Web design terminology beginning with the letter A

Above the fold

Applied to the top half of a web page that web site advertisers refer to as being visible without the need for the user to scroll their browser window. Obviously, the area that is viewable above the fold is a relative term dependent on the size and resolution of the viewer's computer monitor.

ActionScript

Macromedia Flash uses a type of scripting language to control its interactive events. ActionScript has similar sytax to javascript, but functions only within Flash SWF files.

See also: javascript

ActiveX

ActiveX is propriety Microsoft technology, based upon an earlier technology called Component Object Model (COM), which enables the deployment of Windows programs over the internet. With the Internet Explorer browser, under Windows, ActiveX controls can be downloaded alongside a web page. ActiveX adds interactive functionality, for Windows users, in a similar way to Java applets or animation in a similar way to Flash.

Animated GIF

As the name implies, an animated gif is a moving version of the Graphics Interchange Format that is used extensively on the web for logos and flat color images.

Animated gifs can be built with image editing programs such as Photoshop, by putting different elements together on layers, tweening them together and then exporting the graphic as an animated gif via Adobe ImageReady.

See also: JPEG, GIF

Anonymous FTP

Allows a web site owner to set up antonymous ftp access for external users to upload, or download, files over the internet. Usually a special folder on the web server is reserved for this so that the wrest of the web server remains secure.

See also: FTP

Active Server Pages (ASP)

ASP is a Microsoft server application that allows the dynamic creation of web pages from a host of data sources, such as database packages like Access.

See also: Dynamic web pages

Apache server

Apache is a freely available web server application. It is also probably the most widely used web serving application in use on the internet, with about 50% of all web sites using it to serve their HTML pages.

Although it is an open source package and started its days as a unix only program it is now available for a number of operating systems, including Windows, OS/2 and Mac OS X.

Applet

An applet is a kind of mini application that can be downloaded over the internet and launched on the user's computer.