TGM Designs

TGM Designs created this glossary of web design and related terminology to help our clients to know and understand what services we provide. The terms cited are used regularly throughout Web development and design documentation. If you are starting a new website project then you will find these terms very helpful. This glossary's intention is to be relevant and beneficial to your understanding rather than be comprehensive.

Padding

In CSS, padding is a property that allows the author to specify how much space will be inserted between the element border and the element content. Negative values are not allowed.

Panel

In Animation. a single complete graphic image that is displayed chronologically with other complete graphic images. A single panel makes up a static image, while a series of frames make up an animation. Also called a frame.

Payment Gateway

A business or software that enables e-commerce systems to communicate with a merchant's Merchant Account Provider to enable online credit card processing.

PDF

Acronym for Portable Document Format. Created by Adobe Systems in its software program Adobe Acrobat as a universal browser. Files can be downloaded via the web and viewed page by page, provided the user is computer has installed the necessary plug-in which can be downloaded from Adobe's own web site.

PERL

Acronym for Practical Extraction and Reporting Language. A robust, open source, interpreted programming language which has become a popular language to use for writing CGI scripts, as well as for creating statistical reports from Web server log files. Famous for being 'powerful but cryptic'. Python is very similar but less cryptic. Most often used on Unix servers.

Persistent Stylesheet

A Stylesheet that is always applied to the document. One example is the user agent's Stylesheet: it's always applied, although you can override it with your own styles. In Mozilla milestones and builds, this is what the "Basic Page Style" entry in the "Use Stylesheet" menu represents.

PHP

A recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor. Php is an open source, server-side embedded scripting language that allows increased delivery of dynamic content from databases. PHP can perform any task that CGI can, but increased compatability with other technologies (SMTP, POP3 etc) makes it much more powerful. PHP is used commonly on Unix, Linux and Solaris platforms.

PHPBB

phpBB is a popular internet forum package written in the PHP programming language. The name "phpBB" is an abbreviation of PHP Bulletin Board.

Pixel

In graphics, it refers to smallest resolvable rectangular area of an image. It is how how monitors divide the display screen into thousands or millions of individual dots. In CSS, a pixel is a relative unit of measure dependent on the viewing device. They are relative to monitor resolution in contrast to percent and em that are relative to a browser setting. Percent and em are considered best practice for accessibility.

Plug-In

A module (either hardware or software) that adds a special feature to a larger system or program. For example, a program to allow a browser to play movies or to display Flash content. Plug-ins have accessibility issues.

Podcast

A multimedia file distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds, for playback on mobile devices and personal computers. Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital audio formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically using software capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.

Portal

A web site that offers so many resources that a visitor has little reason to go to another site for more information. The resources may include a directory of links, games, email, instant messaging, bill payment, shopping malls & more. The idea behind it is to attract and retain a large audience and offer the various sections of the portal to advertisers. Yahoo is an example of a portal.

Pop-Under Banner

A non-user initiated window that appears behind the main content page.

Pop-Up Banner

A banner that appears in a separate browser window while you wait for a web page to load. Interstitials are in various sizes, and are more likely to contain large graphics, streaming presentations, and special features not found in conventional banners.

Post

A post is a single message sent to a newsgroup or message board.

PNG

Acronym for Portable Network Graphic. This is an image format was developed as the successor to the GIF format. It has a more efficient compression algorithm than GIF.

PPC

Acronym for Pay Per Click advertising.

PPI

Acronym for Pixels Per Inch. This is the resolution of an image file. Web graphics and screenshots are made up of dots called pixels, and they usually contain 72 pixels per inch, though other resolutions are common. The horizontal and/or vertical density of an operating system's graphical display, from the point of view of the operating system (and in turn, of the applications and images running on it).

Preferred Stylesheet

Style sheets that are enabled by default (they are "on" when the page is loaded). They can then be disabled if the user selects an alternate style sheet. To make a style sheet preferred, the rel attribute is set to "stylesheet" and the style sheet is named with the title attribute.

Primary Navigation

Primary navigation is the general menu choices that are repeated on most (if not all) of the pages contained in the site. It is sometimes called the main menu. Primary navigation is sometimes referred to as global navigation or functional navigation. Primary navigation bars provide shortcuts to main sections on a website.

Private Key

A key for both encryption and decryption. It exists with a public key, but is kept secret by the owner.

Progressive Enhancement

A web design strategy which is the opposite of graceful degradation. A basic markup document is created, geared towards the lowest common denominator of browser software functionality, and then the designer adds enhancements to the presentation and behavior of the page, using modern technologies like Cascading Style Sheets or JavaScript.

Property

In CSS, a property is named style attribute or parameter for a markup element specified in a stylesheet declaration, e.g. color, background, font-family, padding etc., that is assigned a certain value. Properties are always followed by a colon to separate them from their value pair. A declaration contains one or more properties the individual pieces of style to be applied to the selected element.

Prototype

A prototype is a partially completed mockup of your final website. Prototyping allows you to test certain parts of the final website, especially when it is incomplete. With many sites, this model can be as simple as paper-and-pencil drawings or as complex as actual working code.

Pseudo-Class

In CSS: a way of selecting certain parts of a HTML document based in principle not on the HTML document tree itself and its elements or on characteristics like name, attributes or contents, but on other phantom conditions like language encoding or the dynamic state of an element. The original pseudo-class defined dynamic states of an element that are entered and exited over time, or through user intervention. CSS2 expanded on this concept to include virtual conceptual document components or inferred portions of the document tree e.g. first-child. Pseudo-classes operate as if phantom classes were added to various elements.

Pseudo-Elements

In CSS: used to address sub-parts of elements. They allow you to set style on a part of an element's content beyond what is specified in the documents. In other words they allow logical elements to be defined which are not actually in the document element tree. Logical elements allow implied semantic structure to be addressed in CSS selectors.

Public Key

A key for both encryption and decryption that is made available to the public. It has a mathematical relationship to the private key which means that information encrypted with one key can only be decrypted with the other.

Python

An interpreted, object-oriented programming language, sometimes offered by hosts for server-side scripting. Designed for simplicity and clarity. Less widly used that Perl, however, but is a good choice for large programs.