Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Vocabulary

User-centered Design: It is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process.

Usability Test: It is a technique used to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system.

Tool Tip: It is a common graphical user interface element. It is used in conjunction with a cursor, usually a mouse pointer. The user hovers the cursor over an item, without clicking it, and a small "hover box" appears with supplementary information regarding the item being hovered over.

Information Architecture: It is the art of expressing a model or concept of information used in activities that require explicit details of complex systems. Among these activities are library systems, Content Management Systems, web development, user interactions, database development, programming, technical writing, enterprise architecture, and critical system software design.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Vocabulary 2

Web server
A computer that is set up with software that accepts HTTP requests.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
A stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the languages can be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL.

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
A type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it.

An Internet Service Provider (ISP)
A company that offers its customers access to the Internet. The ISP connects to its customers using a data transmission technology appropriate for delivering Internet Protocol Datagrams.