File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

File Transfer Protocol is a method to upload and download files over the Internet.

@import rule

 In CSS, the '@import' rule allows users to import style rules from other style sheets. Any @import rules must precede all rule sets in a style sheet. The '@import' keyword must be followed by the URI of the style sheet to include. A string is also allowed; it will be interpreted as if it had url(...) around it.

Feature Inspection

Feature inspections analyze only the feature set of a site, usually given end user scenarios for the end result to be obtained from the use of the website. For example, a scenario for the training site would be to register for a workshop. The features that would be used are navigating to the workshop site, selecting a class, adding it to their shopping cart, filling out the registration form, and pressing the submit button. Each set of features used to produce the required output (a registration) is analyzed for its availability, understandability, and general usefulness.

Field Observation (Ethnographic Study)

Field observation is simply observing users at their work using your website. Observing them in their own environment may help pinpoint problems that you might not think of in your own office or even in a testing lab. However, even though a skilled observer can be subtle, the very nature of the observation process will likely change the way the user works.

Flash

Flash is a multimedia special effects plug-in developed by Macromedia. For more information see Flash.

Float

In Cascading Style Sheets, floated images are removed from the document flow, and yet affect the layout of content. Margins on floated elements are not collapsed with anything. If you float an image, it will behave more or less like in HTML. The basic rule is that a floated element will go as high and as far to one side as possible, so long as it doesn't rise above where it would have been in normal flow, nor move outside its parent element (but negative margins can have the usual strange effect)

Focus Groups

 Focus groups are formal, structured events where you directly interact with users, asking them to voice their opinions and experiences regarding a website.

Following Element

 In (X)HTML an element A is called a following element of an element B, if and only if B is a preceding element of A.

Font Element

The font element has been deprecated and should not be used. Delete your font elements, not only from your web pages, but from your mind as well. Instead use markup and style sheets to control the appearance of text. Size should be defined by relative units such as percent, ems, exs. Do not use absolute units such as picas, inches, etc.

Font-size

The value used with the em-box to scale a font for display. CSS defines the font size to be "the size of the font when set solid. This means that the height of the font is the distance from the highest point in the highest glyph to the lowest point in the lowest glyph.

Formal Usability Inspection

This evaluation method formalizes the review of a specification or early prototype. The basic steps are to assemble a team of four to eight inspectors, assign each a special role in the context of the inspection, distribute the design documents to be inspected and instructions, have the inspectors go off on their own to do their inspection, and convene later in a formal inspection meeting. Defects found are assigned to responsible parties to be fixed, and the cycle continues.

Frames

 A feature of HTML, that allows a web author to divide a page into two or more separate windows. If the frame does not have a <title> element, or the <title> element is not meaningful this can cause accessibility issues. In addition, some browsers do not support frames.

Front Door

The first page of a website.

Function

In programming, functions are blocks of code that can be defined once and then be invoked from their parts of the program. Typically, a function takes an argument or series of arguments, performs a predefined set of operation upon them and returns a resulting value. Functions allow you to write very modular, structured applications. Code that would otherwise be repeated often can instead exist in one place and be invoked (or called) through the rest of your program. PHP has many, many commonly available functions. It also supports user-definable functions.

Gantt Chart

A gantt chart is a representation of a schedule of activities or milestones over time. It is useful in web project management.

GIF

GIF is an abbreviation for Graphics Interchange Format. It suited for flat color images and drawings. GIF images display up to 256 colors. The format was created by CompuServ and is often used for animated images.

Global Navigation

See Primary Navigation.

Glyph

An image for a character in a particular font and style.

Graceful Degradation

Graceful degradation is a web design strategy. When you put in features designed to take advantage of the latest features of newer browsers, you should do it in a way that older browsers and other user agents can disable those particular features and still access the basic content and functionality of the web site. It is the opposite of progressive enhancement. For more information visit fault-tolerance/graceful degradation.

Granularity

Granularity is the extent to which a larger piece of information has been broken down into smaller units.

Greek Text

Greek text is dummy text that is inserted into a web page to illustrate the position of the actual text on a page layout.

GUI

Abbreviation for "Graphical User Interface". It is pronounced "GOOEY".

Guideline Checklists

Guidelines and checklists help ensure that usability principles will be considered in a design. Usually, checklists are used in conjunction with a usability inspection method: the checklist gives the inspectors a basis by which to compare the product. Usability.gov has a good set of Research Based Web Design and Usability Guidleines. Also see: Guidelines.

Half-leading

In CSS, half-leading is the leading split in half and applied equally to the top and bottom edges of the element's content-area. The difference between font-size and line-height, applied equally above and below the content-area for each element.

HCI

 HCI stands for "Human Computer Interaction." It is the study of how people relate to electronic tools and interfaces.

Head Pointer

A device attached to the user's head, that allows a user to move the pointer on the screen, (usually moved by the mouse, a pointing device, the arrow keys, or with the movement of their head). It is useful for people who have limited mobility.

Headings

In (X)HTML there are 6 levels of headings, h1 through to h6. To maintain the logical structure of your documents, headings should follow a logical progression. Headings of level 3 shouldn't follow directly from headings of level 1, only from headings of level 2. You should always try to maintain a distinction between appearance and logic. Simply because an element is a heading of level 2 does not mean that it will be rendered larger and bolder than regular text in the document. Style sheets allow a web designer to very easily apply any styling to a heading. Keep in mind too, that there are browsers which don't display information in a visual way, relying on text to speech conversion, or braille conversion. For maximum accessibility, structural elements such as headings should be used correctly, and appropriately. Also see structure.

Hearing Disability

The condition of a person who experiences partial or total loss of hearing.

Heuristic (Expert) Evaluation

Heuristic evaluation is where a group of usability experts scrutinize a website and evaluate each element of the site against a list of commonly accepted principles or rules of thumb. They apply their training and experience to conduct independent evaluations. Research shows that such evaluations can identify a majority of the usability problems, with the problem-identification percentage increasing as evaluators are added. The major drawback of heuristic evaluation is that evaluators, regardless of their skill and experience, remain surrogate users (expert evaluators who emulate users) and not necessarily typical users of the product. For more information see: Heuristic Evaluation.

Hexadecimal

Hexadecimal numbers are used in HTML and CSS, and other computing applications, to represent colors. The bytes represent the red, green and blue components of the color. One byte represents a number in the range 00 to FF (in hexadecimal notation), or 0 to 255 in decimal notation. The hex triplet is formed by concatenating three bytes in hexadecimal notation. The system uses numbers from 0 to 9 and letters from a to f in any combination of six (and starting with an octothorpe) to represent the correlating red, green, and blue colors (#RRGGBB). e.g. #FFFFFF = 255, 255, 255 = white.

Hierarchy

Hierarchy is a top down organizational structure.

Horizontal Scrolling

Horizontal scrolling is scrolling sideways within a web browser's window. When a site has content that is wider than the browser window, users must scroll horizontally to see it. Horizontal scrolling should be avoided if possible. It's awkward to do and users hate it.

Hue

Hue is the name of a distinct color of the spectrum (e.g. red, green, yellow, orange, blue). It is the particular wavelength frequency.

HyperText Markup Language (HTML)

The markup language that is used on most of the World Wide Web to create web pages. The standards for HTML are controlled by the W3C.

ID Attributes and Selectors

Document languages may contain attributes that are declared to be of type ID. What makes attributes of type ID special is that no two such attributes can have the same value; whatever the document language, an ID attribute can be used to uniquely identify its element. In HTML all ID attributes are named "id"; XML applications may name ID attributes differently, but the same restriction applies.The ID attribute of a document language allows authors to assign an identifier to one element instance in the document tree. CSS ID selectors match an element instance based on its identifier. A CSS ID selector contains a "#" immediately followed by the ID value. ID selectors have a higher precedence than attribute selectors. For example, in HTML , the selector #p123 is more specific than [ID=p123] in terms of the cascade.

If Structure

In programming, an if structure allows you to execute select lines of code only when specified conditions are true.

If...else Structure

In programming, an if ...else structure executes a statement based on the value of if. If the tested condition returns false, PHP allows you to specify another block of code to be executed using the else keyword. Each of these conditionally executed blocks of code is known as a branch, and each branch must be placed within braces if it contains more than one line of code.

Image Map

Areas of an image on a web page that have links to other areas of the Web. Some types of images map can have alt tags on the areas, while others must have text links.

Information and Communications Technology (ICT)

A generic name for all of the technologies involved with communicating with computers.

Information Architect

 A person who organizes inherent patterns in data to make complexities clear. He or she uncovers patterns and relationships and then structures content allowing users to find paths to knowledge.

Information Architecture

Information architecture is the organization of information. This field studies how to organize information most effectively to help people find and use the information. It also refers to the structure or organization of a website, especially how pages relate to one another.

Inheritance

A mechanism in CSS by which some values are passed down to the children of an element in the document tree. Each property defines whether it is inherited or not. It is the mechanism by which styles applied to an element are assumed by any descendant elements.

Inline Box

In CSS, the inline box is the addition of (half-)leading to the content-area for each element. For for replaced elements height of the inline box of an element will be exactly equal to the intrinsic height of the element plus any margins, borders, or padding. For non-replaced elements height of the inline box of a non-replaced element will be exactly equal to the value for line-height.

Inline Element

Inline (also known as "text level") elements typically contain text and other inline elements. When rendered visually, inline elements do not usually begin on a new line. Inline content is displayed with no line breaks before and afterwards. Examples of inline elements include emphasised text, strong text and links.

Inline Style Sheet

An inline style controls the appearance of a single element. CSS rule(s) are placed in the HTML via the style attribute. With inline, style and content are intermingled in the body of the document.

Inquiry

Inquiry is a broad category of usability evaluation methods. It is part one of the "Usability Evaluation Toolbox". With inquiry methods usability evaluators obtain information about users' likes, dislikes, needs, and understanding of the system by talking to them, observing them using the system in real work (not for the purpose of usability testing), or letting them answer questions verbally or in written form. Numerous methods exist for doing inquiries. For more information see: Inquiry.

Inspection

Inspection is a broad category of usability evaluation methods. It is part two of the "Usability Evaluation Toolbox". In the inspection approach, usability specialists, users and other professionals examine usability related aspects of a user interface. Numerous methods exist for doing inquiries. For more information see: Inspection.

Internal Style Sheet- See Embedded .

Iterative design is a process where a web site progressively develops in a repeated cycle. Iteration is repeated revisions.
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Inverted Pyramid

 The inverted pyramid is a type of writing style where conclusions are presented first not last. It begins with a conclusion then moves to the key information followed by background information. Usability studies show that web users want instant gratification. That is why the inverted pyramid style is important. For more information see: Inverted Pyramids in Cyberspace by Jakob Nielsen.

Java

An object-oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. It was specifically designed for the distributed environment of the Web and can be used to create applications that can run on a single computer or distributed among several computers in a network. It can also be used to write applets.

JavaScript

 JavaScript is a client-side scripting language that allows dynamic behavior to be specified within HTML documents. JavaScript is not Java. Java is a full programming language similar to C. JavaScript is similar to C, but is only a scripting language, and cannot be used to write full blown applications. For accessibility reasons, JavaScript should not be relied on. For more information see JavaScript Accessibility.

Journaled Session

  Journaled sessions are where users conduct usability tests in remote locations. Users perform several tasks with the prototype, much as in formal usability tests, and their actions are captured with the journalizing software. Actual actual mouse movements or interactions with dialog boxes and menu items are captured.

JPEG

 JPEG is an abbreviation of "Joint Photographic Experts Group" and pronounced jay-peg. It is a a lossy compression file format used frequently for photographs.

nclusive Design

Inclusive design means developing systems or web sites flexible enough to serve the broadest possible range of users. Inclusive design calls for adaptable interfaces to be built into the product early in the design phase, producing features easily used by everyone. It allows for customization based on user preference. It provides equivalent access to content (e.g. auditory and visual) based on user preference. Inclusive design provides access to users with disabilities and provides better usability for everyone.