INTERNET TERMS

Adware

Adware is free software that is supported by advertisements. Common adware programs are toolbars that sit on your desktop or work in conjunction with your Web browser. They include features like advanced searching of the Web or your hard drive and better organization of your bookmarks and shortcuts. Adware can also be more advanced programs such as games or utilities. They are free to use, but require you to watch advertisements as long as the programs are open. Since the ads often allow you to click to a Web site, adware typically requires an active Internet connection to run.

Most adware is safe to use, but some can serve as spyware, gathering information about you from your hard drive, the Web sites you visit, or your keystrokes. Spyware programs can then send the information over the Internet to another computer. So be careful what adware you install on your computer. Make sure it is from a reputable company and read the privacy agreement that comes with it.

Affiliate

An Internet affiliate is a company, organization, or individual that markets another company's products through theirwebsite. In exchange for marketing their products, companies pay affiliates a commission for each sale they generate.

Affiliate programs exist for many different industries, such as travel, clothing, technology, and online services. This allowsweb publishers to promote specific products or services related to the content of their websites. For example, thewebmaster of a fashion website may publish affiliate banners for a clothing store. The owner of a software review website may include affiliate links to different software programs.

Affiliate marketing is a type of PPS advertising, since affiliates are only paid for sales they produce (unlike PPC advertising). Therefore, merchants must offer affiliates high enough commissions to make it worthwhile for the publishers to run their ads. Affiliate commissions vary widely between industries and also depend on average sale amounts. Low-margin products, such as consumer electronics, may offer commissions as low as 2%, while high-margin products, such as computer software, may offer commissions as high as 75%. Most affiliate commissions fall in the range of 5 to 20%.

Affiliate programs provide free marketing for merchants and an extra source of revenue for web publishers. While it is a win-win partnership, setting up an affiliate system to track sales and generate payments is a complex process. Therefore, many companies run their affiliate programs through a third party e-commerce platform, such as Commission Junction or DirectTrack.

Ajax

Ajax is a combination of Web development technologies used for creating dynamic websites. While the term "Ajax" is not written in all caps like most tech acronyms, the letters stand for "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML." Therefore, websites that use Ajax combine JavaScript and XMLto display dynamic content.

The "asynchronous" part of Ajax refers to the way requests are made to the Web server. When a script sends a request to the Web server, it may receive data, which can then be displayed on the Web page. Since these events happen at slightly different times, they are considered to be asynchronous. Most Ajax implementations use the XMLHttpRequest API, which includes a list of server requests that can be called within JavaScript code. The data is usually sent back to the browser in an XML format, since it is easy to parse. However, it is possible for the server to send data as unformatted plain text as well.

What makes Ajax so powerful is that scripts can run on the client side, rather than on the server. This means a JavaScript function can make a request to a server after awebpage has already finished loading. The data received from the server can then be displayed on the page without reloading the other content. If a server-side scripting language like PHP or ASP was used, the entire page would need to be reloaded in order for the new content to be displayed.

While you may not realize it, you have probably seen Ajax at work on several different websites. For example, search engines that provide a list of search suggestions as you type are most likely using Ajax to display the suggestions. Image searches that produce more thumbnails as you scroll through the results typically use Ajax to retrieve the continual list of images. When you click "Older Posts" at the bottom of a Facebook page, Ajax is used to display additional postings.

Ajax has helped make the Web more dynamic by enabling webpages to retrieve and load new content without needing to reload the rest of the page. By using Ajax, Web developers can create interactive websites that use resources efficiently and provide visitors with a responsive interface.