Glossary

A

  • Alternative Text:  The 'alt' attribute within the image HTML tag. If an image provides information, alternative text is required for accessibility and should clearly explain the image in context with surrounding text. For linked images, the alternative text should also state where the link goes.
  • Automated Directory Listing: An automated listing pulls names associated with your unit directly from Active Directory. As people come and go, this list will update automatically.
  • A unit of: Below the "Quick Contact" area, it provides the name of the unit your department/unit reports to and a link to their site.

B

  • Block: A 'pluggable' piece of content that can be inserted into one or many pages. Some blocks have special functionality and/or formatting.
  • Breadcrumbs: Clickable links located above the page heading. They reflect the location of the current page within the site structure.
  • Bullet: The graphic that can prefix items in an unordered list.

C

  • Call to Action: A call to action is a button, link or graphic that guides the user to their next action step for that page. Calls to action help guide a website visitor through pages and/or lead them to the location or action the page designer wants them to visit.
  • Cascade: The name of the content management system UNG uses to manage the main ung.edu website.
  • Class: A predefined set of characteristics that affects the appearance of the content to which you apply it. Classes are used in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to provide an easy method to control the look and feel of web pages in a central location.
  • Code View: When editing a page, the code view shows the actual HTML code behind the webpage.
  • CSS or Cascading Style Sheets: CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a language used to apply style properties to items in a web page. The web page links to the .css file, and refers to styles by name so that a group of attributes (e.g. font size, color, style) can be applied to multiple items in webpages. This simplifies the process of editing styles and encourages consistency, as it allows styles to be specified and edited once in the style sheet rather than manually applying the styles to each item.

D

  • Data Definition: A form in the Cascade Content Management System used for entering and creating content.
  • Directory Information: Information pulled from Active Directory such as the person's name, title, office location, email and phone number.

E

  • Expandable: An expandable is a way to display text that allows for condensing large amounts of content into manageable chunks of information for a page visitor. Only the heading is displayed when an expandable is closed. When a visitor clicks on the heading, the section expands vertically  to display the content. Expandables can have more that one section expanded at a time.

H

  • HTML: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) communicates the structure of textual data to web browsers, indicating how to display the information. Certain text will be tagged as headings, paragraphs, lists, etc.

I

  • Image Alignment: Images can have no alignment, center, left or right. The center, left and right alignments can allow text to wrap around the image if there is room.
  • Image Format: .gif, .png, or .jpg are specific image file formats for the web.  The file formats are determined when the image is saved, either from the camera or after editing.
  • Index: The index page is the default page in a site or folder. If a visitor goes to a URL in which an individual page is not indicated, their browser will load the index page of that location.

L

  • List item: <li> A single item in a list, prefixed by either a bullet or a number/letter.

M

  • Main Content Area: The center area of the page where the main content resides.
  • Manual Directory Listing: A manual listing is fully controlled by the web editor. As people come and go they must be manually added or removed from this type of listing.
  • Menu: Navigation normally either at the top of the page or the left side. The top menu is overall navigation for the university. The left menu is your department or site navigation.

O

  • Ordered list: <ol> A list of items, each prefixed by a number or letter that indicates its placement in the order of the list.

P

  • Point of View (POV): Determines which personal pronoun is used for the person being referred to. First person POV uses "I" or "me" while third person POV uses "he" or "she." We use third person POV in profiles.
  • Production Server: This is where the live or public version of our website exists.
  • Profile Page: Same as faculty/staff bio page. Displays both directory information and specific information for a person.

Q

  • Quick Contact: An area located consistently below the left menu of a site that provides contact information (phone, email, etc.) for that site.

R

  • Responsive: The term responsive in the web world normally refers to a website that has been designed so that its content responds to the device being used to view the content, and resizes items appropriately. Responsive sites are 'mobile friendly'.
  • Root: Can refer to the main folder of the UNG web site or the main folder (Base Folder) of an individual department site.

S

  • Section: In Cascade, a combination of header/content area creates a horizontal section. You can have multiple sections in a page.
  • Sidebar: An optional area to the right of the main content area in which content can be added.
  • Submenu: One or more links that appear on hover (or first click on mobile devices) of a top level menu item, providing further navigation into a site.

T

  • Table: An html element used for displaying tabular data.
  • Table Header: <thead></thead> Contains the table cells identified as headers for the table.
  • Table Body: <tbody></tbody> Contains the rows and cells that contain data.
  • Table Caption: Describes the information displayed in the table. 
  • Tabs: A method of displaying content that resembles folder tabs. Tabs allows the presentation of a larger amount of related content on a webpage than possible with plain text. Only one tab may be selected/viewed at a time.

U

  • Unordered List: <ul> A list of items, each prefixed by a bullet, not numbers or letters.
  • URL: Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is another term used to describe web addresses.

V

  • Vertical and Horizontal Space: The vertical and horizontal "white" space around an image. This helps give a visual cushion around an image so text does not run right up to the edge of the image.

W

  • Webteam: Group in UNG's Strategic Communications & Marketing division whose job it is to maintain the primary ung.edu website and aid unit coordinators in maintaining their sites. The best method to reach the webteam is to email: webteam@ung.edu .
  • What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG): describes a system in which the content being edited appears very similar to the final product. Cascade uses WYSIWYG (pronounced ‘wizziwig’) editing for many of its text fields.