Reference & Manual > Glossary > H

Hack / Filter
Typically associated with Cascading Style Sheets ( CSS ), a hack exploits the way a specific browser processes ( parses ) code to alter the style declarations it receives. Hacks are required where the browser implementation of the CSS specification is either incomplete or incorrect (and a consistent screen design is required across a number of different browsers).

Hardware
Computer-related items that you can physically touch, such as the computer itself, keyboards, monitors, and the parts inside the computer.

Hexadecimal Color
The hexadecimal counting system consists of 16 unique symbols;

numbers from 0-9
letters from A-F

Counting in hexadecimal: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A

Hit
As used in reference to the World Wide Web, 'hit' means a single request from a web browser for a single item from a web server ; thus in order for a web browser to display a page that contains 3 graphics, 4 'hits' would occur at the server: 1 for the HTML page, and one for each of the 3 graphics.

'Hits' are often used as a very rough measure of load on a server, e.g. 'Our server has been getting 300,000 hits per month.' Because each 'hit' can represent anything from a request for a tiny document (or even a request for a missing document) all the way to a request that requires some significant extra processing (such as a complex search request), the actual load on a machine from 1 hit is almost impossible to define.

Hit Counter
Counts and records hits made to your site. Any request made to the server which is logged is considered a hit. The requests can be for any resource: HTML pages, graphic images, audio files, CGI scripts, etc. Each valid line in the server log is counted as a hit. This number represents the total number of requests that were made to the server during the specified report period.

Home Page (or Homepage)
Several meanings. Originally, the web page that your browser is set to use when it starts up. The more common meaning refers to the main web page for a business, organization, person or simply the main page out of a collection of web pages, e.g. 'Check out so-and-so's new Home Page.' Another sloppier use of the term refers to practically any web page as a 'homepage,' e.g. 'That web site has 65 homepages and none of them are interesting.'

Host
Any computer on a network that is a repository for services available to other computers on the network . It is quite common to have one host machine provide several services, such as WWW and USENET . This term can be used to refer to the housing of a web site, email or a domain. See Email hosting and Web Site hosting for more details.

Hosting
This term can be used to refer to the housing of a web site, email or a domain. See Email hosting and Web Site hosting for more details.

Host Platform
This is the platform of the hosting providers servers. Hosting companies will typically having a hosting platform based upon Windows 2000 (Win2K), Windows NT or Linux. If you have a basic web site that does not make use of server side applications such as a database then you do not need to worry which platform is used.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
The coding language used to create Hypertext documents for use on the World Wide Web . HTML looks a lot like old-fashioned typesetting code, where you surround a block of text with codes that indicate how it should appear, additionally, in HTML you can specify that a block of text, or a word, is linked to another file on the Internet. HTML files are meant to be viewed using a World Wide Web Client Program, such as Netscape or Mosaic .

HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol)

The protocol for moving hypertext files across the Internet . Requires a HTTP client program on one end, and an HTTP server program on the other end. HTTP is the most important protocol used in the World Wide Web (WWW).

Hub
A hub is a network device that is used for connecting computers on a Local Are Network (LAN). It forwards all the packets it receives to all of its ports.

Hyperlink
A part of the web page that links to another web page. By clicking on a hyperlink user redirects the browser to another page. The word hyperlink is sometimes shortened to just "link".

Hypertext
Generally, any text that contains links to other documents - words or phrases in the document that can be chosen by a reader and which cause another document to be retrieved and displayed.