Web Design in a Nutshell

Appendix F. Glossary

-LAW

(Pronounced “myew-lah”) UNIX standard audio file format.

accessibility

Refers to making web pages available and readable to all users, including those with disabilities such as sight or hearing impairments.

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.

alpha channel

In graphics, 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 uses 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 and display.

applet

A self-contained mini-executable program, such as one written in the Java programming language.

ASCII files

Files that are comprised of alphanumeric characters. Some FTP programs refer to ASCII files as “text” files.

ASP

Active Server Pages; the part of Microsoft’s Internet Information Server software that allows server-side scripting ...