Vocabulary for web design and beyond

Question

Anyone tackling web design will encounter dozens of unfamiliar terms. I have compiled together this glossary to help them. I may update and expand in the future. Until then, feel free to use or pass along.
Some of these terms don’t relate strictly to web design, but also to computer graphics and computer programming generally, as I’ve found that such terms are also important to reading and understanding any tutorials or other materials on web design.
Asynchronous (1) General use. Not synchronous; not occurring or existing at the same time or having the same period or phase. (2) Digital communication. Pertaining to a transmission technique that does not require a common clock between the communicating devices; timing signals are instead derived from special characters in the data stream.
Bitmap image Image that uses geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes, which are all based on mathematical equations. In a bitmap image, each pixel on a display screen is assigned at least one bit to indicate whether the pixel should reflect the background color, the foreground color, or some other color. each pixel in the bitmap might have 16, 24, or 48 bits of information associated with it. The more bits, the greater the resolution of the bitmap – and the larger the file. Compare Vector image.
C (programming language) General-purpose computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. It was designed for implementing system software and is also widely used for developing portable application software. C has greatly influenced many other popular programming languages, most notably C++, which began as an extension to C.
C++ Statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell Labs as an enhancement to the C language and originally named C with Classes. It was renamed C++ in 1983.
Cache Component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere. If requested data is contained in the cache (cache hit), this request can be served by simply reading the cache, which is comparatively faster. Otherwise (cache miss), the data has to be recomputed or fetched from its original storage location, which is comparatively slower.
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) Style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics (the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can also be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL.
ColdFusion Programming language based on standard HTML that is used to write dynamic webpages. It allows for the creation of pages that differ depending on user input, database lookups, time of day, or other criteria. ColdFusion pages consist of standard HTML tags together with CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language) tags such as <CFQUERY>, <CFIF> and <CFLOOP>. ColdFusion was introduced by Allaire in 1996, acquired by Macromedia in a merger in April 2001, and acquired by Adobe in December 2005.
Compound selector Can be used to combine two or more style rules to create a style definition that displays only when one style is contained within another. Compound styles are useful when you want to do something like use the Heading 1 tag multiple times to format headlines in different ways on the same web page. For example, you could create one style for headlines that appear in the main story area of a page and then create another style for headlines that appear in the sidebar on the page and still use the Heading 1 tag to format both. Compound styles are created by combining ID, class, or tag styles and look like this: #sidebar h1.
Contextual selector A type of Style Sheet Selector that
CRE Loaded Open source online store management and shopping cart system for e-commerce from Chain Reaction eCommerce. It is based on osCommerce, runs on any LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) web server, and is supported by an active international community of users and developers. For a monthly subscription ($10/mo. as of 2011), CRE Loaded allows small and medium-sized merchants to accept credit card payments in a web site that mirrors their own online stores.
CSS See Cascading Style Sheet.
Dynamic HTML (DHTML) Umbrella term for a collection of technologies used together to create interactive and animated web sites by using a combination of a static markup language (such as HTML), a client-side scripting language (such as JavaScript), a presentation definition language (such as CSS), and the Document Object Model. DHTML allows scripting languages to change variables in a web page's definition language, which in turn affects the look and function of otherwise “static” HTML page content, after the page has been fully loaded and during the viewing process.
ECMA International International membership-based non-profit standards organization for information and communication systems.
ECMAScript Scripting language standardized by Ecma International in the ECMA-262 specification and ISO/IEC 16262. The language is widely used for client-side scripting on the web, in the form of several well-known dialects such as JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript.
Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) Family of XML markup languages that mirror or extend versions of the widely used HTML, the language in which web pages are written. While HTML (prior to HTML5) was defined as an application of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a very flexible markup language framework, XHTML is an application of XML, a more restrictive subset of SGML. Because XHTML documents need to be well-formed, they can be parsed using standard XML parsers—unlike HTML, which requires a lenient HTML-specific parser.
Extensible Markup Language Set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards. Its design goals emphasize simplicity, generality, and usability over the Internet. It is a textual data format with strong support via Unicode for the languages of the world. Known by its acronym XML.
HTML See HyperText Markup Language.
Hypermedia Graphics, audio, video, plain text and hyperlinks that intertwine to create a generally non-linear medium of information. This contrasts with the broader term multimedia, which may be used to describe non-interactive linear presentations as well as hypermedia. The World Wide Web is a classic example of hypermedia, whereas a non-interactive cinema presentation is an example of standard multimedia due to the absence of hyperlinks.
Hypertext Text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) Predominant markup language and basic building-block of webpages. It is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of tags, enclosed in angle brackets (like <html>), within the web page content. HTML tags normally come in pairs like <h1> and </h1>. The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag (they are also called opening tags and closing tags). Known by its acronym HTML.
Hypertext preprocessor (PHP) Widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It brings life to websites by communicating with external data sources, such as databases, news feeds, and XML documents. PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document. PHP 3 was launched in 1998; PHP 4 was released in 2000; and PHP 5 was released in 2005.
Java Programming language released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode (class file) that can run on any Java Virtual Machine (JVM) regardless of computer architecture. Java is a general-purpose, concurrent, class-based, object-oriented language that is specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is intended to let application developers "write once, run anywhere". Java is currently one of the most popular programming languages in use, and is widely used from application software to web applications.[
JavaScript Implementation of the ECMAScript language standard and is typically used to enable programmatic access to computational objects within a host environment. It can be characterized as a prototype-based object-oriented scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions.
JPEG Commonly used method of Lossy compression for digital photography that was named after the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which created the standard. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality. JPEG typically achieves 10:1 compression with little perceptible loss in image quality.
Linux Family of Unix-like computer operating systems using the Linux kernel (central OS component). Linux can be installed on a wide variety of computer hardware, ranging from mobile phones, tablet computers and video game consoles, to mainframes and supercomputers. The development of Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open source software collaboration; typically all the underlying source code can be used, freely modified, and redistributed, both commercially and non-commercially, by anyone under licenses such as the GNU General Public License.
Lossy compression Data encoding method which discards (loses) some of the data, in order to achieve its goal, with the result that decompressing the data yields content that is different from the original, though similar enough to be useful in some way. Lossy compression is most commonly used to compress multimedia data (audio, video, still images), especially in applications such as streaming media and internet telephony. By contrast, lossless compression is required for text and data files, such as bank records, text articles, etc.
MySQL Relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. The MySQL development project has made its source code available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under a variety of proprietary agreements. Acronym for “My Structured Query Language.”
Open source Describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Before the term open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; open source gained hold with the rise of the Internet, and the attendant need for massive retooling of the computing source code.
osCommerce Open source Commerce. It allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs involved. Combines open source solutions to provide a free and open development platform, which includes the PHP web scripting language, the Apache web server, and the MySQL database server. With no restrictions or special requirements, osCommerce can be installed on any PHP3 or PHP4 enabled web server, on any environment that PHP and MySQL supports, which includes Linux, Solaris, BSD, and Microsoft Windows environments.
PHP See Hypertext preprocessor.
Rasterization The process of converting a Vector image into a Bitmap image.
Rasterize See Rasterization.
Shopping cart software Software used in e-commerce to assist people making purchases online. The software allows online shopping customers to accumulate a list of items for purchase. Upon checkout, the software typically calculates a total for the order, including shipping and handling (i.e. postage and packing) charges and the associated taxes.
Style sheet selector One of the two parts of a CSS rule (the other being the properties, or declaration block) that declares which of the markup elements a style applies to. Selectors may apply to all elements of a specific type, or only those elements that match a certain attribute (e.g., how they are placed relative to each other in the markup code, or on how they are nested within the document object model). There are many types of style sheet selectors: element selectors, which select by element name; class selectors, which select by class name; contextual selectors, which select by context based on parent elements (what the element is nested within or what precedes it in the document), etc..
Supercomputer Computer that is at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation. Supercomputers are typically one-of-a-kind custom designs produced by companies such as Cray, IBM and Hewlett-Packard, who had purchased many of the 1980s companies to gain their experience. Since October 2010, the Tianhe-1A supercomputer, located in China, has been the fastest in the world.
Tag Non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system. HTML tags include paragraph, heading 1, heading 2, etc.
Unix Computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs. The Unix operating system was first developed in assembly, which is machine-dependent and a low-level programming language. Ken Thompson created the B language in 1969 and Unix was written in the B language, a high-level programming language. The first Unix system written in C was released in November 1973.
Vector image Image made up of numerous individual, scalable objects. These objects are defined by mathematical equations rather than pixels, so they always render at the highest quality. Objects may consist of lines, curves, and shapes with editable attributes such as color, fill, and outline. Changing the attributes of a vector object does not effect the object itself. Compare Bitmap image.
Vector processor Central processing unit (CPU) that implements an instruction set containing instructions that operate on one-dimensional arrays of data called vectors. This is in contrast to a scalar processor, whose instructions operate on single data items. Also known as array processor.
Web analytics Measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data, including the number of visitors and page views, for understanding and optimizing web usage. It can be used as a tool for measuring website traffic and for business and market research. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print advertising campaigns. It helps one to estimate how the traffic to the website changed after the launch of a new advertising campaign.
Web design Design of the way that content is delivered to an end-user through the World Wide Web, using a web browser or other web-enabled software.
Web development Refers to the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). This can include Web design, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development. However, among web professionals, "web development" usually refers to the main non-design aspects of building web sites: writing markup and coding. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.
World Wide Web Consortium Main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. It is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. Known by its acronym W3C.
XHTML See Extensible HyperText Markup Language.
XML See Extensible Markup Language.
Zend Engine Open source scripting engine (a Virtual Machine) commonly known for the important role it plays in the web automation language PHP.

Answer 1

Thanks for posting this!
I would only mention that your definition is incomplete for this -
Contextual selector A type of Style Sheet Selector that
and that it's most often referred to now as a Descendent selector, not a contextual selector.  It's basically the same as the Compound selector that you have already defined....