Throughout the duration of this course, there have been a number of words which I have titled "weird-ass" because you look at them from front to back and still think they're weird. These W.A.Ws as they shall be abbreviated include TCP/IP, HTML, and CSS. As you can see, these are all acronymn's for much larger words but even when these tiny abbreviations are extended, I still have no idea what they are on about. SO! I decided to put my fingers to the keyboard and research just exactly what these W.A.W's are on about.
W.A.W: TCP/IP
Stands for: Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol aka. The Internet Protocol Suite
Meaning: Ok, so this is a toughy. According to my trusty guide from the TCP/IP for Dummies book, TCP/IP is "the glue that holds the internet together". Basically this means that computer-to-computer communications can be made securely and easily. The internet protocol suite is made up of a series of layers including the Link Layer, the Internet Layer, the Transport Layer, and the Application Layer. These layers ensure problems involving the transmission of data are solved easily, each lower layer protocol provides a well-defined service to the upper layer protocols based on using their services alone. The TCP/IP suite was set up in the summer of 1973 by Robert E. Kahn and Vinton Cerf to connect satellite packet networks with ground-based radio packet networks. Before this, information transmission was limited to radio-radio networks or satellite -satellite networks. Nowadays, numerous connections can be made between various types of networks no matter what their characteristics. This is all linked to a greater ability to access information around the world and send information to someone no matter where they are. I have to express my sincere and utter gratitude to Kahn and Cerf. Without them, there is no way I would be able to check my Facebook, send emails to my boss or Skype with my parents. This would have been a major drawback on my social life as sad as that is to admit but either way, I am utterly endebted to these two men for life.
W.A.W: HTML
Stands For: Hypertext Markup Language
Meaning: HTML is basically the language of computers. Just like France has French, Germany has German and Australia has... whatever we have, computers too need a language in order to communicate with us mere humans. It's a way of describing how a set of text and images should be displayed to the viewer, similar in concept to a newspaper editor's markup symbols. The actual language of HTML is made up of elements which are further made up of attributes and content. Attributes detail what is to happen with the content which is contained within the single or double quotes. HTML was created in the late 1980s as a revision of the CERN system of information transmission called ENQUIRE which was designed to assist CERN scientists in transferring data between eachother. This system was expanded upon by Tim Berners-Lee and is now used as the primary language amongst computer systems across the globe. I definitely would not have been able to complete this assignment without knowing about this HTML. It's definitely not something you can just fob your way around. HTML is a complicated and tricky language just like French (which by the way, took me 5 years to learn and I'm not even fluent at it) but with practice, I was able to acquire basic skills and practices that are involved with translating normal text to HTML. I'm actually quite excited about the prospects of where this can take me and I look forward to doing more HTML exercises later in the future.
W.A.W: CSS
Stands for: Cascading Style Sheet
Meaning: CSS is another way HTML language can be presented to the human eye. Whilst its all well and good to have a website which presents your content neatly, at the end of the day, people will get bored of reading page after page of boring black text on a white background. CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation, including elements such as the colors, fonts, and layout. This is possibly the most exciting W.A.W that I have come across during my studies as CSS represented to me the gateway between me just doing this whole website making assignment begrudingly to actually enjoying the control I had over the way my website looked. And it looked cool! Instead of a boring white background and black Times New Roman, I finally got an awesome, professional looking site all in few applications of a simple code.
Whilst these "definitions" may not be as detailed as the ones you would find on Wikipedia , they do all basically detail the fundamental meanings of each of these "weird-ass words" so I hope you will all be able to use them to your own advantage when you too have a WTF moment like I did.
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