Knowledge Base

A layout engine
A layout engine, or rendering engine, is software that takes marked up content (such as HTML, XML, image files, etc.) and formatting information (such as CSS, XSL, etc.) and displays the formatted content on the screen. It "paints" on the content area of a window, which is displayed on a monitor or a printer. A layout engine is typically used for web browsers, e-mail clients, or other applications that require the displaying (and editing) of web contents.

The term "layout engine" only reached popular usage when these became easily separable from the browser. For example, Gecko, the Mozilla project's open-source layout engine, is used by a variety of products derived from the Mozilla code base, including the Firefox web browser, the Thunderbird E-mail client, and Seamonkey application suite. Trident, the layout engine from Internet Explorer, is used by many applications on the Microsoft Windows platform to render HTML, as in Outlook Express, some versions of Microsoft Outlook, and the mini-browsers in Winamp and RealPlayer.

Similarly, Opera Software's proprietary Presto engine is licensed to a number of other software vendors, as well as being used in Opera's own Opera web browser, and KDE's open-source KHTML engine is used both in KDE's own Konqueror web browser as well as being used, in an adapted form, as the basis for WebKit, the rendering engine in Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome web browsers.

ActionScript
ActionScript is a scripting language based on ECMAScript. ActionScript is used primarily for the development of websites and software using the Adobe Flash Player platform (in the form of SWF files embedded into Web pages), but is also used in some database applications (such as Alpha Five), and in basic robotics, as with the Make Controller Kit.

AJAX
Ajax (shorthand for asynchronous JavaScript + XML) is a group of interrelated web development techniques used on the client-side to create interactive web applications. With Ajax, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page. The use of Ajax techniques has led to an increase in interactive or dynamic interfaces on web pages and better quality of Web services due to the asynchronous mode. Data is usually retrieved using the XMLHttpRequest object. Despite the name, the use of JavaScript and XML is not actually required, nor do the requests need to be asynchronous.

API
An application programming interface (API) is an interface that a software program implements in order to allow other software to interact with it; much in the same way that software might implement a user interface in order to allow humans to interact with it.

API's are implemented by applications, libraries and operating systems to define how other software can make calls to or request services from them. An API determines the vocabulary and calling conventions the programmer should employ to use the services. It may include specifications for routines, data structures, object classes, and protocols used to communicate between the consumer and implementer of the API.

ASP
Active Server Pages (ASP), also known as Classic ASP or ASP Classic, was Microsoft's first server-side script engine for dynamically-generated web pages. Initially released as an add-on to Internet Information Services (IIS) via the Windows NT 4.0 Option Pack, it was subsequently included as a free component of Windows Server (since the initial release of Windows 2000 Server). It has now been superseded by ASP.NET.

CGI
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard protocol for interfacing external application software with an information server, commonly a web server.

The task of such an information server is to respond to requests (in the case of web servers, requests from client web browsers) by returning output. Each time a request is received, the server analyzes what the request asks for, and returns the appropriate output. 

CMS
A content management system (CMS) is a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer based. The procedure are designed to:

    * Allow for large numbers of people to contribute to and share stored data
    * Control access to data based on user roles. User role are used to define each use as to what information they can view or edit
    * Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data
    * Reduce repetitive duplicate input
    * Improve the ease of report writing
    * Improve communication between users.

CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation semantics (that is, 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 be applied to any kind of XML document, including SVG and XUL.

CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation, including elements such as the layout, colors, and fonts. This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple pages to share formatting, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as by allowing for tableless web design). CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices. While the author of a document typically links that document to a CSS style sheet, readers can use a different style sheet, perhaps one on their own computer, to override the one the author has specified.

DBMS
A Database Management System (DBMS) is a set of computer programs that controls the creation, maintenance, and the use of the database in a computer platform or of an organization and its end users. It allows organizations to place control of organization-wide database development in the hands of database administrators (DBAs) and other specialists. A DBMS is a system software package that helps the use of integrated collection of data records and files known as databases. It allows different user application programs to easily access the same database. DBMSs may use any of a variety of database models, such as the network model or relational model.

DHTML
Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, is 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. Thus the dynamic characteristic of DHTML is the way it functions while a page is viewed, not in its ability to generate a unique page with each page load.

DOM
The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents. Aspects of the DOM (such as its "Elements") may be addressed and manipulated within the syntax of the programming language in use. The public interface of a DOM are specified in its Application Programming Interface (API).

E-commerce
Electronic commerce, commonly known as (electronic marketing) e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.

Extranet
An extranet is a private network that uses Internet protocols, network connectivity, and possibly the public telecommunication system to securely share part of an organization's information or operations with suppliers, vendors, partners, customers or other businesses. An extranet can be viewed as part of a company's intranet that is extended to users outside the company, usually via the Internet. It has also been described as a "state of mind" in which the Internet is perceived as a way to do business with a selected set of other companies (business-to-business, B2B), in isolation from all other Internet users. In contrast, business-to-consumer (B2C) models involve known servers of one or more companies, communicating with previously unknown consumer users.

Flash
Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform originally acquired by Macromedia and currently developed and distributed by Adobe Systems. Since its introduction in 1996, Flash has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page Flash components, to integrate video into web pages, and more recently, to develop rich Internet applications.

Hosting
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to make their own website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server they own or lease for use by their clients as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data center. Web hosts can also provide data center space and connectivity to the Internet for servers they do not own to be located in their data center, called colocation.

HTML
HTML, which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms. It is written in the form of HTML elements consisting of "tags" surrounded by angle brackets within the web page content. It can include or can load scripts in languages such as JavaScript which affect the behavior of HTML processors like Web browsers; and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to define the appearance and layout of text and other material. The W3C, maintainer of both HTML and CSS standards, encourages the use of CSS over explicit presentational markup.[1]

Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is the encoding scheme used to create and format a web document. A user need not be an expert programmer to make use of HTML for creating hypertext documents that can be put on the internet.

HTML is the language of communication that flies over the network. Although files are not necessarily required to be stored in HTML formatting, it is often found the most easy way to do so. Servers may store files in other formats, or in variations on HTML that include extra information of local interest only, and then generate HTML on the fly with each request.

JAVA
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and 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.

JavaScript
JavaScript(JS)  is an object-oriented scripting language used to enable programmatic access to objects within both the client application and other applications. It is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as an integrated component of the web browser, allowing the development of enhanced user interfaces and dynamic websites. JavaScript is a dialect of the ECMAScript standard and is characterized as a dynamic, weakly typed, prototype-based language with first-class functions. JavaScript was influenced by many languages and was designed to look like Java, but to be easier for non-programmers to work with.

Joomla
Joomla! is a content management system platform for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets as well as a Model–view–controller (MVC) Web Application Development framework.

The system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization.

It is written in the PHP programming language and uses the MySQL database system to store information. Joomla is the result of a fork of Mambo. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Joomla is free software.

MVC
Model–View–Controller (MVC) is an architectural pattern used in software engineering. The pattern isolates business logic from input and presentation, permitting independent development, testing and maintenance of each.
MVC is often seen in web applications where the view is the HTML or XHTML generated by the app. The controller receives GET or POST input and decides what to do with it, handing over to domain objects (ie the model) which contain the business rules and know how to carry out specific tasks such as processing a new subscription.