Managing Interactive Media Glossary: W

Glossary: W (25 entries found)

walled garden: A self-contained mini version of the Internet which a service provider produces in order to provide a 'safe' web experience to its customers. This might be to avoid certain kinds of content (a school might do this to limit pupils' web access) or to make sure available material is in the right format for cable TV or WAP.
WAP: Wireless Application Protocol, web-like system for use on mobile phones. Uses a mark-up language called WML which is based on XML.
waterfall approach: A traditional software development approach where one stage sequentially follows another. This has received criticism because it is slow, methodical, heavy on administration and relies on strong documentation.
waveform: A visual representation of a signal, usually electronic in nature, that changes over time, such as recorded sound.
WBS: Work Breakdown Structure, a stage in classic project management methodology where the development of a project is split into phases of development showing the time and resources needed. Each main stage may be linked to a milestone.
web access logs: Continually growing list of all the web pages and other files accessed from a web server. Will usually include information on what computer made the request and which page contained the link that was followed to get to the site.
web analytics: The analysis of data gathered online about the use of a website including time spent on site, most viewed pages, success of promotions and sales figures among others.
web browser: A piece of software that takes as its input a web page - with all its text, images, links and even sounds and moving images - and formats and displays it on the user's computer.
web editor: Either a person who is responsible for the content of a web page or a piece of software used to lay out web pages.
web pages: The individual documents, based around HTML, that make up a website. Analogous to the pages of a magazine.
web safe palette: A set of 216 colours which will always reproduce correctly in a web page when viewed on a system with only a few colours. It is not 256 colours because some places in the computer's palette are reserved for the windowing environment.
web server: A computer that accepts HTTP requests from client, which are known as web browsers, and returns web pages, which are usually HTML documents and linked objects (images, etc.), or runs programs that generate web pages. Also, a program that provides that functionality.
web surfer: Person who accesses the World Wide Web and looks at websites.
web-television: Display of web pages on a television set rather than a computer screen.
website: A group of web pages and possibly other networked resources that are designed to be viewed as a distinct entity in the same way a magazine is made up of pages and separate articles.
white balance: A setting of a camera to make sure that what is white in a scene is recorded as white by adjusting the relative proportions of the primary colours and so compensating for the inherent colour of the light source. Also known as colour balancing if carried out after recording.
WHOIS: A part of the DNS which allows you to look up who owns a particular domain name or IP address. See also domain name system.
Wi-Fi: trade mark name used to denote IEEE 802.11 standard wireless network. The basic system has 11 megabits speed over a medium range sufficient for use in buildings or a close neighbourhood but newer versions with suffix letters (such as 802.11g) have higher bandwidth.
wide area network: Computer network that extends beyond the home or office building or complex. Often consisting of linked local area networks, as in the Internet.
wide latitude: Of film, able to record a wide range of brightness levels in a scene, or cope with under- and/or over-exposure. It is analagous to dynamic range.
WML: Wireless Markup Language, based on XML and similar to HTML. Used to mark up web pages for WAP.
WMLScript: Extension scripting language for WML. See also JavaScript.
World Wide Web (WWW): The multiplicity of HTML documents on websites spread around the Internet. On a technical level the web uses Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) for communication between web browsers and web servers, although other Internet protocols such as FTP (File Transfer Protocol) are also used in tandem.
WORM: In data storage, Write Once Read Many, a type of computer disc that can be written to but not changed. Often used to denote a CD-ROM that has been written rather than pressed or replicated. The process is known as burning a WORM or burning a CD.
WYSIWYG: Describes an application that shows you the end result of your work exactly as it will be seen by the end-users: What You See Is What You Get.