Glossary

[ LiB ]

Generally glossaries go in the back of a book so that you only have to look up definitions to words you don't know. However, I've already used words that I think need some explanation. It's not that I think you haven't heard "scalable," but people use that word for several different meanings. This mini-glossary will help you talk the talk, and it can help you understand me. I'm just trying to relay information in this book, and the more you understand my terms the better. Plus, I can poke fun at a few catchphrases.

Places or Times

Client side Code that executes on the user 's machine. Flash SWFs and JavaScript both run on the client side.

Server side Code that executes on your web server computer. Application server code (such as ColdFusion) is server side, as is the Flash Communication Server.

Author time or design time Edits you make while building an application.

Runtime When an app is running for the user.

Things

Killer app A piece of software so useful that it attracts people to adopt the underlying system needed to run it.

Rich media Audio, video, or graphics. Really just the new word for multimedia .

IDE (Integrated Development Environment) A software tool that gives you complete access to create and edit source files. Basically, the Flash authoring tool.

API (Application Programming Interface) The set of commands and functions that, through programming, give you access to an underlying system. For example, Flash has a Drawing API that lets you draw lines, curves, and fills, effectively giving you complete access to the drawing tools built into Flash.

SDK (Software Development Kit) The documentation, samples, and needed tools that get you started using a system. For example, you can download and study the SDK for Macromedia Central.

Technologies

Application server Software that runs on the server side that can produce custom HTML on-the-fly . Also, application servers can access local or remote databases.

Plug-ins Add-on software tools that extend the functionality of your browser.

Shockwave Director's plug-in technology. The .swf extension in Flash movies used to stand for S hock w ave F lash, but now it officially stands for s mall w eb f ormat.

Thin client The client-side component required to run Flash movies (that is, the player). It's "thin" in that it's small enough to download quickly.

Hot Words

Scalable Two meanings. A graphic can scale to different dimensions. Also, if you plan for your application to grow, it will be considered scalable if it can handle more and more users (without collapsing).

Parse The way you can go through a set of data and extract just the elements that match the objective for which you're looking. I probably overuse this term to also mean the process of translating a set of data to some other format. For instance, going through and capitalizing each word involves a parsing process.

Collaboration Often used to describe how an application can help a group of people work together.

Legacy An existing system. Usually companies expect your new app to work with their legacy systems.

Mission critical Overused term to mean "really reallyno I mean really important." The idea is that if you fail to deliver the missioncritical objective, the project is doomed.

Populate Used as a verb to mean "fill in."

Some of these terms I like to make fun of, but they're still important because it's nice to have an idea what someone means when you hear the term used.

[ LiB ]