For beginners - Internet, Web and ethical Coding Classes
Here you will find a dictionary of common terms for web developers. These are mostly technical terms that are used frequently and defined very briefly. Understanding these terms will help you to learn the jargon which is relevant of any understanding. It is not super necessary to learn them by hard, but it is good to have them in mind and to know where to look them up. As an advice, try to grasp for a definition in your own words.
These definitions are sorted alphabetically. There is no consistent use of brackets. If a headline contains brackets it migth be an abbreviation or a explanation of an abbreviation. The first expression is the more commonly used term, e.g. nobody says Application Programming Interface, when she or he needs a connection between the Frontend and the Backend, everyone would say API. Some definitions also contain further information about more comprehensive information and synonyms in a broader sense. There are terms that are used in some cases like synonyms, but do have important differences.
Accessibility (a11y) is a measure of how accessible a computer system is to all people, including those with disabilities or impairments. It concerns both software and hardware and how they are configured in order to enable a disabled or impaired person to use that computer system successfully.
Source: https://www.techopedia.com/definition/10165/accessibility-a11y
https://dev.to/awwsmm/eli5-what-is-an-api-1dd2
Synonyms: Collection, List etc.
An attribute extends a tag, changing its behavior or providing metadata. An attribute always has the form
name=value(the attribute’s identifier followed by its associated value).
<input type="number" min="0" max="1" step="0.1" />
This HTML code represents a form input field, that must contain a number from 0 to 1.
It iterates in 0.1 steps. type, min, max and step are attributes.
Synonyms: Terminal, Command line (CLI), Shell, Console
BEM is a highly useful, powerful, and simple naming convention that makes your front-end code easier to read and understand, easier to work with, easier to scale, more robust and explicit, and a lot more strict.
.person { } /* Block */
.person__head { } /* Element */
.person--tall { } /* Modifier */
Source: http://getbem.com/introduction/
A bug is a coding error that usually causes glitches. The term got its name from an incident, where an actual bug was pulled out a computer.
Source: https://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/definition/bug
Synonyms: Bash, Terminal, Command Line Interface (CLI), Shell
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a declarative language that controls how webpages look in the browser. The browser applies CSS style declarations to selected elements to display them properly. A style declaration contains the properties and their values, which determine how a webpage looks.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/CSS
| Further Reads |
|---|
| CSS Guidlines |
Open Source and FOSS are essentially the same. The source code is open for use. However they differ in values and reasons. While in FOSS the aim of making the source code open for use is to help others and each other, in Open Source it represents a useful technique with which it’s easier to keep the program free from bugs and add new features.
In addition to that the term Open Source is not a secured name. When companies use that term it is not certain that e.g. the whole source code is accessible.
Other than that both are used in the same situation which is why even though they have slight similarities they can describe the same software.
An element consists of the opening tag, the closing tag and the content.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/HTML/Introduction_to_HTML/Getting_started
FOSS follows four principles:
Difference between FOSS and Open Source
The hamburger menu is used to view options. It is referred to as hotdog menu or three line menu as well. It got it’s name from looking like a hamburger.
Source: https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/h/hamburger-menu.htm
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is a descriptive language that specifies webpage structure. An HTML document is a plaintext document structured with elements. Elements are surrounded by matching opening and closing tags. Each tag begins and ends with angle brackets (<>).
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/HTML
The HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the underlying network protocol that enables transfer of hypermedia documents on the Web, typically between a browser and a server so that humans can read them. The current version of the HTTP specification is called HTTP/2.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/HTTP
| Open Source Code Editors |
|---|
| VS Code |
| Atom IDE |
| Sublime Text |
JavaScript is a programming language that allows you to implement complex things on web pages. Every time a web page does more than just sit there and display static information for you to look at—displaying timely content updates, interactive maps, animated 2D/3D graphics, scrolling video jukeboxes, or more—you can bet that JavaScript is probably involved.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/JavaScript
Synonyms: Collection, Array
Markdown similar to a coding language like html, exept it’s much easier and not considert a programming language. Amongst others it is used on GitHub to format text.
Here you can find an explanation on how to use it.
Source: https://t3n.de/news/eigentlich-markdown-478610/
Synonyms: Entity
Open Source means that the code is open and therefor can be accessed by the user. Unlike FOSS there are no set rules.
Difference between FOSS and Open Source
Padding is used in CSS to indicate how much space there is around paragraphs, headings etc.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/padding
Responsive design is the practice of designing a website so it looks and works properly on a range of different devices — particularly mobile phones and tablets as well as desktops and laptops.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Responsive_Design_Mode
Rust is a new open-source systems programming language created by Mozilla and a community of volunteers, designed to help developers create fast, secure applications which take full advantage of the powerful features of modern multi-core processors. It prevents segmentation faults and guarantees thread safety, all with an easy-to-learn syntax.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Rust
The current context of execution. The context in which values and expressions are “visible,” or can be referenced. If a variable or other expression is not “in the current scope,” then it is unavailable for use. Scopes can also be layered in a hierarchy, so that child scopes have access to parent scopes, but not vice versa.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Scope
| Further Explanations |
|---|
| MDN Article about CSS Specificity |
| CSS Specificity Calculator |
| CSS Specificity Cheatsheet |
A server is a software or hardware offering a service to a user, usually referred to as client. A hardware server is a shared computer on a network, usually powerful and housed in a data center. A software server (often running on a hardware server) is a program that provides services to client programs or a user interface to human clients.
Source: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Server
TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript that is compiled into plain JavaScript that can be interpreted by any browser. TypeScript its self cannot be interpreted by browsers, so it is a kind of dialect of JavaScript. A typical new feature is to type-set variables:
const foo: string[] // type-setting `foo` to an array of strings
const foo = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz'] // setting value of `foo`
Source: https://www.typescriptlang.org/index.html