G HIGH DENSITY COMPUTING Gateway --------- GZip A | B | C | D | E |F | G | H |I | J| K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

Gateway --- GZip Pages 106 --- 109 Page 106 Gateway --- GIF animation   Gateway --- The technical meaning is a hardware or software set-up that translates between two dissimilar protocols, for example Prodigy has a gateway that translates between its internal, proprietary e-mail format and Internet e-mail format. Another, sloppier meaning of gateway is to describe any mechanism for providing access to another system, e.g. AOL might be called a gateway to the Internet. GEnie --- The oldest on-line service, no matter what CI$ claims. First operated by General Electric (of course) as an in-house bbs-- probably #7 in size, it recently totally revamped its pricing structure, which has caused a number of unhappy users. It has been recently sold, and is being remodeled as a pure gaming network. GIF --- GIF - Graphics Interchange Format; Developed by Compuserve, this imageformat is designed for images with limited color palletes, such as line drawings, grayscale images, and images that represent text. GIF images can be one of two types: GIF87a or GIF89a (a newer format which allows transparent backgrounds). GIFs can also be assembled to form animations. GIF animations are used for banner advertisements and other simple animations. For photorealistic images, the JPEG format should be used. GIF animation --- or animated GIF or multi block GIF - a type of GIF format which allows a series of images to be displayed one after another or on top of each other. Since its implementation in Netscape Navigator 2.0, GIF animation has been one of the best and easiest ways to put animation. Animated GIFs have been around since the introduction of the GIF89a format in 1989. The reason animated GIFs didn't appear on the Web at that time is that Netscape Navigator or any other Web browsers around at that time didn't support GIF89a's animation features. Page 107 GIF89a --- GIF89a   GIF89a --- Graphics Interchange Format --- Developed by Compuserve using compression technology from Unisys. On the World Wide Web pictures and graphics you see on Web pages are usually in GIF format because the files are small and download quickly. Another type of graphics format used commonly are JPEG these files download even faster and contain a better resolution but cannot be interlaced so many Web page authors tend to opt for using GIF's instead to get that "melting" onto the screen effect that happens with interlaced images. Transparent GIF --- - Transparent GIFs are useful because they appear to blend in smoothly with the user's display, even if the user has set a background color that differs from that the developer expected. They do this by assigning one color to be transparent -- if the Web browser supports transparency, that color will be replaced by the browser's background color, whatever it may be. Interlaced GIF --- Interlaced GIFs appear first with poor resolution and then improve in resolution until the entire image has arrived, as opposed to arriving linearly from the top row to the bottom row. This is great to get a quick idea of what the entire image will look like while waiting for the rest. This doesn't do much for you if your Web browser doesn't support progressive display as the image is downloaded, but non-progressive-display Web browsers will still display interlaced GIFs once they have arrived in their entirety. You can make transparent and interlaced GIFs through the Web without running any utility software on your own system through the Visioneering image manipulation page, which will access your image through the Web and produce an enhanced version for you to save. For more information on the different types of GIF's click on the more button below. For Windows PCs, try Lview Pro GIF89a, GIF animation, or multi block GIF --- a type of GIF format which allows a series of images to be displayed one after another or on top of each other. For more info on GIF animation go here. Page 108 Gigabyte --- Grid   Gigabyte --- 1000 Megabytes See Also: Byte , Gigabyte GNU --- Gnu's Not Unix - A project of the Free Software Foundation to write a free version of the Unix operating system. Gopher --- A widely successful method of making menus of material available over the Internet. Gopher is a Client and Server style program, which requires that the user have a Gopher Client program. Although Gopher spread rapidly across the globe in only a couple of years, it has been largely supplanted by Hypertext, also known as WWW (World Wide Web). There are still thousands of Gopher Servers on the Internet and we can expect they will remain for a while. See Also: Client , Server , WWW , Hypertext Graphical user interface --- Graphical User Interface - this term refers to a software front-end meant to provide an attractive and easy to use interface between a computer user and an application. Grid --- A background pattern that defines regular intervals--for example, a 1/4" grid displays dots in the background every quarter inch on in a rectangular pattern. Many graphics programs make a grid available. Even when turned on, a grid won't print. When you "snap to grid", your graphic endpoints are constrained to fall on a grid point. Page 109 GSM --- GZip   GSM --- Global Standard for Mobile Communications --- This set of standards is widely used in Europe for cellular communications. The audio encoding subset of the GSM standard is best known to computer users because its data compression and decompression techniques are also being used for Web-phone communication and encoding .wav and .aiff files. GUI --- GUI=Graphic Users Interface, all those pretty icons, etc. which make macs, windows, x-windows, etc. look the way they do. Guru --- A more experienced user who helps a newer user (ie, a newbie). GZip --- A free compression program commonly available as a UNIX command for file compression, GZip, which is also available for MSDos, compresses files and appends either ".z" or ".gz" to the file name.