w.md

W

W3C : → World Wide Web Consortium

WAF : → Web Application Firewall : → Web Application Framework

WAI : → Web Accessibility Initiative

WAI–ARIA : → ARIA

WAMP : → Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python

WAN : → Wide area network

WAP : → Wireless Application Protocol

WAR : → Web application archive

Wasm : → WebAssembly

WaSP : → Web Standards Project

Waterfall : A breakdown of project activities into linear sequential phases, where each phase depends on the deliverables of the previous one and corresponds to a specialization of tasks. The approach is typical for certain areas of engineering design. In software development, it tends to be among the less iterative and flexible approaches, as progress flows in largely one direction (“downwards” like a waterfall). †

WAU : → Weekly Active Users

WCAG : → Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

WCAG Samurai : A group of developers independent of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), led by Joe Clark, that from 2006 to 2008 published suggestions, corrections, and extensions to WCAG 1.0. †

Weak character : A character with vague direction. Examples include European digits, Eastern Arabic-Indic digits, arithmetic symbols, and currency symbols. †

Web 2.0 : A term for websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and devices) for end users. The term was invented by Darcy DiNucci in 1999 and later popularized by Tim O’Reilly and Dale Dougherty at the O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 Conference in late 2004. The concept details only the design and use of websites and does not place any technical demands or specifications. The transition to “Web 2.0” was gradual and, therefore, no precise dates can be given. †

Web Accessibility Initiative : An effort to improve the accessibility of the World Wide Web (WWW) for people with disabilities. People with disabilities may encounter difficulties when using computers generally, but also on the Web. Since people with disabilities often require non-standard devices and browsers, making websites more accessible also benefits a wide range of user agents and devices, including mobile devices, which have limited resources. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) launched the Web Accessibility Initiative in 1997 with endorsement by W3C members as well as The White House. It has several working groups and interest groups that work on guidelines, technical reports, educational materials, and other documents that relate to the several different components of web accessibility. † ℹ︎ w3.org/WAI

Web address : → URL

Web analytics : The measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage. However, web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for business and market research, and to assess and improve the effectiveness of a website. Web analytics applications can also help companies measure the results of traditional print or broadcast advertising campaigns. †

Web app : → Web application

Web application : A client-server computer program that the client (including the user interface and client-side logic) runs in a web browser. The general distinction between a dynamic web page of any kind and a “web application” is unclear. Websites most likely to be referred to as web applications are those which have similar functionality to a desktop or mobile application. †

Web application archive : A file used to distribute a collection of JAR files, JavaServer Pages, Java servlets, Java classes, XML files, tag libraries, static web pages (HTML and related files), and other resources that together constitute a web application. †

Web Application Firewall : A specific form of application firewall that filters, monitors, and blocks HTTP traffic to and from a web service. By inspecting HTTP traffic, a WAF can prevent attacks exploiting a web application’s known vulnerabilities, such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), file inclusion, and improper system configuration. †

Web Application Framework : → Web framework

Web beacon : → Tracking pixel

Web browser : → Browser

Web bug : → Tracking pixel

Web Bundles : A draft standard to bundle and store HTTP responses. Web Bundles are a part of Google’s Web Packaging effort. ℹ︎ github.com/WICG/webpackage

Web cache : → Cache

Web component : A set of features that provide a standard component model for the Web allowing for encapsulation and interoperability of individual HTML elements. The primary technologies used to create web components include custom elements (APIs to define new HTML elements), Shadow DOM (encapsulated DOM and styling, with composition), and HTML templates (HTML fragments that are not rendered, but stored until instantiated via JavaScript). † ℹ︎ webcomponents.org

Web content : The textual, visual, or aural content that is encountered as part of the user experience on websites. Web content may include—among other things—text, images, sounds, videos, and animations. †

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines : A part of a series of web accessibility guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). WCAG are a set of recommendations for making web content more accessible, primarily for people with disabilities, but also for user agents, including highly limited devices such as mobile phones. WCAG 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation in 1999, and WCAG 2.0 in 2008. ℹ︎ w3.org/TR/WCAG21

Web design : Skills and disciplines related to the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design, interface design, user experience design, authoring (including standardized code and proprietary software), as well as search engine optimization. Often many individuals work in teams covering different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover them all. The term “web design” is normally used to describe the design process relating to the frontend (client side) design of a website including writing markup. Web design partially overlaps web engineering in the broader scope of web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability, and if their role involves developing then they are also expected to be up-to-date with web accessibility and other guidelines. †

Web development : The work involved in developing a website for the Internet (World Wide Web) or an intranet (a private network). Web development can range from developing a simple single static page of plain-text to complex web-based Internet applications (web apps). A more comprehensive list of tasks to which web development commonly refers to may include web design, web content development, client- and server-side scripting, web engineering, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development. Among web professionals, “web development” usually refers to the main non-design aspects of building websites: describing document structures (HTML), giving formatting instructions (CSS), and implementing interaction and logic (scripting). †

Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning : An extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) that allows clients to perform remote web content authoring operations. WebDAV is defined in RFC 4918 by a working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The WebDAV protocol provides a framework for users to create, change, and move documents on a server. The most important features include maintenance of content properties, namespace management, collections, and overwrite protection. † ℹ︎ webdav.org

Web feed : → Feed

Web font : A CSS feature that allows to specify font files to be downloaded along with a website as it is accessed, meaning that any browser that supports web fonts can use exactly the fonts defined. Web fonts are based on CSS @font-face rules, which specify the font file(s) to download. Several services, like Google Fonts, make it easy to choose and implement web fonts. ‡

Web forms : A revision of HTML forms that influenced and got integrated into HTML 5. The first draft for Web Forms was released in 2003. ℹ︎ w3.org/TR/web-forms-2

Web framework : Software that supports the development of web applications including web services, web resources, and web APIs. Web frameworks provide a standard way to build and deploy web applications. Web frameworks aim to automate the overhead associated with common activities performed in web development. For example, many web frameworks provide libraries for database access, templating frameworks, and session management, and they often promote code reuse. Although they often target the development of dynamic websites, they are also applicable to static websites. †

Web Graphics Library : A JavaScript API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plugins. WebGL is fully integrated with other web standards, allowing GPU-accelerated usage of physics and image processing and effects as part of the web page canvas. WebGL elements can be mixed with other HTML elements and composited with other parts of a page or page background. † ℹ︎ khronos.org/webgl

Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group : A community of people interested in evolving HTML and related technologies. The WHATWG was founded by individuals from Apple, the Mozilla Foundation, and Opera, leading web browser vendors, in 2004. Google subsequently joined the WHATWG with the move of the then-editor of the WHATWG specifications, Ian Hickson, from Opera to Google. The central organizational membership and control of WHATWG today—its “Steering Group”—consists of Apple, Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft. WHATWG has a small, invitation-only oversight committee, “Members,” which has the power to impeach the editor of the specifications. † ℹ︎ whatwg.org

Web IDL : An interface description language (IDL) format for describing application programming interfaces (APIs) that are intended to be implemented in web browsers. Web IDL is an IDL variant with a number of features that allow to more easily describe the behavior of common script objects in a web context, and a mapping of how interfaces described with Web IDL correspond to language constructs within an ECMAScript execution environment. † ℹ︎ webidl.spec.whatwg.org

Web indexing : The indexing of contents of a website or of the Internet—the Surface Web—as a whole. Individual websites or intranets may use a back-of-the-book index, while search engines usually use keywords and metadata to provide a more useful vocabulary for Internet or on-site searching. †

Web Open Font Format : A font format for use in web pages. WOFF files are OpenType or TrueType fonts, with additional XML metadata added and format-specific compression applied. The two primary goals are to first distinguish font files intended for use as web fonts from fonts files intended for use in desktop applications via local installation, and second to reduce web font latency when fonts are transferred from a server to a client over a network connection. The first draft of WOFF 1 was published in 2009. † ℹ︎ w3.org/TR/WOFF2

Web Packaging : A set of draft standards for packaging websites, developed by Google. Web Packaging focuses on bundling website resources with provisions for authentication and offline sharing. ℹ︎ github.com/WICG/webpackage

Web page : A document that acts as a web resource on the World Wide Web. In order to retrieve and display a web page, a web browser is needed. Typical web pages are hypertext documents which contain hyperlinks for browsing to other web pages. The term “web page” usually refers to what is visible, but may also refer to the contents of the source code itself, which is usually a file containing hypertext written in HTML or a comparable markup language. †

Web performance : → Performance

Web Performance Optimization : The field of knowledge about increasing web performance, focusing on how to make websites and apps faster, or to get them to appear faster (perceived performance). †

Web platform : A collection of technologies developed as open standards by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and other standardization bodies such as the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), the Unicode Consortium, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and Ecma International. It includes technologies—computer languages and APIs—that were originally created in relation to the publication of web pages, like HTML, CSS, SVG, MathML, WAI–ARIA, ECMAScript, and many others. “Web platform” is an umbrella term introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium. †

Web Platform Incubator Community Group : A World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Community Group to provide “a lightweight venue for proposing and discussing new web platform features.” The WICG was founded in 2015. ℹ︎ wicg.io

Web resource : Any identifiable thing or entity, whether digital, physical, or abstract. Resources are identified using Uniform Resource Identifiers. In the Semantic Web, web resources and their semantic properties are described using the Resource Description Framework. The concept of a web resource has evolved during the Web’s history, from the early notion of static addressable documents or files, to a more generic and abstract definition, now encompassing everything that can be identified, named, addressed, or handled, in any way whatsoever, in the Web at large, or in any networked information system. †

Web service : A server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a network, serving web documents (HTML, JSON, XML, multimedia), and creating web applications services, which serve in solving specific domain problems over the Web. † : A service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the World Wide Web. †

Web site : → Website

Web standard : A technical standard related to the Web, or the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building websites, and a philosophy of web design and development that includes those methods. †

Web standards movement : A grassroots coalition fighting for improved web standards support in browsers. The web standards movement traditionally supported concepts of standards-based web development, including the separation of document structure from a website’s or application’s appearance and behavior, an emphasis on semantically structured content that validates (that is, contains no errors of structural composition) when tested against validation software, and progressive enhancement, a layered approach to website and application creation that enables all people and devices to access a page, regardless of personal physical ability (accessibility), connection speed, and browser capability. †

Web Standards Project : A dissolved group of professional web developers dedicated to disseminating and encouraging the use of the web standards recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), along with other groups and standards bodies. Founded in 1998, the Web Standards Project campaigned for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any document published on the Web. WaSP worked with browser companies, authoring tool makers, and peers to encourage them to use these standards, since they “are carefully designed to deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of web users.” The group disbanded in 2013. † ℹ︎ webstandards.org

Web storage : Methods and protocols for storing client-side data. Web storage supports persistent data storage, similar to cookies but with a greatly enhanced capacity and no information stored in the HTTP request header. There are two main web storage types: local storage and session storage, behaving similarly to persistent cookies and session cookies respectively. Web storage is standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the WHATWG. †

Web tracking : The practice by which operators of websites collect, store, and share information about user activity on the World Wide Web. Analysis of individual behavior may be used to provide content that relates to the implied preferences and may be of interest to various parties. Uses for web tracking include creating profiles that are used to individualize advertisements (advertising), determining how easy a website design is to use (usability testing), analyzing the performance of websites as a whole (web analytics), or, broadly, spying on individuals and solving crime (law enforcement). †

Web typography : The use of fonts on the World Wide Web. When HTML was created, font faces and styles were controlled exclusively by the settings of each web browser. There was no mechanism for individual web pages to control font display until Netscape introduced the font element in 1995, which was then standardized in HTML 3.2. However, the font specified had to be installed on the user’s computer or a fallback font, such as a browser’s default sans-serif or monospace font, would be used. The CSS 2 specification attempted to improve the font selection process by adding font matching, synthesis, and download. These techniques did not gain much use, and were removed in CSS 2.1. However, Internet Explorer added support for the font downloading feature in version 4.0, released in 1997, which was later included in the CSS 3 fonts module, and has since been implemented in Safari 3.1, Opera 10, and Firefox 3.5. This has subsequently increased interest in web typography, as well as the usage of web fonts. †

Web Video Text Tracks : A World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard for displaying timed text in connection with the HTML track element. The early drafts of the specification were written by the WHATWG in 2010 after discussions about what caption format should be supported by HTML. † ℹ︎ w3.org/TR/webvtt1

Web Vitals : A set of metrics suggested important for a great user experience on the Web. The Web Vitals initiative was started in 2020 by Google. The “Core Web Vitals” include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). ℹ︎ web.dev/vitals

Web worker : A JavaScript script executed from an HTML page that runs in the background, independently of scripts that may also have been executed from the same HTML page. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the WHATWG envision web workers as long-running scripts that are not interrupted by scripts that respond to clicks or other user interactions. Keeping such workers from being interrupted by user activities allows web pages to remain responsive at the same time as they are running long tasks in the background. † ℹ︎ is.gd/A546Cx

WebAssembly : A standard that defines a portable binary code format for executable programs, and a corresponding textual assembly language, as well as interfaces for facilitating interactions between such programs and their host environment. The main goal of WebAssembly is to enable high performance applications on web pages, but the format is designed to be executed and integrated in other environments as well. WebAssembly became a W3C Recommendation in 2019 and, alongside HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, is the fourth language to run natively in browsers. † ℹ︎ webassembly.org

WebAuthn : A core component of the FIDO2 Project, which is a joint effort between the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to provide strong authentication for the Web, and to standardize an interface for authenticating users to web-based applications and services using public-key cryptography. Support for WebAuthn can be implemented in a variety of ways. The underlying cryptographic operations are performed by an authenticator, which is an abstract functional model that is mostly agnostic with respect to how the key material is managed. This makes it possible to implement support for WebAuthn purely in software. WebAuthn Level 1 was published as a W3C Recommendation in 2019. † ℹ︎ w3.org/TR/webauthn

WebDAV : → Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning

WebExplorer : An early web browser developed by IBM for OS/2. It was released in 1995 and discontinued in 1998. †

WebGL : → Web Graphics Library

WebKit : A browser engine developed by Apple and primarily used in its Safari web browser, as well as all the iOS web browsers. WebKit’s C++ API provides a set of classes to display web content. WebKit’s HTML and JavaScript engine started as a fork of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE, and has since been further developed by KDE contributors, Apple, Google, Nokia, Bitstream, BlackBerry, Igalia, and others. WebKit was first released in 1998. † ℹ︎ webkit.org

Webkrauts : A former coalition of German web designers and developers. The Webkrauts were founded in 2005. ℹ︎ webkrauts.de

Weblog : → Blog

WebM : An audiovisual media file format. WebM is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML video and audio elements. It was first released in 2010. WebM has a sister project for images, WebP. † ℹ︎ webmproject.org

Webmaster : A person responsible for maintaining one or more websites. The title may refer to web architects, web developers, site authors, website administrators, website owners, website coordinators, or website publishers. †

Webmention : A W3C specification that describes a simple protocol to notify any URL when a website links to it, and for web pages to request notifications when somebody links to them. Webmention was originally developed in the IndieWebCamp community and published as a W3C working draft in 2016. Webmention enables authors to keep track of who is linking to, referring to, or commenting on their articles. By incorporating such comments from other sites, sites themselves provide federated commenting functionality. † ℹ︎ w3.org/TR/webmention

WebP : An image format employing both lossy and lossless compression. WebP was first released in 2010. † ℹ︎ developers.google.com/speed/webp

webpack : A module bundler primarily for JavaScript which can transform frontend assets like HTML, CSS, and images if the corresponding loaders are included. It takes modules with dependencies and generates static assets representing those modules. webpack was first released in 2012. † ℹ︎ webpack.js.org

WebPageTest : A web-based website performance testing tool. WebPageTest launched publicly in 2008. ℹ︎ webpagetest.org

Website : A collection of related network web resources, such as web pages and multimedia content, which are typically identified with a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Websites can be accessed via a public Internet Protocol (IP) network, such as the Internet, or a private local area network (LAN), by a uniform resource locator (URL) that identifies the site. Websites can have many functions and can be used in various fashions. They are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, ranging from entertainment and social networking to providing news and education. †

WebSocket : A computer communications protocol, providing full-duplex communication channels over a single TCP connection. The WebSocket protocol was standardized by the IETF as RFC 6455 in 2011, and the WebSocket API in Web IDL is being standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). WebSocket is distinct from HTTP, although both protocols are located at layer 7 in the OSI model and depend on TCP at layer 4. The WebSocket protocol enables interaction between a web browser (or other client application) and a web server with lower overhead than half-duplex alternatives such as HTTP polling, facilitating real-time data transfer from and to the server. †

WebStorm : A commercial, cross-platform IDE for JavaScript. WebStorm was first released in 2010. ℹ︎ jetbrains.com/webstorm

WebView : An Android system component (“View”) allowing apps to display web content directly in an application. ℹ︎ is.gd/Sx0xdE

WebVTT : → Web Video Text Tracks

WeChat Mini Program : → Mini Program

Weebly : A website builder and web hosting service. Weebly was founded in 2006; in 2018, it was acquired by Square. ℹ︎ weebly.com

Weekly Active Users : → Active Users

Weex : A mobile application framework supporting Vue.js and Rax, themselves frameworks that are integrated into the Weex SDK. ℹ︎ weex.apache.org

WeiXin Markup Language : A proprietary document language to describe page structures for so-called Mini Programs. WXML is maintained by Tencent. ℹ︎ bit.ly/2XcZORT

WeiXin Script : A proprietary scripting language, used to build Mini Programs. WXS is maintained by Tencent. ℹ︎ bit.ly/3nhfdvq

WeiXin Style Sheets : An extension of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that includes additional dimensions and import options, and that is used to build Mini Programs. Like WXML and WXS, WXSS is maintained by Tencent. ℹ︎ bit.ly/3pP0eKP

Well-formedness : An attribute of document markup that adheres to the syntax rules specified by XML. Well-formed markup specifically refers to content being delimited by start and end tags, elements being properly nested, and void elements being closed. †

WET : The opposite of DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself).

Wget : A computer program that retrieves content from web servers. Wget’s name derives from “World Wide Web” and “get.” It supports downloading via HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP, and features include recursive download, conversion of links for offline viewing of local HTML, as well as support for proxies. Wget was first released in 1996 and is part of the GNU Project. † ℹ︎ gnu.org/software/wget

What You See Is All You Get : An idea from The Pragmatic Programmer, a disadvantage with WYSIWYG tools.

What You See Is What You Get : A system where editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web page, or slide presentation. WYSIWYG implies a user interface that allows the user to view something similar to the end result. In general, WYSIWYG means the ability to directly manipulate the layout of a document without having to type or remember names of layout commands. The actual meaning depends on the user’s perspective. †

WHATWG : → Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group

while : → Loop

White-box testing : A method of software testing that tests internal structures or workings of an application, as opposed to its functionality (i.e., black-box testing). In white-box testing an internal perspective of the system, as well as programming skills, are used to design test cases. A tester chooses inputs to exercise paths through the code and to determine the expected outputs. White-box testing can be applied at the unit, integration, and system levels of the software testing process. †

Whitelist : The practice of explicitly allowing identified entities access to a particular privilege, service, mobility, access, or recognition. The opposite of a whitelist is a blacklist. †

Whitespace : Any character or series of characters that represent horizontal or vertical space in typography. When rendered, a whitespace character does not correspond to a visible mark, but typically does occupy an area on a page. For example, the common whitespace symbol U+0020 SPACE (also ASCII 32) represents a blank space punctuation character in text, used as a word divider in western scripts. †

WHOIS : A query and response protocol that is widely used for querying databases that store the registered users or assignees of an Internet resource, such as a domain name, an IP address block, or an autonomous system, but is also used for a wider range of other information. The protocol stores and delivers database content in a human-readable format. The current iteration of the WHOIS protocol was drafted by the Internet Society, and is documented in RFC 3912. The first WHOIS directory was created in the 1970s. †

WICG : → Web Platform Incubator Community Group

Wide area network : A telecommunications network that extends over a large geographic area for the primary purpose of computer networking. Wide area networks are often established with leased telecommunication circuits. The Internet may be considered a WAN. †

Widow : A paragraph-ending word that falls at the beginning of the following page or column, separated from the rest of the text. †

Wiki : A hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience directly using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project and may be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base. †

Window-Eyes : A screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system, developed by GW Micro. Window-Eyes was first released in 1995. †

Windows : A group of several proprietary graphical operating system families, all of which are developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. Active Microsoft Windows families include Windows NT and Windows IoT; these may encompass subfamilies, e.g., Windows Server or Windows Embedded Compact (Windows CE). Defunct Microsoft Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone. Microsoft introduced an operating environment named “Windows” in 1985, as a graphical operating system shell for MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces (GUIs). † ℹ︎ microsoft.com/windows

Windows Aero : A design language introduced in the Windows Vista operating system. “Aero” is a backronym for “Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open.” Windows Aero was in force during the development of Windows Vista and Windows 7. In 2012 and with Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012, Microsoft moved on to a design language codenamed “Metro.” †

Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python : The equivalent of the LAMP or MAMP solution stack but with the Windows operating system.

WIP : → Work in Progress

Wireframe : A visual guide that represents the skeletal framework of a website. Wireframes are created for the purpose of arranging elements to best accomplish a particular purpose, which is usually being informed by a business objective and a creative idea. A wireframe depicts the page layout or arrangement of a website’s content, including interface elements and navigational systems, and how they work together. A wireframe usually lacks typographic style, color, or graphics, since the main focus lies in functionality, behavior, and priority of content. It focuses on what a screen does, not what it looks like. †

Wireless Application Protocol : A technical standard for accessing information over a mobile wireless network. A WAP browser is a web browser for mobile devices (such as mobile phones) that uses the protocol. Introduced in 1999, WAP achieved some popularity in the early 2000s, but by the 2010s it had been largely superseded by more modern standards. Most modern handset Internet browsers now fully support HTML, meaning they do not need to rely on WML, WAP’s markup language. † ℹ︎ is.gd/ylO55b

Wireless Markup Language : A now-obsolete XML-based markup language intended for devices that implement the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) specification, such as mobile phones. WML provides navigational support, data input, hyperlinks, text and image presentation, as well as forms, much like HTML. It preceded the use of other markup languages now used with WAP, such as HTML itself as well as XHTML (which have been gaining in popularity as processing power in mobile devices increased). WML was first released in 1998. †

Wix : A software company providing cloud-based web development services. It allows users to create websites through the use of online drag-and-drop tools. Wix was founded in 2006. † ℹ︎ wix.com

WML : → Wireless Markup Language

Wobbly Transformation Format 8-Bit : An extension of UTF-8 where the encodings of unpaired surrogate halves (U+D800 through U+DFFF) are allowed. This is necessary to store possibly-invalid UTF-16, such as Windows filenames. Many systems that deal with UTF-8 work this way without considering it a different encoding, as it is simpler. †

WOFF : → Web Open Font Format

WORA : → Write Once, Run Anywhere

WordPress : A content management system (CMS) written in PHP and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database. Features include a template system and a plugin architecture. WordPress was originally created as a blog-publishing system but has evolved to support other types of web content. As of 2019, WordPress is used by more than 60 million websites, including 33.6% of the top 10 million websites. It was released in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. † ℹ︎ wordpress.org

WordPress Theme : A collection of templates and style sheets for customization of a site built with WordPress.

Work in Progress : Work still to be done, or being done.

Workaround : A bypass of a recognized problem or limitation in a system or policy. A workaround is typically a temporary fix that implies that a genuine solution to the problem is needed. Workarounds are frequently as creative as true solutions, involving outside the box thinking in their creation. Typically, they are considered brittle in that they will not respond well to further pressure from a system beyond the original design. In implementing a workaround it is important to flag the change so as to later implement a proper solution. A “workaround” can also be a euphemism for a “hack.” †

Workbox : A Google-maintained set of libraries and Node modules to assist the building of progressive web apps (PWAs). Workbox was first released in 2017. ℹ︎ is.gd/GFKM3p

Working Draft : The initial design phase of a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specification. Based on internal and external feedback, the respective W3C Working Group fleshes out the draft.

Worklet : A piece of HTML specification infrastructure which can be used for running scripts independent of the main JavaScript execution environment, while not requiring a particular implementation model. Worklets are similar to web workers but are thread-agnostic; they are able to have multiple duplicate instances of the global scope created; they do not use an event-based API; they have a reduced API surface on the global scope; and they have a lifetime for their global object which is defined by other specifications. §

World Wide Web : An information system where documents and other web resources are identified by Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), which may be interlinked by hypertext, and are accessible over the Internet. The resources of the WWW are published by a software application called a web server, may be accessed by users through a software application called a web browser, and are transferred via the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989. †

World Wide Web Consortium : The main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and currently led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations which maintain full-time staff working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web. The consortium also engages in education and outreach, develops software, and serves as an open forum for discussion about the Web. † ℹ︎ w3.org

WorldWideWeb : The first web browser and editor, later renamed “Nexus.” WorldWideWeb was discontinued in 1994. At the time it was written, it was the sole web browser in existence as well as the first WYSIWYG HTML editor. †

WPO : → Web Performance Optimization

Wrapper : In software development, a subroutine in a software library or a computer program whose main purpose is to call a second subroutine or a system call with little or no additional computation. Wrapper functions are used to make writing computer programs easier by abstracting away the details of a subroutine’s underlying implementation. † : In web development, a name for a higher-level container, usually covering a major section of a document with many child elements.

Write Once, Run Anywhere : A slogan created by Sun Microsystems to illustrate the cross-platform benefits of the Java language. Ideally, this meant that a Java program could be developed on any device, compiled into standard bytecode, and be expected to run on any device equipped with a Java virtual machine (JVM). The installation of a JVM or Java interpreter on chips, devices, or software packages became an industry standard practice. †

WTF-8 : → Wobbly Transformation Format 8-Bit

WWW : → World Wide Web

WXML : → WeiXin Markup Language

WXS : → WeiXin Script

WXSS : → WeiXin Style Sheets

WYSIAYG : → What You See Is All You Get

WYSIWYG : → What You See Is What You Get

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