Application Programming Interface - A specification for how a software component interact with other software components.
ASCII is a character-encoding scheme originally based on the English alphabet that encodes 128 specified characters - the numbers 0-9, the letters a-z and A-Z, some basic punctuation symbols, and a blank space. See more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII
The term assets is commonly refers to the various parts that are needed to make a web page after the initial HTML file has loaded into the browser. Assets commonly include CSS, JavaScript, and Image files.
The Browser Rendering Engine of Google Chrome since 2013. Chrome used Webkit before 2013. See more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(layout_engine)
A term that describes how well two browsers align in terms of implementing the W3C's recommended standards.
The algorithm within browsers that is responsible for turning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript into DOM and rendering the page into pixels for the page
Content Delivery Networks are systems of distributed servers (network) that deliver webpages and other Web content to a user based on the geographic locations of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server.
A piece of software (such as a User Agent / Browser) which receives information from a server.
The a piece of software will only work if another piece of software is in the same environment, then the first software is said to have a "dependency" on the second. For example, BackboneJS (a JavaScript Framework) has a dependency of jQuery.
A commonly understood solution to a recurring problem, generally in the form of a software algorithm.
Another word for "folder" as seen in Finder (OsX) or Windows Explorer (Microsoft Windows)
The Browser Rendering Engine of Mozilla Firefox. See more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(software)
An HTTP method used to send request parameters through the URL. GET variables are implemented via a Query String
The thought process that developers should create features for more modern browsers first then apply fixes and polyfills second to bring older browsers up to speed. This thought process is sometimes in conflict with Progressive Enhancement.
Graphical User Interface - Presenting software to the user in the form of graphics (buttons, menus, links, images etc) as opposed to CLI (Command Line Interface).
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol - A set of rules used to transfer data between Server and Client
To start, usually a body of code
To create something from a pattern or template
In computing and systems design a loosely coupled system is one in which each of its components has, or makes use of, little or no knowledge of the definitions of other separate components. See More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loose_coupling
To place within, as in HTML and Code. See more: http://webdesign.about.com/od/beginningtutorials/a/aa090407.htm
A single point in a tree structure, such as an Element in DOM
The thought process that developers should create widely accessible features first for older browsers, then add "sugar coated" features second for more modern browsers. This thought process is sometimes in conflict with Graceful Degradation.
A naming structure for accessing directories and files. The path: Users/brad/Sites refers to where the "Sites" folder is under the "Users" and "brad" folder
Code which supplements features into the browser that are not there by default but should be according to the W3C standards. Polyfills can sometimes come in the form of a "Shiv" or "Shim"
An HTTP method used to send request parameters through the HTTP Headers.
A language that is written and then processed into another language.
The part of a URL (or URI) that passes variables from the Client to the Server. Typically these variables come after the "?" Question Mark in the URL. Query String variables are a means to create a GET HTTP request.
A piece of software that responds with information to a Client.
A tree structure is a way of representing the hierarchy. See Also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_structure
The Browser Rendering Engine of Internet Explorer. See more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(layout_engine)
A piece of software that is acting on the behalf of a user to make requests on the Internet. In the web industry, browsers are User Agents, which are also known as Clients.
World Wide Web Consortium - The standards body that establishes the rules of HTML and CSS among other things.
The Browser Rendering Engine developed by Apple (for Safari) and Google (for Chrome). It was used in Chrome until 2013 when Chrome switched to Blink. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit
ASCII characters which have no visual representation except spacing (such as a tabs, spaces, and hard returns).
Link's in HTML are created with the anchor tag: <a>
The process of loading assets simultaneously. This is in contrast with loading assets in serial.
An attribute is a modification to an HTML element, while also providing additional information about it. Where <div> is a tag, the "class" of <div class="highlight"> is an attribute.
A HTML <body> tag which encompasses the visual portion of your HTML tags.
An element which is nested inside another element. The term "child" in this case refers to the relationship between two elements where the child element is within the parent element.
See Parent Element.
Document Object Model - A tree-stucture-like API which allows JavaScript to interact with HTML Elements. Sometimes the entire collection of rendered elements is referred to as DOM.
An HTML Element is the rendered version of an HTML Tag.
Hypertext Reference - An HTML Attribute used to refer to other documents. Often used by anchors to indicate the location a link should point to. "HREF" is also the name of the turtle in the pond at RockIT as named by class 14.1.
An element which contains other elements. The term "parent" in this case refers to the relationship between two elements where the parent element is the container for Child Elements.
A process of reading HTML tags and converting them to be HTML elements in the creation of DOM. See also Browser Rendering Engine.
Another term for Assets.
Using tag names that describe the meaning of the content they contain.
A process of loading assets in sequence such that one thing must finish before the next is allowed to start. This is in contrast with loading assets asynchronously.
Two or more elements that belong to the same parent element in a tree-structure.
HTML Tags are a syntax for describing content. Tags use greater-than and less-than characters to denote the tag name. Content will have an opening and a closing tag as follows: <user>Dave Smith</user>. Where the tag name is "user" which describes the content within: "Dave Smith".
The visible portion of a website within the browser
A set of rules that describes how the content of an element, its padding, border, and margin are layers and how those layers interact with other element's box models.
The process in which child elements inherit their parent's styles.
An identifying name given to one or more elements which can then be used with a CSS selectors
A group of properties and values belonging to a single selectors
In order to change the visual look of a website, CSS properties describe the variety of changes that can be made. The properties behave like settings for the design. Some examples of properties include: color, background-color, border, padding, margin, and font.
A "CSS Reset" is a section at the beginning of one's CSS where they attempt to create a new set of defaults as a base for their CSS
A technique used to apply different CSS styles based on the viewport size being used by the user.
Selectors are a set of rules that determine which groups of CSS properties should apply to which sections on the website.
CSS Values describe how CSS properties should look or behave. For instance, a property might be "background-color" and its value might be "blue"
Each browser may have "vendor prefixes" which are special CSS property prefixes allowing the browser to adopt the W3C specification.
The value(s) you pass to a function
An array is a special variable, which can hold more than one value at a time.
A variable type that can hold one of two possible values: true or false
The operation of combining two or more strings into one.
A reusable block of code whose purpose is to accomplish a well-defined task.
The process of populating a string with variables embedded into the string, without concatenation
To do something again and again, usually in the context of a programatic loop
A programming structure that allows code to be executed in repetitions
A method is a function, but in the context of an object.
A body of code that combines data and functionality which is all interrelated.
Defined within a function, it specifies an expectation for a specific argument to be passed in.
"Recursive" or "recursion" is the process of calling one's self
A variable type used to hold a wide variety of ASCII (text) characters
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML: The combination of these technologies allows the client to create HTTP requests to the server without requiring a page refresh
XMLHttpRequest - The underlying technology that allows AJAX to be possible
The command-line interpreter that allows a user to interact with the computer in text-based instructions
A window, commonly black background and white or green text, that runs bash. Common usage: "open up a bash window"
Aka CLI (Command Line Interface). See Bash
The prompt in bash where the user types in a command
A collection of bash commands, saved into a file, that can be ran all at once
See Bash Window