Web Design Glossary

CMS - Content Management System

Content Management System. A tool for managing content, usually on a Web site, that separates the design, interactivity, and content from one another to make it easier for content authors to provide content.

Cascading Style Sheets/ CSS

A language for the Web to define the style (look and feel) of a Web page. Cascading Style Sheets can define: fonts, colors, layouts, and more.

URL - Uniform Resource Locator

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It is the address of a document or other resource on the Internet. RFC 1738

Liquid layout

Liquid layout are layouts that are based on percentages of the current browser window's size. They flex with the size of the window, even if the current viewer changes their browser size as they're viewing the site. Liquid width layouts allow a very efficient use of the space provided by any given Web browser window or screen resolution. They are often preferred by designers who have a lot of information to get across in as little space as possible, as they remain consistent in size and relative page weights regardless of who is viewing the page.

Hypertext

Computer based information retrieval method. On Web pages, hypertext is any text that is "clickable".

hyperlink

An image or portion of text that is highlighted in some way (usually underlined on the Web) and connects the current document to another. Hyperlinks are what make plain text into "hypertext".