seen as constituting a mammoth "World Wide Web" of information.

The pages of a website will be accessed from a common root URL called the homepage, and usually reside on the same physical server. The URLs of the pages organize them into a hierarchy, although the hyperlinks between them control how the reader perceives the overall structure and how the traffic flows between the different parts of the sites.

Some websites require a subscription to access some or all of their content. Examples of subscription sites include many business sites, parts of many news sites, gaming sites, message boards, Web-based e-mail services, and sites providing real-time stock market data.

WhoIs

WHOIS is a TCP-based query/response protocol which is widely used for querying a database in order to determine the owner of a domain name, an IP address, or an autonomous system number on the Internet. WHOIS lookups were traditionally made using a command line interface, but a number of simplified web-based tools now exist for looking up domain ownership details from different databases. Web-based WHOIS clients still rely on the WHOIS protocol to connect to a WHOIS server and do lookups, and command-line WHOIS clients are still quite widely used by system administrators.

The WHOIS system originated as a method that system administrators could use to look up information to contact other IP address or domain name administrators (almost like a "white pages"). The use of the data that is returned from query responses has evolved from those origins into a variety of uses, both altruistic (such as a Certificate Authority validating the registration for ecommerce https) and nefarious (such as bulk unsolicited email campaigns).

.ws

.ws is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Samoa. It is administered by SamoaNIC, for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of Samoa. Global Domains International markets .ws registrations worldwide.

It has been marketed — and achieved a degree of popularity — as an alternative to the more "crowded" generic top-level domains, where the selection of unregistered domain names is much more limited. In this context, .ws is suggested to stand for "web site" or "world site"; the original intent was to abbreviate "Western Samoa", the nation's official name when two-letter country codes were standardized in the 1970s. There are no geographic restrictions on registration of .ws domains. One limitation with .ws domains is that they cannot be transferred, so if a person registers a name, he will not be able to switch registrars later; this is because of the contract signed between the registrars and the main registry.

2nd level domains: 3 TLDs for domain registration to the general public: .WS, .COM.WS and .NET.WS. WS also offers 3 restricted TLDs: .ORG.WS, .GOV.WS and .EDU.WS.

XHTML

The Extensible HyperText Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but a stricter syntax. Whereas HTML is an application of SGML, a very flexible markup language, XHTML is an application of XML, a more restrictive subset of SGML. Because they need to be well-formed, XHTML documents allow for automated processing to be performed using a standard XML library—unlike HTML, which requires a relatively complex, lenient, and generally custom parser (though an SGML parser library could possibly be used). XHTML can be thought of as the intersection of HTML and XML in many respects, since it is a reformulation of HTML in XML. XHTML 1.0 became a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation on January 26, 2000. XHTML 1.1 became a W3C recommendation May 31, 2001.

XML

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a W3C-recommended general-purpose markup language that supports a wide variety of applications. XML languages or 'dialects' are easy to design and to process. XML is also designed to be reasonably human-legible, and to this end, terseness was not considered essential in its structure. XML is a simplified subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Its primary purpose is to facilitate the sharing of data across different information systems, particularly systems connected via the Internet[1]. Formally defined languages based on XML (such as RSS, MathML, GraphML, XHTML, Scalable Vector Graphics, MusicXML and thousands of other examples) allow diverse software to reliably understand information formatted and passed in these languages.

Yahoo

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) is an American global Internet services company. It operates an Internet portal and provides a full range of products and services including a search engine, the Yahoo! Directory and Yahoo! Mail. It was founded by Stanford graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo in January of 1994 and incorporated on March 2, 1995. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

According to Web trends companies among others Alexa Internet and Netcraft, Yahoo! has been the most visited website on the Internet today with more than 412 million unique users. The global network of Yahoo! websites received 3.4 billion page views per day on average as of October 2005. In November 2006 Yahoo has been battling with MySpace for the top U.S. visited website online.

Zend Engine

The Zend Engine is an open source scripting engine also called SuperZello, from the name of the SuperHacker Dany < le Verzellone - (a Virtual Machine), commonly known for the important role it plays in hacking and spoofing around with bncs but also for the web automation language PHP. It was originally developed by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski while they were students at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology. They later founded a company called Zend Technologies in Ramat Gan, Israel. The name Zend is a portmanteau of their forenames, Zeev and Andi.

The first version of the Zend Engine appeared in 1999 alongside PHP version 4. It was written as a highly optimized modular back-end, which for the first time could be used in applications outside of PHP. The performance, reliability and extensibility of the engine played a significant role in increasing the popularity of PHP.

The current version of the virtual machine is The Zend Engine II and is at the heart of PHP 5. The source code for the Zend Engine has been freely available under a BSD-style license since 2001; it is an open-source project, and there are now several programmers from all over the world who volunteer their time and skills to expand and improve the code base.