Accessibility

The degree to which a Web site makes it easy for users with disabilities to access the electronic information. Content designers and developers must enable Web pages to function with assistive devices used by users with disabilities.

CMS (Content Management System)

A software package that allows users to create, update and edit content for their Web site.

CMS Solution

A Content Management System that is customized to solve an organization's particular needs.

Content

Anything that a Web site contains such as text, images, sounds or videos.

Content Management System

A software package that allows users to create, update and edit content for their Web site.

FeedStream

A Canadian software company that produces the world-class Content Management System FLUiD CMS 4.5.

File Locking

File locking is a feature of FLUiD CMS 4.5 that enables two different users to edit one file at the same time.

Flash

Macromedia’s Flash allows designers and developers to integrate video, text, audio, and graphics for interactive marketing and presentations, and user application interfaces.

FLUiD CMS 4.5

An XML-based Content Management System that enables multiple users to create and manage a professional Web site that is automatically Search Engine Optimized and Accessible.

Future-proofed/Future-ready

Refers to the practice of designing software so that its content is not trapped into a proprietary format.  When a system is future-proofed it means that the structure and content of that system are well-suited to being converted, updated, or altered.  Because FLUiD CMS 4.5 is XML-based it does not lock-in the content to any one format.  XML is a raw, highly flexible language that is designed to be moldable.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

The coded format language used for creating hypertext documents on the World Wide Web and controlling how Web pages appear.

Java

A programming language introduced by Sun Microsystems. Java is a multiplatform, platform-independent, object oriented programming language. Java programs are not compiled, but rather interpreted as run.

JavaScript

A scripting language from Netscape that is only marginally related to Java. Java and JavaScript are not the same thing. JavaScript was designed to resemble Java, which in turn looks a lot like C and C++. The difference is that Java was built as a general-purpose object language, while JavaScript is intended to provide a quicker and simpler language for enhancing Web pages and servers. JavaScript is embedded as a small program in a web page that is interpreted and executed by the Web client. The scriptor controls the time and nature of the execution, and JavaScript functions can be called from within a Web document, often executed by mouse functions, buttons, or other actions from the user. JavaScript can be used to fully control Netscape and Microsoft Web browsers, including all the familiar browser attributes.

Metadata

Information about data.  A good example is a library catalog card, which contains data about the nature and location of a book.

PDA (Personal Digital Assistant)

A handheld computer that provides a calendar and organizer for personal information. A PDA normally contains at least one database with names and addresses, to-do lists and a notepad.

PDF (Portable Document Format)

A file format created by Adobe, initially to provide a standard form for storing and editing printed publishable documents. Because documents in .pdf format can easily be seen and printed by users on a variety of computer and platform types, they are very common on the World Wide Web.

Proprietary Format

A data format specific to a company, industry or other limited group.  A proprietary format locks in content and is not easily converted into a different format.

RDF (Resource Description Framework)

A metadata standard.

RSS

RSS is an XML specification for content syndication that allows organizations to feed key information to other Websites in the form of a headline, a short description and a link to the actual location of the information.  Syndication is also an efficient way for corporate head office to disseminate information to sites within the organization, and vice versa.

Scalability

The ability to expand the number of users or increase the capabilities of a computing solution users without making major changes to the systems or application software.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Building a Web site so that the search engines such as Google and Yahoo will give it consistently high ranking.

SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)

The pages that result from a search or query in a search engine.

Spider

An automated program designed to crawl about the Web indexing Web sites. They are also known as robots, crawlers, and wanderers. Some of them index Web sites by title, some by URL, some by words in each document in a Web site, and some by combinations of these.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

A Web address.

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)

The W3C develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.

Workflow

Workflow refers to the management and monitoring of business processes. It is the flow of work between individuals and/or departments.

XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language)

A reformulation of HTML 4.5 in XML 1.0. XHTML is a new language for building web pages that has recently been proposed as a W3C Recommendation.

XML (Extensible Markup Language)

According to the W3C, XML is the universal format for structured documents and data on the Web.  XML makes it easy for a computer to generate data, read data, and ensure that the data structure is unambiguous. It is extensible and platform-independent.  XML is a language which stores data in a text-only format. Because of this, XML-based data can be used by any computer system and sent across any network, regardless of the platforms and software systems involved. XML is the industry standard for intercompatibility in data storage and retrieval. Once data has been stored in XML format, there is no limit to how it can be published. Information stored in XML is highly accessible even for non-technical users.

XPath (XML Path Language)

A language for addressing parts of an XML document, designed to be used by both XSLT and XPointer. The language mainly consists of location paths and expressions.

XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language)

XSL is a language for creating a style sheet that describes how data sent over the Web using XML is to be presented to the user. XSL specifies the styling of an XML document by using XSLT to describe how the document is transformed into another XML document that uses the formatting vocabulary.

XSLT (XSL Transformation)

A language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents. XSLT is designed for use as part of XSL.  In addition to XSLT, XSL includes an XML vocabulary for specifying formatting.