Glossary of Terms

There are many technical terms used in this section of the website - the IT industry has a tendency to create a lot of these - here are come of the more common ones you may come across on this site.

ASCII
Abbreviation for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a code that represents letters, numerals, punctuation marks, control characters, and symbols, and makes it possible to transfer information from one computer to another.

Attachment
A file included with an e-mail message.

BCC
Abbreviation for "blind carbon copy" or "blind courtesy copy", a way to send a copy of an e-mail message to a recipient without the recipient's name or address appearing in the message header.

CC
Abbreviation for "carbon copy" or "courtesy copy", a way to send a copy of an e-mail message to a recipient so that the recipient's name or address appears in the message header.

HTML
HTML stands for HyperText Mark-up Language, it is a way of providing content that goes beyond just plain text. It is the standard way to create and display documents on web servers. Recently it has gained a little more acceptance as a method of sending content via email. Currently many Macintosh clients don't support easy display of html mail.

IMAP
IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It is a method of accessing electronic mail or bulletin board messages that are kept on a mail server. In other words, it permits a "client" email program to access remote message stores as if they were local. For example, email stored on an IMAP server can be manipulated from a desktop computer at home, a workstation at the office, and a notebook computer while travelling, without the need to transfer messages or files back and forth between these computers.

ISP

Abbreviation for Internet service provider, a company that provides connections to the Internet.

MIME
Abbreviation for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, a TCP/IP protocol for transferring various file formats over the Internet in e-mail messages.

MIME/Base64
A method of encoding non-text files into text so they can be transferred over the Internet in an e-mail message. This encoding method does not encode the resource information in a Macintosh file.

POP3
POP stands for Post Office Protocol, and POP3 is the latest version. This protocol is how email servers, (at your ISP) and email clients (Outlook Express) communicate and transfer messages. POP mail is used by most ISPs because when the e-mail client connects, it sends all the mail to the user's computer and erases it from the server.

PPP
Point to Point Protocol is most well known as a protocol that allows a computer to use a regular telephone line and a modem to make internet connections. It's main usefulness is in making sure that data transmitted over error prone communication lines gets through accurately.

SSL
Abbreviation for Secure Sockets Layer, a protocol for securely transmitting private information, such as credit card numbers, over the Internet.

SMTP
Simple Mail Transport Protocol is the main protocol used to send electronic mail on the Internet. SMTP consists of a set of rules for how a program sending mail and a program receiving mail should interact. For the most part, SMTP is used for client to server and server-to-server communication. Server to client communication is normally done using an IMAP or POP server. SMTP does allow for server to client communication but it requires the client to be running at all times to work efficiently, this is not a common scenario for Macintosh users.