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.

RAID

Acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. This is a standard for connecting multiple disks to the same server for higher security, speed and performance. Often used on web servers.

Ranking

The relative location of a web page on the list of web pages generated by a search engine. A higher ranking is desirable because it places the page nearer the top of the list making it more likely to be viewed by a user entering the search request.

Rapid Prototyping

The process of quickly generating mock-ups of what a website will look like.

RDF

Acronym for Resource Description Framework. This is a framework for constructing languages for describing web resources.

Readability

The degree to which the meaning of text is understandable, based on the complexity of sentences and the difficulty of vocabulary. Indexes for readability usually rank usability by the age or grade level required for someone to be able to readily understand a reading passage.

Real Audio

A common multimedia audio format created by Real Networks.

Real Video

A common multimedia video format created by Real Networks.

Reciprocal Link

A link exchange completed between two websites.

Redirect

Also known as forwarding. In web terms: The action when a web page automatically forwards (redirects) the user to another web page. Search engine ranking suffers as spiders are not always able to follow the link thus hurting the web page indexing and ranking.

Replaced Element

A replaced element is one that, when the page is rendered, its contents are replaced by something else. Examples of replaced elements include images, form inputs, and objects.

Relative Link

Does not show the entire link. An example of a relative link is clients.php which would re-direct you to the clients page on this website as opposed to writing http://www.tgmdesigns.com/clients.php which is an absolute link.

Relative Sizing

Relative sizing is scalable. It is the opposite of absolute sizing. For usability and accessibility it is better to use relative rather than absolute sized units. Use relative units such as percent or ems. Many low-vision users make use of devices to enlarge content displayed on their monitors. By using relative units, these users are able to change the size of the text without much difficulty

RFP

Acronym for Request For Proposal. A term that may be used by an advertiser that is requesting some type of advertising arrangement with a web site.

RFQ

Acronym for Request For Quotation. A term that may be used by an advertiser that is requesting a price for placing advertisements on a publishers web site.

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.

Rich Media

Typically, a web site or banner ads that use technology more advanced than standard GIF animation. Rich media banners include: Flash, Shockwave, streaming video, Real Audio/Video, pull-down menus, search boxes, applets that allow for interactivity, and other types of special effects.

Robot

Also known as a "spider" which is an automatic software program that serves a search engine by exploring the Web and collects Web page addresses and stores them in a huge database.

Robot.txt

A file written and stored in the root directory of a website that restricts the search engine spiders from indexing certain pages of the website.

Root Directory

The directory at the highest level of a hierarchy of directories. The "top" directory of a collection of files and/or folders.

Router

A hardware (or software) system that directs (routes) data transfer to different computers in a network.

Royalty Free

Photos, graphic images, or other intellectual property that are sold for a single standard fee and may be used repeatedly by the purchaser. Typically with royalty-free clauses, the company that sells you the images still owns all of the rights to the images, and they are allowed for use only by the purchaser (i.e., the same images cannot be used by another company or individual without repurchase).

RSS

Acronym for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. RSS is an XML-based language which represents information on the World Wide Web in a form which may be syndicated (subscribed to) in special news reader applications. RSS allows your news reader program to bring a websites news feed directly to your computer.

RSS Aggregator

An RSS aggregator, also known as a reader is client software that uses web feed to retrieve syndicated web content such as weblogs, podcasts, vlogs, and mainstream mass media websites, or in the case of a search aggregator, a customized set of search results.

RSS Feed

An RSS document called a feed, web feed or channel contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that can be pulled into special programs or filtered displays.

Ruby on Rails

Often called RoR, or just Rails, is an open source web application framework written in Ruby that closely follows the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture. It strives for simplicity and allowing real-world applications to be developed in less code than other frameworks and with a minimum of configuration.

Rules

Rules, or horizontal rules, are HTML tags enable you to insert horizontal lines as separators or dividers. Web graphic designers will vary the length and color of horizontal rules to add emphasis and flair. The following gray line is a horizontal rule set at a width of 50 percent.