Common terms used on this site 

What is a Buddy Icon?

A buddy icon is a small image associated with an Instant messaging (IM) account such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger. This image can be used to distinguish your online identity, i.e it personifies you.  Just as you can see your buddies's icons, they can see yours as well.  It is commonly 48x48 pixels in size.  They are designed to fit in a small space.

What is an Avatar?

An avatar is a small image that you can create/modify, even cartoon-ify, that you upload and associate with your profile and then appears when you post to the forums and when you comment on posts. Avatars are commonly 96x96 pixels in size, which of course means a little more detail than buddy icons.

The basic difference between buddy icons and avatars is that avatars are larger in size and used in different situations where there is more available real estate to display them.

What is a Web Banner?

A web banner is a graphic that is used for advertising on the internet, on a web site. The graphic can be linked to any page on a web site that the advertiser believes will entice the customer to support the service. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking them to the web site of the advertiser. Images are usually in a high-aspect ratio shape (i.e. either wide and short, or tall and narrow) hence the reference to banners. These images are usually placed on web pages that have interesting content, such as a newspaper article or an opinion piece.

The banner advertisement can be as simple as a simple .gif or .jpg image to a much more animated multimedia object created in Javascript or perhaps Flash.

Both web banners and web stickers can vary substantially in size.  Banners that occupy the header (horizontal top section) of a web page might be 750 pixels wide by 100 pixels tall whereas those occupying a left or right column on a site could be 150 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall. Commonly the size of the banner is dictated by the space offered on the website.

A form of online advertising that entails the embedding of an advertisement into a web page.

What are Web Stickers?

See examples at:  http://capwiz.com/artsusa/remotecontent/

Web Stickers are "interactive" banners you can upload to Web Sites. They are a package that comes with both the graphic and the HTML code to make them interactive. The code can used to do things such as register for a forum, register a vote, initiate a letter to your legislator to halt puppy mills, etc. Sizes can vary significantly just as web banners.

What are Emoticons?

An emoticon is a very simple symbolic graphic which can be used in signing messages when chatting with friends, sending email, etc.  They are used to express, enhance your emotions. As the graphic can be done with common keyboard keys, it does not require uploading an image into your profile. For example this ":)" means smile or happy.

What is a Blog?

A blog is basically a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger." Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog. Postings on a blog are almost always arranged in cronological order with the most recent additions featured most prominantly. For a little more background read the article: Introduction to Blogging.  

What is a Message Board

A web application for holding discussions and posting user generated content.

General Internet/Web terms: 

Download

To transfer to your computer a copy of a file that resides on another computer, perhaps on a website.

FAQ

This is the acronym for Frequently Asked Questions. A common feature on the Internet, FAQs are files of answers to commonly asked questions. Read FAQs before wasting electrons asking obvious questions. Saves you from receiving flames.

HTML

An acronym for HyperText Markup Language, HTML is the language used to mark up various parts of a Web document so browsing software will know how to display that document's links, text, graphics and attached media.

Links

These are the hypertext connections between Web pages. This is a synonym for hotlinks or hyperlinks.

QuickTime

This is a digital video standard developed for Apple Macintosh computers. Special viewing applications are needed to run QuickTime movies.

Webmaster

This term refers to the person in charge of administrating a web site.

Web Page

An HTML document that is accessible on the internet.