# Glossary

This site explains itself in public. The credits name every piece of technology
behind it, the notes argue about browser bugs, and the conformance claim cites
clauses by number — so a reader who follows any of that meets words that are
precise and unfamiliar at the same time.

Each one below gets a line. The name links to the people who define it, because
a summary is a place to start and a specification is the thing that is true.


- [Ansible](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/index.html) — a tool that puts a server into a written-down state
- [ARIA](https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-1.2/) — extra markup that names a control for assistive tech
- [axe](https://github.com/dequelabs/axe-core) — the accessibility engine this site is audited with
- [cache](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9111) — a stored copy a browser may reuse instead of asking
- [canonical URL](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6596) — the one address a page says is its own
- [Content Security Policy](https://www.w3.org/TR/CSP3/) — a list of where a page may load things from
- [contrast ratio](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#dfn-contrast-ratio) — how far apart two colours are, as a number
- [Core Web Vitals](https://web.dev/articles/vitals) — three measurements of how a page feels to use
- [DNS](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1035) — the directory turning a name into an address
- [Docker](https://docs.docker.com/) — a way to ship a program with everything it needs
- [favicon](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/links.html#rel-icon) — the small picture a browser shows beside a page
- [feed](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4287) — a page's updates, in a format you subscribe to
- [gemtext](https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/gemtext.gmi) — a text format with one link per line
- [Gopher](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1436) — a menu protocol older than the web
- [hreflang](https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/links.html#attr-hyperlink-hreflang) — the attribute pairing a page with its translations
- [HSTS](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6797) — a browser's promise to use HTTPS next time
- [HTTP](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110) — the request and answer the web is built on
- [HTTPS](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#name-https-uri-scheme) — the same requests, over an encrypted connection
- [idempotent](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110#name-idempotent-methods) — safe to run twice, because the second time changes nothing
- [Kubernetes](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/) — a system that keeps a fleet of containers running
- [Lighthouse](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/overview) — Chrome's own audit of speed, markup and good practice
- [Markdown](https://spec.commonmark.org/) — plain text with a few marks that mean formatting
- [onion service](https://spec.torproject.org/rend-spec/) — an address that works only through Tor
- [PostgreSQL](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/intro-whatis.html) — the database most of this work was built on
- [robots.txt](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309) — the file telling crawlers where not to go
- [RSS](https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification) — one of the two formats a feed is written in
- [screen reader](https://www.w3.org/WAI/people-use-web/tools-techniques/) — software that reads a page aloud, or into braille
- [service worker](https://www.w3.org/TR/service-workers/) — a script that answers requests when the network cannot
- [sitemap](https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html) — a list of a site's pages, written for machines
- [static site generator](https://gohugo.io/about/introduction/) — a program that writes every page out in advance
- [structured data](https://schema.org/) — facts about a page, written for machines
- [Subresource Integrity](https://www.w3.org/TR/SRI/) — a hash a browser checks a file against
- [TLS](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8446) — the handshake that encrypts a connection
- [Tor](https://spec.torproject.org/) — a network that routes traffic through volunteer relays
- [viewport](https://www.w3.org/TR/css-viewport-1/) — the part of a page a window actually shows
- [WCAG 2.2](https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/) — the accessibility standard this site is held to
- [web app manifest](https://www.w3.org/TR/appmanifest/) — the file that lets a site be installed
- [WebP](https://developers.google.com/speed/webp) — an image format smaller than the ones it replaces
- [YAML](https://yaml.org/spec/1.2.2/) — a format for settings a person can still read

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