Back/Forward Buttons in most browsers' Tool Button Bar, upper left. Back returns you to the document previously viewed. Forward goes to the next document, after you go Back. If it seems like the Back button does not work, check if you are in a new window; some Web pages are progammed to open a new window when you click some links.

Browsers Browsers are software programs that enable you to view WWW documents. They "translate" HTML-encoded files into the text, images, sounds, and other features you see. Microfsot Internet Explorer (called simply IE), Netscape, Mosaic, Macweb, and Netcruiser are examples of browsers.

Cache A cache temporarily stores Web pages you have visited in your computer. A copy of documents you retrieve is stored in cache.

Case Sensitive Capital letters (upper case) retrieve only upper case. Most search tools are not case sensitive or only respond to initial capitals, as in proper names. It is always safe to key all lower case (no capitals), because lower case will always retrieve upper case.

Cookie A message frin a Web server computer, sent to and stored by your browser on your computer. When your computer consults the originating server computer, the cookie is sent back to the server, allowing it to respond to you according to the cookie's contents.

Domain, Top Level Domain (TLD) Hierarchical scheme for indicating logical and sometimes geographical venue of a web-page from the network. In the US, common domains are .edu (education), .gov (government agency), .net (network related), .com (commercial, .org (nonprofit and research organizations). Outside the US, domains indicate country: ca (Canada), uk (United Kingdom), au (Australia, jp (Japan), fr (France), etc.

Download To copy something from a primary source to a more peripheral one, as in saving something found on the Web (currently located on its server) to diskette or to a file on your local hard drive.

Favorites Way in Internet Explorer to store your computer direct links to sites you want to return to.

Field Searching Ability to limit a search by requiring word or phrase to appear in a specific field of documents (e.g., title, url, link). See LIMITING TO A FIELD.

Host Computer that provides web-documents to clients or users. See also server.

HTML Hypertext Markup Language. A standarized language of computer code, imbedded in "source" documents behind all Web documents, containing the textual content, images, links to other documents, etc.

Hypertext On the World Wide Web, the feature, built into HTML that allows a text area, image, or other object to become a "link" (as if in a chanin) that retireves another computer file (another Web page, image, sound file, or other document) on the Internet.

Internet The vast collection of interconnected networks that all use the TCP/IP protocols that allows computers to "talk" to one another. The World Wide Web is part of the Internet.

ISP Commonly used abbreviation for Internet Service Provider. The company or institution from which you access the Internet.

Keyword(s) A word searched for in a search command. Keywords are searched in any order. Use spaces to separate keywords in simple keyword searching. To search keywords exactly as keyed in the same order, see PHRASE.

Limiting to a Field Requiring that a keyword or phrase appear in a specific field of documents retrieved. Most often used to limit to the Title field in order to find documents primarily about keywords.

Meta-Search Engine Search engines that automatically submit your keyword search to several other search tools, and retrieve results from all their databases. Convenient time-savers for relatively simple keyword searches.

Personal Page A Web page created by an individual (as opposed to someone creating a page for an institution, business, organization, or other entity). Often personal pages contain valid and useful options, links to important resources, and significant facts. One of the greatest benefits of the Web is the freedom it has given almost anyone to put his or her ideas "out there." But frequently personal pages offer highly biased personal perspectives or ironical/satirical spoofs, which must be evaluated carefully. The presence of the page's URL of a personal name (such as "jbarker") and a ~ or % or the word "users" or "people" or "members" very frequently indicate a site offering personal pages.

Refresh Requests a fresh copy of the document, and it is likely to be sent without jamming.

Phrase More than one Keyword, searched exactly as keyed (all terms required to be in documents, in the order. Most, but not all Search Engines require that you put phrases in quotation marks.

Popularity Ranking Some Search Engines rank the orde in which search results appear primarily by how many other sites link to each page (a kind of popularity vote based on the assumption that other pages would create a link to the "best" pages.)

Scroll (Down, Up, Left, Right) Moving up or down within a document in your screen. Use scroll bar at right. Click on arrow down or arrow up. Drag the scroll button down or up. Or click on the page up or page down icons at the bottom of the bar. If you need to scroll left or right, use the scroll bar at the bottom.

Server, Web Server A computer running Web software, assigned an IP address, and connected to the Internet so that it can provide documents via the World Wide Web.

Spiders Computer robot programs, referred to sometimes as "crawlers" or "knowledge-bots" or "knowbots" that are used by search engines to roam the World Wide Web via the Internet, visit sites and databases, and keep current the search engine database of Web pages...

Stop Button on IE's Tool Button Bar. Use to stop downloading of a document.

Subject Directory A finding aid for Web pages. Directories are compiled by humans, not computers and therefore usually retrieve fewer and better Web pages than a search engine.

URL Uniform Resource Locator. The unique address of any Web page.

Web Directories An approach to Web documents by a lexicon of subject terms hierarchically grouped. synonyms are Web Catalogs and Subject Trees. May be browsed or searched by Keywords. Web Directories are smaller than other searable databases because of the human involvement required to classify documents by subject.

Web Page A publicly available file stored on a computer linked to the World Wide Web. Web pages may contain text, pictures, sound bites, movie clips and links to other Web pages.

Adapted with permission from:Barker, Joe "Glossary of Internet & Web Jargon." Teaching Library, University of California Berkeley. 11 August 2003