Anti Virus Software:  A program, which is written specifically to locate and remove harmful viruses from your PC. These programs constantly have to be updated to cater to new viruses as they become known.

Browser:  An application program, which interprets HTML and presents the final Web Page. Used to "Surf the WWW". Examples include:- Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mosaic

Client Server:  Client/Server distributes the processing of a Computer Application between two computers the Client & the Server - the principal being to exploit the power of each. The Client is normally a PC. The Application Program will access data and perform processing on the Server and using the data obtained via the server more processing tasks will be performed on the Client. More than one user can use the application.

Compression:  A technique used to considerably reduce the size of a file without losing any of the original information. The compression process alters the content of the file but this can and is completely recovered by reversing the process.

Cookie:  A file that is written to your Hard Disk when you access certain Web Pages. The file contains certain information, often information that you entered when you displayed the page. The next time you access this page a check is done to see if the Cookie exists. The information within the cookie may well influence what happens next.

CPU:  Central Processing Unit.

CTRL:  A term that represents the control key on the keyboard.

Cursor:  A flashing rectangle or line on the screen that shows exactly where you are working. For example, when using a Word Processor the cursor indicates the point at which the characters being typed will be inserted.

**If you continually swear at your PC because it will not do want you want it to, those within earshot may well accuse you of being a cursor.

Cut and Paste:  Just like when we were in Kindergarten - only using the PC instead of scissors and glue. This allows us to remove sections from one document (cut) & place them in another document (paste).

DNS:  The Domain Name System is how the Internet links together the thousands of Networks that it is comprised of. The DNS is utilized whenever you send an Email or access a particular Web Page. Each computer on the Internet has a one of more Domain Names such as "Harrods.co.uk". The .co indicates a commercial organization & the .uk indicates that the computer is in the United Kingdom.

Domain Name:  The Domain Name is a unique name that represents each computer on the Internet. (Some machines do have more than one Domain Name. The DNS converts the Domain Name requested by an Internet User into an IP Address. The location of the machine with this IP address is known and the information being requested can then be found. "www.yahoo.com" is an example of a Domain Name. The "com" indicates that Yahoo is a commercial Organization. Other codes include:-

You will also see these codes in URL's such as "http://pdc.cvc.edu". These Domain Names are converted to a unique number known as an IP address (the IP stands for Internet Protocol). You will often see the IP address displayed by your Web Browser when you are connecting to a particular computer.

Download:  To copy files from another computer to your own PC via a network or using a modem.

Drag and drop:  This term relates to a GUI (Graphical User Interface). You can drag a file by clicking its icon with the left-hand mouse button depressed and moving the mouse pointer - the file is dragged along. When you let go of the file pointer the icon is released or dropped. You can use this technique to move a file between directories.