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A brief history of the browser wars:

November 2002 -
Microsoft was able to release Windows 98 with their browser bundled into it, meaning that if you want to have the most recent version of Windows, you automatically have Microsoft's browser there, ready to go, on the bar next to the "Start" button. This, according to all conventional wisdom, was a major coup for Microsoft. It was also a lot of why Microsoft finds themselves in hot water with the department of justice. Some feel that this is not a fair, free market advantage that Microsoft had. The allegation is made that they have used their position with the Windows operating system to destroy any competition they may have had by bundling the browser in with the operating system.
      Netscape is also giving away their browser but to deal with the bundling problem has made their source code available to developers in the hopes that they will pick it up and run with it, making it a better browser. It is important to have the most recent browsers due to the advancing technology on the internet. You truly will get more out of your time on the internet with an updated browser.
      My take on it is that Netscape has lost. But you never know. Microsoft is doing some monopolistic maneuverings that may just estrange enough of the developer community to get a flow of users away from their products. But for the time being, they are king, and they know it. They make a darn good browser.
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May 16, 2006
The above information was written nearly 4 years ago, and it appears that some of it has turned out as predicted. Internet Explorer has clearly dominated the Internet, but Firefox is now getting a good share of users. Microsoft has just released IE 7 in the hopes of staunching the flow to other browser options. Granted, 85% of users are still happily plugging along with IE 6 that has remained essentially unchanged for a number of years, but that 15% is significant since it represents those who have gone to the trouble to download and install another browser. IE comes free and installed with Windows. It willl be interesting to see what the next 4 years brings.
Domain Name
November 2002
This is the unique name of the business or organization. Such as
gallerywebs.com
As you may imagine the ".com" is for commercial sites
".net" is for non-commercial sites, (theoretically).
".edu" is for&.; that's right, educational sites.
".org" is for science fiction sites&.; all right, just kidding, its really for non-commercial organization sites.
".info" was just released on October 1, 2001 and ".biz" will be along shortly thereafter.
May 16, 2006
It is interesting to see how things have changed since the writing of the above domain information. The meaning to what the .com's and .info's etc... has all run together and has now been dominated simply by what is available. If your domain is not available as a .com, then you will definitely settle for a .net or .org or whatever. The extension .biz has become common.
Download
The process of transferring data from the internet to your computer. The opposite, to upload, is to transfer files from your computer to the ISP that would in turn make the data available for others to view on the internet. When you visit a website, you download to your computer the text and graphics and maybe even sound, if they have it at the site. This is one way of downloading. Another is when you transfer a file by clicking on appropriate links that begin the process, sometimes lengthy, of receiving a file or files to your computer. Lets say for instance that you wanted to upgrade your browser. So you visit the Microsoft or Netscape website and download the program.
Flash
is a program made by Macromedia©. Flash uses a technology that employs vector graphics as opposed to bitmap graphics. Vector is pure math whereas bitmap is pixels. The vector images are much "lighter weight" meaning they load very fast. Flash sites typically feature animation and sound, resulting in the most dynamic pages on the web. Flash requires a plugin or the most recent browsers from Microsoft or Netscape to view.
Click here to get the Flash plugin. We have a page designed to help with the process. Its easy and well worth it.
Freeware
This is software that you can use for free. No strings attached. Somebody just wrote a program and then gives it away.
HTML
Hyperlink Text Markup Language. Which really should be self explanatory. But just in case its not... HTML is the language of the internet. All the pages you visit on the internet are written, behind the scenes, in HTML. The beauty of the language is that it is just text, it is readable by a human being, (although it looks a little strange). The language allows for the "linking" which goes on all over the place. If you would like to see what HTML looks like: in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, click on "View" (up top on the menu bar) and select "Source". In Netscape, click on "View" then "Page Source". What you will then see is HTML code. Fascinating, isn't it?
ISP
Internet Service Provider. These are the folks that you pay monthly to let you access the internet. America on Line is perhaps the most widely used but there are now gazillions of ISP's all over the world that are privately or governmentally owned. We use Interland as our ISP.
Java Script
A scripting language that is arguably the most commonly used now on the web. It performs many functions for us, from browser detection code to animating images, to special effects, to form handling and on and on it goes. To view java script one must have Netscape 3.0 or higher, or Microsoft's IE 4.0 or higher. Our site features Java Script in the site map with the "mouse over" effect on the words.
Pay per click
Some search services place your site, not by the content of the site, but by the
Plug-ins
Plug-ins are little programs that help our browsers do more. They are necessary when a web page developer uses technology to enhance his/her site that the browser does not have the capability to view. So the developer will put a link on the site to another website where the visitor can download the plug-in.
Search Engines
Internet indexing. Sort of a large yellow pages for the billions of sites on the web. They use keywords that the user types in to locate pertinent websites that have registered themselves with the service. These links will load a new browser window. So you may return here by closing that browser when you are done with it.
Ask Jeeves is an interesting search service.  It utilizes several of the main search engines.
Yahoo is one of the best known and is widely used.
Google has become one of the more dominant search engines, if not the dominant one. They are tops for the reason that they are, IMHO, the best.
Others include:
@About
@Excite/Web Crawler
@Fast All the Web
@GoTo
@Hot Bot
@Iwon
@Alta Vista
@Look Smart
@Lycos
@Netscape
@Open Directory
@AOL Search
@MSN
Shareware
Software that you can try for awhile, and then buy if you like it. Usually the shareware versions are limited. A limitation might be that you can't save anything that you make with the program, or only certain features of the program are available until you register. Some, such as CuteFTP, allow you to use the full program for free for 30 days, and then it is no longer available to you until you register it. I think that WinZip still employs the complete honor system. You can use the full version forever without registering it, but the price you pay is that you can't sleep at night knowing that you have not been honorable.
Site Map
This is essentially a menu of the main pages of a web site.  Usually a site map will be available on everypage of a site so that you, the visitor can always navigate around the site.  The site map facilitates always being able to get to the main or home page, the "contact" page or e-mail link, as well as the major pages of the site.  Gallery Webs uses the fancy looking box along the top left side of most pages in the site, as well as a text site map along the bottom.
Site Promotion
The internet is vast. So vast in fact that the biggest internet business is one that simply helps people find what they are looking for on the web. The website must be listed in the major search engines. Visiting other complementary sites on the web and offering to trade links with them is a common technique for site promotion. Also a site can utilize services such as "Link Exchange", which is a reciprocal linking service. These are free, but they require that you display a banner on your site that links you to other participating sites. Your banner will turn up on other such sites as well that link back to your site. There are also New Web Site announcement services. Premium services are available as well and these employ many different methods of operation. Here is a hypothetical situation but it helps to illustrate how internet based premium advertising work. Lets say you were to buy a search term for a certain period of time. Lets say the word "art" for one month at Yahoo. You would pay Yahoo a fee for the word and they would give you say 100,000 exposures for the fee. This means that when someone types in the word "art" your banner would show up above the query results. Since it would be unlikely that you could afford every occurrence of a term for a month on Yahoo, your banner would only come up proportionate to the amount of times it was requested. Sorry to sound nerdy, but this explains why you might type in your keyword and get someone elses banner. Search Engines as large as Yahoo have many blocks of say, 100,000, to sell of certain keywords. Keep in mind that I am not here telling you how Yahoo works. I am using them in this example to help explain the concept of for-pay web advertising.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator: This is another way of saying "internet address", ie. http://www.gallerywebs.com. I highly recommend the use of this term as it makes one appear to be quite comfortable with the whole internet thing. The old line of "whats your sign", can now be replaced with, "whats your URL?".

We will be constantly adding to our glossary of common internet terms that nobody understands on a regular basis.