The Webmaster's Lexicon: P

Parse	To divide language into small components that can be analyzed.
Password	A secret code used by a person to access their computer account, and a form input element. The PASSWORD attribute works like a text entry field, except all characters entered are displayed as asterisks (*).
Perl	Practical Extraction and Report Language. A popular language for programming CGI applications. Perl is by far the most popular language for CGI, because, among other things, it has powerful string matching. Perl is an interpreted language optimized for scanning arbitrary text files, extracting information from those text files, and printing reports based on that information.
PHP	PHP is recursive acronym standing for PHP: Hypertext Processor A popular open source, server-side, cross-platform, HTML embedded scripting language.
Pixel	Short for Picture Element, a pixel is a single point in a graphic image. Images on your monitor are pixels, arranged in thousands of rows and columns and placed so closely together as to appear connected. The number of pixels displayed collectively is referred to as the resolution.
Plugin	A helper application that runs within the browser. Helper applications, of course, are those programs called upon by the browser to display those content types that it cannot handle internally. When the server informs the browser of the MIME content type of the following object, the browser consults its internal tables to see if the MIME type is known to it. If so, it either displays the object inside the browser window, or it invokes the helper application to correctly handle the object. Netscape plug-ins work in the same way, but are much more tightly integrated into the browser software itself. Instead of say, invoking the Microsoft audio-visual player to handle .avi movie files, the browser could call a plug-in internally to play the movie directly within the browser window. The plug-ins themselves are software modules that can directly control Mozilla, but will not run as stand-alone applications. (by Dan Austin)
PNG	Portable Network Graphics. A new, extensible file format for the lossless, portable, well-compressed storage of raster images. PNG provides a patent-free replacement for the GIF format and can also replace many common uses of TIFF format. Indexed-color, grayscale, and truecolor images are supported, plus an optional alpha channel. Sample depths range from 1 to 16 bits. PNG is designed to work well in online viewing applications, such as the World Wide Web, and so it is fully streamable with a progressive display option. PNG is robust, providing both full file integrity checking and simple detection of common transmission errors. Also, PNG can store gamma and chromaticity data for improved color matching on heterogenous platforms.
POST	An HTTP request method. This method transmits all form input information immediately after the requested URI. Your CGI program will receive the encoded form input on stdin.
Programming	Static HTML pages can be supplemented with server or client-side programming, or 'scripting' as it is often known. Currently the main languages for this are Perl, Java, and JavaScript, sometimes used in combination with CGI.
Promotion	The process of informing the world of the presence of a web site. The World Wide Web is exploding as a communications medium. Not only is the technology growing and changing, but the number of people involved in using and publishing on the web is expanding. As the Web expands it is critical that your Web site stands out. Your Web site must be easily found and it must be linked in high-traffic locations. Considering the Web's continuous growth, new directories, search resources, and other listing sites are being added daily. It is important that this growth be addressed by your online promotional plan.
Protocol	The standards and conventions agreed upon that allow heterogeneous systems to communicate with each other.
Python	An interpreted, object-oriented programming language used for server-side scripting.