Wysiwhat?! Learning to speak web lingo...

January 4, 2012 by jason

No matter how tech savvy you may be, there is often a language barrier when discussing internet technology. Sometimes it stems from a brand new technology that no one has really heard of. Other times it can be a simple issue of "How do you pronounce that word anyways?". Lets take "Wysiwyg" for example. I find myself using that word pretty often when trying to explain to a potential customer how they will be able to change/add content on their own without coding knowledge. The problem is, even though I know what a "Wizzywig" is, more often than not, they have no idea. In response I have started building a list of common jargon that needs a little explanation, so that I can have a readily accessible answer when the inevitable questions come up.


Wysiwyg (Wizzywig): Acronym for "What you see is what you get".  A plugin that converts webpage text input areas into mini word processors, with a very similar style and function as Microsoft Word. This allows more flexible content customization and layout without needing to know any HTML coding techniques, since the wysiwyg editor takes care of all of the coding for you. We recommend CKEditor.

Clearing your browser cache: Depending on your browser settings, various parts of any webpage that you visit are saved to your hard drive so that if you visit that page again, it does not need to re-dowload the files. This is a great way to speed up page load times, but it has the unfortunate side effect of making the page display out of date information if there has been a very recent update to the website. This does not cause a problem once a website has been completed, since any changes would be minor. But during development, there will often be large chunks of information that have been updated and viewing the older "cached" versions will make the page look broken or incomplete. During development, it is important to clear your browser cache any time you want to make sure you are seeing the website in it's fully up-to-date form. See how to clear your browser cache.

Favicon: The little 16x16 pixel icon graphic displayed in the browser next to the URL for a website. It also appears on the tab and in the list of your favorites for some browsers. Although small, this extra detail really helps create a well rounded theme for any website and can be used to give a personal touch to a site.

Page Title: Not to be confused with the title text displayed on the page as the heading for the content, this title is used mostly by the browser and search engines. This is the text that appears on the top of the browser window (or tab if you are using tabbed browsing). It is also what is used as the title of the page anytime this page is shown as a search result on google or Bing.

Modal pop-up: A modal pop up is what you call that overlay of content that appears within a webpage covering up the existing content (usually with a translucent grey background). These are becoming more and more common as they allow an easy way to integrate more detailed content to a page without adding clutter or forcing the user to click through to a new page.