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Understanding HTML and other technical terms There is little need for you to fully comprehend most of the technical terms shown below before you start building an online business. However, if you can at least recognize some of these terms and get a feel for their meaning, then you should be able to make a better decision for choosing your software development tool.
WYSIWYG is a software design term that means What - you - see - is - what - you - get. If your software design tool gives you this capability (and most do), then there is usually a graphical interface between you and the underlying programming language that allows you to design your Web site with a mouse. When your software is equipped with a WYSIWYG editor, then there is no need for you to learn a programming language like HTML, since the software will convert your on screen design to HTML. Every computer uses an instruction set that is composed of a series of "bits" or "on-off" signals that are usually represented by a "1" or a "0." A bit can be thought of a single instruction that tells a computer processor whether it is "on" or "off." Think off this like the relationship between a light bulb and a light switch -- when the switch is up, the light is on, and when it is down, the light is off. A computer language combines a series of "bits" into "bytes" and provides an instruction set that tells a computer processor what to do. A byte is composed of 8 bits or "on-off" signals. You can think of a byte as being the computer representation for a letter, like "A," a number like "7," or an instruction to multiply two numbers, like "3 * 6." For the purposes of creating a Web site, the number of bytes will measure the size of your site in terms of disk space. For instance, if your Web hosting plan allows you to publish a 2 MB (Megabytes or million bytes) Web site, then essentially it can be made up of 2 million characters or instructions. In the world of Web publishing, this term normally refers to the amount of disk space that is provided by your Web hosting service. No matter whether you publish your Web site using a free service like Max Pages, or a paid service like Verio, the amount of disk space you get on their server will be limited to a certain amount of bytes (like Megabytes or MB). Obviously, the more space you get, the larger your site can be. The amount of space you will need depends on the number of pages in your Web, and more importantly, on the number and size of your graphic images. If your site is going to have a lot of graphic images, then you will need a hosting service that gives you a lot of disk space. Disk space normally ranges from a few Megabytes (MB) to hundreds of MBs. For instance, if you use the AOL Personal Publisher for your Web site, then you will get 2 MB of disk space per screen name. If you go with a robust hosting plan from Verio, then you can get up to 100MB of disk space on their servers. Although it is difficult to determine exactly how much space you will need, keep in mind that you can get about 100,000 words on a single floppy disk, or 1.44MB. Bandwidth (the pipe to your Web site) Bandwidth is the measure of bits that a connection to the Internet can carry in a certain amount of time. Think of bandwidth as being similar to the size of a water pipe. The larger the water pipe, the more water it can carry in a specific period of time. Common measurements for bandwidth are bits per second (bps) and megabits per second (Mbps). Sometimes bandwidth can also be measured in bytes per second. For instance, you might see a bandwidth measurement in megabytes (million bytes) per second, that would be abbreviated MBps. The only distinction being that the "B" is capitalized to represent "Byte," as opposed to "bit." Bandwidth is important for a Web hosting service because it determines the amount of traffic, or visitors, that can be handled simultaneously. For instance, if your Web host only has a few small pipes connected to the Internet (like a couple of DS3s), then the amount of traffic that it can handle will be much less than a Web host that has a lot of larger pipes (like a few OC48 systems). According to Webopedia, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) "is the authoring language used to create documents on the World Wide Web." This language uses a special set of "tags" to create Web pages that can be read by Web browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Software companies, like Microsoft and Macromedia, have done a great job in creating software packages that allow you to design Web sites without knowing much about HTML. However, in a few instances, you will need to at least be able to identify a few important HTML components and understand their importance to search engines. Java is a programming language that was created by Sun Microsystems. Once you have created an HTML document, Java gives you the capability to add sound and pictures to make your site more interactive. Small programs that can be interpreted by Web browsing software, like Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, are called Java applets. ActiveX controls (technologies) ActiveX, developed by Microsoft, gives you the capability to add controls to your Web site, like scroll bars, drop down menus, and radio buttons. Once you add these controls to your Web pages, then they can be downloaded and used by Web browsing software.
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