Bookmarks/Favorites: These are links to websites that you want to find more easily. When you find a website you like that you want to keep, in Netscape, you choose Add Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu; in Internet Explorer, you'll Add a Favorite.
Browser: A program that you use to look at information on the World Wide Web. Because the information is in a special format, you need a special program -- a 'web browser' -- to see the information.
Download: To move files from a location on another server (somewhere on a local network or the Internet) to your own computer. You can only download files from a computer that has been set up to let you do so.
Editor: Sometimes called an HTML editor or a Web editor, this is a program that makes writing web pages almost as simple as using a word-processor. Netscape Composer (part of Netscape Navigator 4) and Internet Assistant (part of Internet Explorer) are free editors. Claris Home Page and Adobe PageMill are commercial versions.
FTP: File Transfer Protocol - this is a way to send programs, not just text, between computers. There are many computers around the world that are set up as "anonymous FTP servers," which means that they make the files they have available to anyone who wants them. They're called 'anonymous' because you type "Anonymous" as your login name, with your regular email name as your password. You can use an ftp server over the web, which can make getting files pretty easy. FTP server URLs start with ftp:// rather than http://
Gopher: This is an earlier version of the web, and it has only text files. There is a network of gopher servers around the world, still, with lots of files. You can get to gopher through the web, too. A gopher URL starts with gopher://
HTML: HyperText Markup Language - the way text files are coded on the web so that they aren't completely ugly. All text on the web starts out as very plain text, then has HTML codes like <B> for boldface, <I> for italics, <P> for new paragraph, etc. added to make it look nicer.
HTTP: HyperText Transport Protocol - the underlying instructions used by the web browser to send and receive information. HTTP is like the rules rather than the content.
Internet Explorer: This is the Microsoft web browser. It works a lot like Netscape Navigator, but there are some small differences between the two programs.
Netscape: A company that makes one of the most popular web browsers, Netscape Navigator. Navigator is free to people in education (teachers, students, administrators, etc.). Many people refer to the browser simply as "Netscape."
Open File: You don't need to be on the web to look at web pages. You can choose Save As... from the File menu when you're in Netscape and save a page to your disk in "Source" format. Once it's on your disk, you can choose Open File from the File menu in Netscape to see the web page without being connected to the Internet. See my tech tip about this at http://osu.orst.edu/Dept/eli/may.htm
Open Location: This lets you type a URL to go to a web page.
Proxy Server: This computer serves as a gateway between a school and the Web. It stores previously-viewed sites so that subsequent access is far faster -- they load off the proxy server, not off the Internet. The proxy server can be set to allow various levels of access to the Internet. At its most liberal setting, the proxy server will not screen the sites at all. An intermediate level of access will prohibit specified sites but allow all others. At its most conservative setting, the proxy server will allow access only to sites specified in advance, often storing the sites ahead of time so that students don't need direct contact with the Internet. K-12 schools often use proxy servers at intermediate or conservative settings.
Search Tools: The power of the web is in its information, but there's too much there for anyone to read through it all. You need to use a "search engine" to find what you're looking for. There are many search engines, but among the most popular ones are Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.com), Infoseek (http://www.infoseek.com), and Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com). They all index a lot of the same places, but they also each have sites that the others don't. You'll need to try several to see which is best for you.
One way to get a good comparison of the search engines is with a "meta-search engine." This is one like Metacrawler (http://www.metacrawler.com) and Dogpile (http://www.dogpile.com) that searches a whole series of search engines for you and presents the results. It's an easy way to see if one of the search engines works better for what you need than others.
A special note is needed for http://www.shareware.com &emdash; this is a search engine that looks for programs that you can download from the Internet. These programs are not commercial ones like Microsoft Word, but rather smaller programs that often do useful and interesting things. You can find and download MOO and Chat clients by using www.shareware.com and searching for "MOO" or "Chat."
Telnet: Telnet is a program that lets you log into another computer, perhaps one thousands of miles away, and run programs there like SchMOOze. Telnet is not easy to use, because most telnet servers run Unix -- not a very 'friendly' operating system.
URL: Uniform/Universal Resource Locator -- this is the web address that you use, and looks something like http://ucs.orst.edu/~healeyd or telnet://schmooze.hunter.cuny.edu:8888