CHAPTER 20. GLOSSARY OF TERMS 219
of text. Cursive is not good for body text or small text because it is hard
to read. Cursive can be nice for headings.
deprecated: something that was once approved and commonly used, but
is now viewed as the wrong way to do things. It has been replaced by a
better way, but the old way is still allowed for now. Someday the old way
may be removed. It is being phased out.
dynamic: something that changes automatically, and therefore can be dif-
ferent every time we use it.
fantasy: One of the five generic font families. It captures everything that
did not fall into the other families: serif, sans-serif, monospace, and cursive.
Fantasy is usually not good for body text or small text because it is hard to
read. Fantasy can be nice for major headings.
homepage: The root or main webpage of a domain, but sometimes another
special page. It is incorrect to refer to all webpages as homepages. Can be
written as “homepage” or “home page” (with a space).
JavaScript: The scripting language most commonly used with webpages.
It provides the ability to modify pages without involving a server or the use
of bandwidth.
local: right at your computer instead of somewhere out on the Internet. It
means the same thing as “offline.”
lowercase: Non-capital letters. Letters like “ABC” are called uppercase.
Letters like “abc” are called lowercase. They are also called small letters.
monospace: One of the five generic font families. It means uniformly-
spaced. Narrow letters like i and j take the same amount of space as wide
letters like m and w. Monospace is commonly used for code examples.
offline: right at your computer instead of somewhere out on the Internet.
It means the same thing as “local.” Sometimes it is written with a hyphen:
off-line.
online: somewhere out on the Internet, not local. Sometimes it is written
with a hyphen: on-line.
raster fonts: Ultimately, fonts are rendered as pixels on the user’s screen
or on a printed page. Raster fonts were used originally and are defined in
terms of these pixels. Basically, all screens are raster. Even the retinas of
our eyes are raster. If you magnify a raster font, the curved edges eventually
become jagged.