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Glossary of Computer Terms
Terms starting with alphabets 'W', 'X', 'Y' & 'Z'
| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| WAN | Stands for "Wide Area Network." It is similar to a Local Area Network (LAN), but it'slot bigger. Unlike LANs, WANs are not limited to a single location. Many wide area networks span long distances via telephone lines, fiber-optic cables, or satellite links. The Internet can be described as the biggest WAN in the world. |
| Web Host | A web host is needed to publish a website online. The Web host stores all the pages of a website and makes them available to computers connected to the Internet. The domain name, such as "sony.com," is actually linked to an IP address that points to a specific computer. When somebody enters a domain name into his browser's address field, the IP address is located and Web site is loaded from the Web host. |
| Web page | Web pages are what make up the World Wide Web. These documents are written in HTML (hypertext markup language) and are translated by the Web browser. Web pages can either be static or dynamic. |
| Webmaster | A webmaster is the person in charge of maintaining a Web site. The jobs of a webmaster include writing HTML for Web pages, organizing the Web site's structure, responding to e-mails about the Web site, and keeping the site up-to-date. |
| Web site | A website is a collection of Web pages. |
| WHOIS | This is an Internet service that finds information about a domain name or IP address. If you enter a domain name in a WHOIS search engine, it will scour a huge database of domains and return information about the one you entered. This information typically contains the name, address, and phone number of the administrative, billing, and technical contacts of the domain name. WHOIS can also be used to simply check if a certain domain name is available or if it has already been registered. |
| Win 32 | This is the Windows application programming interface (API) for developing 32-bit applications. It has been used in Windows 95 and newer Windows operating systems. |
| Windows | Microsoft Windows is the most popular operating system for personal computers. There are several versions of the Windows operating system the latest being Windows Vista. All Windows platforms use graphical user interface (GUI) |
| Wizard | In computer terminology, a wizard is a part of a program that guides you through certain steps. A wizard acts as a guide for creating a new document in a software program. |
| Word processor | A word processor processes words. It also processes paragraphs, pages, and entire page/document. |
| Word wrap | Word wrapping is when a line of text automatically "wraps" to the next line when it gets to the end of a page or text field. Most word processing programs use word wrap to keep the text within the default margins of the page. Without the word wrap feature, text would continue on one line until the user pressed "Enter" or "Return" to insert a line break. |
| Work station | It refers to a computer that has been configured to perform a certain set of tasks. An office may have several workstations for different purposes, assigned to different employees. |
| Worm | A computer worm is a type of virus that replicates itself, but does not alter any files. However, worms can still cause havoc by multiplying so many times that they take up all available memory of a computer or hard disk space. If a worm consumes the memory, a computer will run very slowly and possibly even crash. If the worm affects hard disk space, a computer will take a long time to access files and a user will not be able to save or create new files until the worm has been eradicated. |
| www | www is acronym for "World Wide Web." It is not a synonym for the Internet. The World Wide Web, or just "the Web," is a subset of the Internet. The Web consists of pages that can be accessed using a Web browser. The Internet is the actual network of networks where all the information resides. Things like Telnet, FTP, Internet gaming, Internet Relay Chat (IRC), and e-mail are all part of the Internet, but are not part of the World Wide Web. The Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the method used to transfer Web pages to a computer.All Web pages are written in the hyper-text markup language (HTML), which works in conjunction with HTTP. |
| XHTML | XHTML is acronym for "Extensible Hypertext Markup Language."It is based on the HTML 4.0 syntax, but has been modified to follow the guidelines of XML, the Extensible Markup Language. |
| XML | XML is acronym for "Extensible Markup Language."XML is used to define documents with a standard format that can be read by any XML-compatible application. The language can be used with HTML pages, but XML itself is not a markup language. Instead, it is a "metalanguage" that can be used to create markup languages for specific applications. Basically, XML allows to create a database of information without having an actual database. While it is commonly used in Web applications, many other programs can use XML documents as well. |
| XSLT | An XSLT style sheet provides a template with rules that XML documents must conform to. It receives an XML document as input and outputs a file that is recognizable by the intended program. |
| Zip | Windows users see this term a lot when looking for files on the Internet. A zip file (.zip) is a "zipped" or compressed file. |