Glossary: Buzzword Bucket

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Ajax: Originally stood for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML, but the term has since come to refer to pretty much any technique used to dyanmically update a Web page (without causing a full page reload). Typically, it involves using the JavaScript communications object called XmlHTTPRequest (or XHR for short) to query the page'sWeb server for data. That data can take the form of XML, HTML, JavaScript Objects (see JSON), and so forth.

Atom: An data format for syndicated content (where you can subscribe to updates). RSS is another format for syndicated content. Atom is like the Beta to RSS's VHS. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_syndication.

attribute

In HTML, XML, and XHTML you write an element with angle brackets like this:

<monkey></monkey>

And you can give that element an attribute like this:

<monkey class="curious"></monkey>

CSS: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is code used to describe the presentation of a document. Its most common application is to style Web pages written in HTML and XHTML. We have a really, really good explanation of CSS right here on our site.

DHTML: Dynamic HTML. Any page that changes its appearance or behavior without reloading. You don't have to use Ajax to implement DHTML, but folks often do, nowadays.

Dojo: A kickass JavaScript library. See http://dojotoolkit.org/. We used it to build most of the AIMPages Publisher Tool. We host it on our CDN, too, so that module developers and users can access it quickly and so that it gets cached from a single URL.

DOM: Document Object Model. Imagine each component on a Web page: Some components follow one after the other, like a list. Some components contain other components, like those little Russian dolls inside dolls. The DOM is this structure. For a great visualization of the DOM, check out View Source Chart plugin for Firefox and try it out on any Web page.

Element

Elements are how you represent document structure in XHTML, XML, and HTML. They look like this:

<body>Stuff inside the body.</body>

The name of the element above is "body" and it's content is "Stuff inside the body."

Hobo Revolution: John Hodgman's book, Areas of My Expertise, sheds light on the forgotten but truely American story of the Hobo Revolution. See also http://www.e-hobo.com.

HTML: All Web pages are build from HTML. You can mix in lots of other stuff (JavaScript, CSS, Flash, and so forth), but everything starts with HTML. MySpace "codes" are HTML (sometimes with CSS mixed in).

JavaScript: JavaScript is a programming language that runs in Web pages. In JS (for short), you can change pretty much anything in a Web page, you can communicate with services out there on the Internet, and you can animate modules. It's generally very, very cool. Check out the sections on Building Modules to learn more more about JS.

mashup: "You got your chocolate in my peanut butter!"
"You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!"
In Web tech circles, a mashup is any site, page, or module that combines two or more existing services out there on the Internet already. There are gobs of map mashups, for instance. Could be there's one that let's you plot out the density of convertibles with personalized licence plates near your zip code.

In music circles, a mashup is when you take two songs and blend them into something wacky. We love wacky.

microcontent: In the olden days, content meant big things like a whole document or Web page. Now folks like to think of pages/media being constructed from microcontent–modules/atoms/chunks of content all aggregated together to make a page.

microformats: Traditionally, HTML describes the structure of a document but doesn't say much about the meaning of the content. A microformat is a way of using standard HTML elements and class attributes to build meaning into the document. Visit http://microformats.org for the full scoop.

module: To us, a module is the fundamental building block of page content. We describe them using a microformat called AOL ModuleT. You can take virtually any existing Web content and wrap it up as a module. You can also build really sophisticated modules that are Web applications that folks can then toss into their Web pages.

Playground: An informal name for AOL's open source tool, Publisher, which creates a development environment where AIM Pages members can work on modules and themes before releasing them into the Rogue's Gallery for millions of people to use.

Publisher Tool: AOL's open source tool that creates a publishing environment for AIM Pages modules and page themes.

RSS: Really Simple Syndication. A data format for describing updates to a "feed." A feed can be any source of news or information.

Semantic Web: An effort to embed lots and lots of meaning and relationship data into HTML documents. It's pretty complicated and it's not what we mean when we talk about semantic HTML.

Semantic HTML: Writing code in semantic HTML means picking class names that give meaning to your HTML elements, and picking elements that add structure to that meaning. An AOL ModuleT module is an example of semantic HTML.

syndication: In syndication, a portion of a Web site's content is made available for viewers to use. News services syndicate stories to on-line newspapers, for example. Access to syndicated content can be free or subscription-based.

valid HTML/XHTML: Code that conforms to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendations and other standards.

W3C: World Wide Web Consortium, the standards organization for open source Web development.

Web 2.0: Man, who knows for sure? This is a world class buzzword. Mostly, it refers to advanced Web design, but there's also a political element too, with regard to the ways companies interact with their users. Tim O'Reilly coined the term, so if you want to know more, start out with his short and long descriptions.

widget: We call our page-building blocks modules. Some folks use the term widget.

XHTML: eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language, a standard from the W3C that brings HTML into XML's world and creates a wonderful mix (kind of like that whole chocolate and peanut butter thing). Formally speaking, a reformulation of HTML 4 in XML 1.0, the first major change to HTML since HTML 4.0 was released in 1997.

XHTML 1.0 Strict: A markup language identical to HTML 4 Strict, except for changes due to the differences between XML and SGML. A data type definition for XHTML Strict can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd.

XHTML 1.0 Transitional: XHTML 1.0 Transitional allows some common deprecated elements and attributes not found in XHTML 1.0 Strict to be used, such as <center>, <u>, <strike>, and <applet>. Supports everything found in XHTML 1.0 Strict, but it is also good for compatibility with older browsers that cannot render style sheets, due to the prevalent use of attributes such as body, bgcolor, and so forth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML).

XML: Extensible Markup Language, a markup language that enables standardized description of data. XML standards are set and monitored by W3C.

XmlHttpRequest: A JavaScript object for sending and receiving data in a Web page.

XSL: eXtensible Stylesheet Language. XSL is a way of describing how to turn XML into other formats like HTML. See http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/

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