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THE TWO ROMMIES

Interior pub scene in a west London TV studio sometime in the 1970s full of acting extras and sound of canned laughter.

Rommie B
Hello Harry. Haven't seen you for a while.

Rommie C
I been seeing this bird Perl. I meta in my 'HTML for beginners' class. Pretty Head Lovely Body.

Rommie B
Real Player?

Rommie C
Not half. Like a dream. Weaver couple of drinks last week. And she says she's on for a Quicktime if I GIF her a lift home?

Rommie B
JAVA new motor then?

Rommie C
Yes. Rommie B Flash?

Rommie C
Just a brief one in the car park. Turns out she's been screwing this MP3 times a week.

Rommie B
No!

Rommie C
So we get back to her place upstairs at the Photoshop.

Rommie B
Yeah.

Rommie C
I Server a couple of drinks and then I need to go to the Kharsi. She says URL FTP in the sink – the bogs blocked.

Rommie B
Awful that.

Rommie C
I come back to find her powered up.

Rommie B
Plug-In?

Rommie C
Nah, Laptop. She's Embedded linked to the net downloading erotic pictures. So I say, 'come on love put that away'.

Rommie B
Lovers TIFF?

Rommie C
And a few dodgy JPEGs. So she snaps the laptop closed. Wallop!

Rommie B
UNIX?

Rommie C
Well it made my eyes water, I ROLLOVER and she's holding cuffs!

Rommie B
Handcuffs?

Rommie C
Right! Clicks them on. So M PEGed, to the bed Frame. And then WYSIWYG

Rommie B
Eh?

Rommie C
What you see is what you get!

Rommie B
Well what did you get?

Rommie C
GriNs from her Oratrix!!

Corny comedy musical sting by Rommie Hazelhurst

Terms

Perl
A high-level programming language, particularly well-suited for tasks involving software tools, database access, networking, web programming and stuff. And it's free to download from www.perl.com

RealPlayer
Popular plug-in which allows you to play audio and video as it is being downloaded. If your site is to include audio or video content, you may like to incorporate this. www.real.com

META
In HTML, META tags provide information such as who created the page, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content. Many search engines use this information when building their indices. If you are making a fan site you would put the comedian's name in the META tags. www.w3.org/MarkUp/

HTML
This is your ABC, your 1,2,3, DNA and Do Ray Me of website programming language. Learn more from www.w3.org/MarkUp/

Head
An HTML tag within which you can enclose the title of the web page. www.w3.org/MarkUp/

Body
An HTML tag within which you can define the setting for the appearance of the web page itself.
www.w3.org/MarkUp/

Dreamweaver
An expensive but popular program which allows you to build web pages without all that mucking about with HTML. But we say – learn HTML first!! www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/

QuickTime
The popular Mac-based format for streaming video over the Internet, also available for Windows.
www.apple.com/quicktime

Gif
A compressed file format for web images, good for flat-colour illustrations and small animation. If your site has simple cartoon graphics, they'll probably be GIFs. www.argonet.co.uk/zfc/grafx.html

Java
A powerful programming language that can generate programmes which run within a web browser.
java.sun.com/

Flash
An innovative programme which enables you to produce many types of animation and sound effects and interaction on your web page. Looks nice but there is a bit of a backlash against unnecessarily used Flash in a 'style over content' New Labour kind of way. Be warned! www.macromedia.com/software/flash/

MP3
Compressed sound format that is popular for exchanging audio files across the Internet.
help.mp3.com/help/

PhotoShop
One of the leading photographic manipulation programmes, which allows you to create and modify digital images for the web. Sites such as http://fractalcow.com make great use of Photoshop. www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html

URL
Internet equivalent of the address.
www.cnet.com/Resources/Info/Glossary/Terms/url.html

FTP
The way to upload your HTML pages to web server. www.w3.org/

Plug-In
Little helper programmes that can allow your browser to incorporate specialised content, e.g. document files using Adobe Acrobat www.adobe.com, streaming audio and video using RealAudio and RealVideo www.real.com, and Shockwave and Flash Animation from www.macromedia.com

Embedded Links
A good way of linking to related content on your sites using HTML. For example, this is an embedded link to www.w3.org/MarkUp/

Tiff
Popular format for photographic images providing file size is not a limitation. Be warned, files from large images can get huge – may be better to use JPEGS! www.argonet.co.uk/zfc/grafx.html

Jpeg
A compressed file format for web images, particularly good for photographs. Not quite the quality of Tiffs but less memory.
www.jpeg.org/

UNIX
If it's not a PC or a Mac, it must be UNIX. Sounds a bit like 'Eunuch' (tee hee).

Rollover
A nice interactive web page feature – when the cursor moves over an image, it causes an action. Just like what you've done to bring up this window, fun wasn't it? www.w3.org/MarkUp/

Right Click
Errrm – click the right hand button of the mouse.

MPeg
A standard file format for compressing sound and movie files for downloading – or even streaming – across the Internet. www.mpeg.org

Frame
A convenient way that HTML allows you to divide up your web page into independent sections. On this page there are XXXX frames. Count them out loud. www.w3.org/MarkUp/

WYSIWYG
What You See Is What You Get – web page authoring programmes, such as FrontPage, which allow you to write your web page without having to learn HTML in an environment where What You See Is What You Get. But go on – learn HTML first, we beg you.
www.microsoft.com/frontpage/

GriNs from Oratrix
A third-party client and development platform for SMIL – Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language. You'll probably never use it or even hear about it ever again, but it provided us with a gratuitous punchline! www.w3.org