Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Glossary

Above the fold

Pertaining to content that is visible without scrolling when the visitor first lands on a web page.

accessibility

Refers to building web sites, applications, and pages so that there are as few barriers to use as possible for anyone, regardless of ability and the device used to access the information.

AIFF

Audio Interchange File Format. Standard audio format originally developed for the Macintosh, which is now supported on PCs as well. It is one of the formats commonly used for distributing audio on the Web.

Ajax

A web development technique for creating interactive web applications using a combination of (X)HTML, CSS, the DOM, and the nonstandard XMLHttpRequest object to exchange data asynchronously with the server. Because the page doesn’t need to refresh with each user interaction, Ajax makes web applications feel more like desktop applications.

alpha channel

In graphics formats, an extra channel for storing information about an image. The alpha channel works like a mask that applies properties (such as transparency) to the pixels in the image. Other channels typically include color value information—as in the red, green, and blue channels of an RGB image.

alpha-channel transparency

The method of transparency used by 24-bit PNGs, which use an additional (alpha) channel to store variable levels of transparency (up to 256) for each pixel in the image.

animated GIF

A GIF89a that contains multiple frames and a “control block” for controlling the animation timing ...