Current and potential clients often have questions about the technical side of Web development and Graphic Design. While we encourage
you to contact us with any questions you have, we hope the list below will help you decipher the meanings of the most common Web and
Design related terms at your convenience.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the amount of information your connection to the Internet can carry. On average, typical telephone lines can carry 1K of
information per second.
Bleed or Bleeding Edge
When a page or a cover design extends to and off the edge of the paper it is called a "bleed". In print design, the artwork or block of color
must extend off the edge of the page. The artwork or block of color is then printed on larger-size paper. Then the printed page is trimmed
to the desired size
browser
A program or interface whose primary function is to display information from Web sites. Browsers receive information by requesting it from
a server. Typical browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox, display information as visible text and images on a computer monitor.
Alternative browsers for the visually impaired read the content of the page out loud to the user or convert it to Braille.
Creating Web pages that are accessible to all types of browsers is an integral part of usability.
CMS (content management system)
Software that streamlines creating, editing and publishing Web content. Most professional-quality content management systems are
designed so that a person with no knowledge of Web languages can edit a Web site’s content.
CMYK
Stands for the colors Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black. In print design, colors are defined as a percentage of each of these 4 colors.
For example, the CMYK abbreviation for the color black would be 0-0-0-100. In contrast, display devices (i.e. computer monitors)
typically define colors using RGB.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
The style language of Web pages. CSS allows the appearance of HTML documents to be displayed according to the designer’s wishes.
For example, Web designers can customize attributes like font size and color, and insert background images into HTML pages using CSS.
domain name
Nothing more than a unique, human-friendly nickname for the server that hosts your Web site. When you purchase or rent a domain name,
you are entitled to the right to “point” that domain name to any server that you rent or own. At that point anyone who types your domain
name into their browser will be directed to your server, and consequently to your Web site. The technical side to setting all this up is handled
by your hosting provider.
DPI
Considered as "dots per square inch," a measure of output resolution in relationship to printers, imagesetters and monitors.
GIF
A popular file format for graphics displayed on the Web. The GIF format is excellent for displaying graphics with large areas of solid color,
such as logos, without any loss in quality. The main downside to GIF is that it only supports 256 colors, so more complex images must
suffer serious loss of quality to be saved in this format.
GSM
The unit of measurement for paper weight (grams per square meter).
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
The structural language of Web pages. The great majority of Web site data is written in HTML. Each part of an HTML document is marked
up according to its data type (titles, headers, paragraphs, images, etc) using tags. Tags tell the browser how to display each data type
so that it makes sense to the viewer. The appearance of data contained within HTML tags can be customized using CSS.
JavaScript
A scripting language that enables enhanced interactivity on HTML Web pages.
JPG or JPEG
A popular file format for graphics displayed on the Web. The JPG format is ideal for decreasing the file size of photographs and large,
complex illustrations so that they load faster in the browser.
Kerning
The horizontal spacing between the letters in a word.
Leading
The vertical spacing between lines of text.
MATTE FINISH
Flat (not glossy) finish on photographic paper or coated printing paper.
Meta-tag
Meta-tags are HTML tags that can be used to identify the creator of a web page, what HTML specifications a web page follows, keywords
and description of the page, etc. The most common use of a meta-tag in online marketing is the keyword and description tags, which tell
the search engines that index meta-tags what description to use in their search query results.
Offset Printing
Printing technique that transfers ink from a plate to a blanket to paper instead of directly from plate to paper.
PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor)
PHP is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development, to produce dynamic web
pages. It can be embedded into HTML and generally runs on a web server, which needs to be configured to process PHP code and create
web page content from it.
PNG
A file format for displaying graphics on the Web that is similar but superior to GIF. The PNG format is excellent for displaying graphics with
large areas of solid color or gradients, such as logos, at a small file size without any loss of quality. The PNG format also supports
transparency, so it is ideal for layering one graphic over another.
RGB
Stands for the colors Red-Green-Blue. In web design and design for computer monitors, colors are defined in terms of a combination of
these three colors. For example, the RGB abbreviation for the color blue shown below is 0-0-255. In contrast, print designers typically
define colors using CMYK.
Score
To compress paper along a straight line so it folds more easily and accurately. Also called crease.
Search Engine
A search engines is a program that searches documents (i.e. web pages, which are HTML-documents) for specified keywords and returns
the list of documents. A search engine has two parts, a spider and an indexer. The spider is the program that fetches the documents and
the indexer reads the documents and creates an index based on the words or ideas contained in each document.
Spider/Robot
A software program that search engines use which visits every site on the web, follows all of the links, and catalogs all of the text of every
web page that contains text and it is able to visit or crawl.
Vector Graphic
A graphic image drawn in shapes and lines, called paths. Images created in Illustrator (graphic design software) are vector graphics.
WYSIWYG
Abbreviation for What You See Is What You Get. WYSIWYG implies a user interface that allows the user to view something very similar to
the end result while the document is being created.