Website Design and Development Glossary

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B

Bandwidth

A data transmission rate; the maximum amount of information (bits/second) that can be transmitted along a channel.

Source: Dictionary.com

BBS (Bulletin Board System)

A computer and associated software which typically provides an electronic message database where people can log in and leave messages. Messages are typically split into topic groups similar to the newsgroups on Usenet (which is like a distributed BBS). Any user may submit or read any message in these public areas.

Apart from public message areas, a BBS may provide archives of files, personal electronic mail and any other services or activities of interest to the bulletin board's system operator (the "sysop"). Thousands of local BBSes are in operation throughout the world, typically run by amateurs for fun out of their homes on MS-DOS boxes with a single modem line each. Although BBSes have traditionally been the domain of hobbyists, an increasing number of BBSes are connected directly to the Internet, and many BBSes are currently operated by government, educational, and research institutions. Fans of Usenet and Internet or the big commercial time-sharing bboards such as CompuServe, CIX and GEnie tend to consider local BBSes the low-rent district of the hacker culture, but they serve a valuable function by knitting together lots of hackers and users in the personal-micro world who would otherwise be unable to exchange code at all.

Use of this term for a Usenet newsgroup generally marks one either as a newbie fresh in from the BBS world or as a real old-timer predating Usenet.

Source: Dictionary.com

BCC (Blind Carbon Copy)

The field in an e-mail header that names additional recipients for the message. It is similar to carbon copy (cc), but the names do not appear in the recipient's message. Not all e-mail systems support the bcc feature.

Source: TechWeb.com

Bit

A fundamental unit of information having just two possible values, as either of the binary digits 0 or 1.

Source: Dictionary.com

Bot (roBOT)

A program used on the Internet that performs a repetitive function such as posting a message to multiple newsgroups or searching for information or news. Bots are used to provide comparison shopping. Bots also keep a channel open on the Internet Relay Chat (IRC). The term is used for all variety of macros and intelligent agents that are Internet or Web related.

Source: TechWeb.com

Bps (Bits Per Second)

The rate at which data is transferred (as by a modem).

Source: Dictionary.com

Browser

A program which allows a person to read hypertext. The browser gives some means of viewing the contents of nodes (or "pages") and of navigating from one node to another.

Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Opera, Internet Explorer are examples for browsers for the World Wide Web. They act as clients to remote web servers.

Source: Dictionary.com

Byte

A sequence of 8 bits (enough to represent one character of alphanumeric data) processed as a single unit of information.

Source: Dictionary.com

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