A web browser is a software application Application software, also known as software application, application or app, is computer software designed to help the user to perform singular or multiple related specific tasks. Typical examples are word processors, spreadsheets, media players and database applications for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web The World Wide Web, abbreviated as WWW and commonly known as the Web, is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them by using hyperlinks. Using concepts from earlier hypertext systems, British. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier In computing, a Uniform Resource Identifier is a string of characters used to identify a name or a resource on the Internet. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network (typically the World Wide Web) using specific protocols. Schemes specifying a concrete syntax and associated protocols define each (URI) and may be a web page A web page or webpage is a document or resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device, image, video, or other piece of content.^[1] Hyperlinks In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically [citation needed]. The reference points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. Such text is usually viewed with a computer. A software system for viewing and present in resources enable users to easily navigate their browsers to related resources.

Although browsers are primarily intended to access the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by Web servers A web server is a computer program that delivers content, such as web pages, using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), over the World Wide Web. The term web server can also refer to the computer or virtual machine running the program. In large commercial deployments, a server computer running a web server can be rack-mounted with other servers in private networks In the Internet addressing architecture, a private network is a network that uses private IP address space, following the standards set by RFC 1918 and RFC 4193. These addresses are commonly used for home, office, and enterprise local area networks , when globally routable addresses are not mandatory, or are not available for the intended network or files in file systems A file system is a method of storing and organizing computer files and their data. Essentially, it organizes these files into a database for the storage, organization, manipulation, and retrieval by the computer's operating system. Some browsers can be also used to save information resources to file systems A file system is a method of storing and organizing computer files and their data. Essentially, it organizes these files into a database for the storage, organization, manipulation, and retrieval by the computer's operating system.

History

The history of the Web browser dates back in to the late 1980s, when a variety of technologies laid the foundation for the first Web browser, WorldWideWeb WorldWideWeb, later renamed to Nexus to avoid confusion about the software and the World Wide Web, was the first web browser. When it was written, WorldWideWeb was the only way to view the Web, by Tim Berners-Lee Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee, OM, KBE, FRS, FREng, FRSA , is a British engineer and computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web, making the first proposal for it in March 1989. On 25 December 1990, with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student at CERN, he implemented the first successful in 1991. That browser brought together a variety of existing and new software and hardware technologies.

Ted Nelson Theodor Holm Nelson is an American sociologist, philosopher, and pioneer of information technology. He coined the terms "hypertext" and "hypermedia" in 1963 and published it in 1965. He also is credited with first use of the words transclusion, virtuality, intertwingularity and teledildonics. The main thrust of his work has and Douglas Engelbart Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart is an American inventor and early computer pioneer. He is best known for inventing the computer mouse, as a pioneer of human-computer interaction whose team developed hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs; and as a committed and vocal proponent of the development and use of computers and networks to help developed the concept of hypertext Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Apart from running text, hypertext may contain tables, images and other presentational devices. Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure of the long before Berners-Lee and CERN. It became the core of the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee does acknowledge Engelbart's contribution.

The introduction of the NCSA Mosaic Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened up the Web to the general public. Mosaic was also Web browser in 1993 – one of the first graphical Web browsers – led to an explosion in Web use. Marc Andreessen Marc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur, investor, startup coach, blogger, and a multi-millionaire software engineer best known as co-author of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, and founder of Netscape Communications Corporation. He was the chair of Opsware, a software company he founded originally as Loudcloud, when it was acquired, the leader of the Mosaic team at NCSA, soon started his own company, named Netscape Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California. The name Netscape was a trademark of Cisco Systems, that was granted to the company, and released the Mosaic-influenced Netscape Navigator Netscape Navigator and Netscape are the names for the proprietary web browser popular in the 1990s, the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corporation and the dominant web browser in terms of usage share, although by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared. This was partly due to the increased usage of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web in 1994, which quickly became the world's most popular browser, accounting for 90% of all Web use at its peak (see usage share of web browsers The usage share of web browsers is the percentage of visitors to a group of websites that use a particular web browser. For example, when it is said that Internet Explorer has 52% usage share, it means that some version of Internet Explorer is used by 52% of visitors that visit a given set of sites).

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is a public multinational corporation based in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, responded with its browser Internet Explorer Windows Internet Explorer , is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. It has been the most widely used web browser since 1999, attaining a peak of about 95% usage share during 2002 and 2003 with IE5 and IE6 in 1995 (also heavily influenced by Mosaic), initiating the industry's first browser war Browser wars is a metaphorical term that refers to competitions for dominance in usage share in the web browser marketplace. The term is often used to denote two specific rivalries: the competition that saw Microsoft's Internet Explorer replace Netscape's Navigator as the dominant browser during the late 1990s and the erosion of Internet Explorer'. By bundling Internet Explorer with Windows Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal, Microsoft was able to leverage its dominance in the operating system An operating system is the software on a computer that manages the way different programs use its hardware, and regulates the ways that a user controls the computer. Operating systems are found on almost any device that contains a computer with multiple programs—from cellular phones and video game consoles to supercomputers and web servers. Some market to take over the Web browser market; Internet Explorer usage share peaked at over 95% by 2002.^[3] Internet Explorer has 60% browser usage share as of April 2010 according to Net Applications.^[4]

Opera Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by Opera Software. The browser handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting on IRC, downloading files via BitTorrent, and reading Web feeds. Opera is offered free of charge for personal computers and mobile first appeared in 1996; although it has never achieved widespread use, having 2% browser usage share as of April 2010,^[4] it has a substantial share of the fast-growing mobile phone A mobile phone is an electronic device used for full duplex two-way radio telecommunications over a cellular network of base stations known as cell sites. Mobile phones differ from cordless telephones, which only offer telephone service within limited range through a single base station attached to a fixed land line, for example within a home or Web browser market, being preinstalled on over 40 million phones. It is also available on several other embedded systems An embedded system is a computer system designed to perform one or a few dedicated functions often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal computer , is designed to be flexible and to meet a wide, including Nintendo Nintendo Co., Ltd. is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel's Wii The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others. As of July 2010, the Wii leads the generation over the video game console.

In 1998, Netscape launched what was to become the Mozilla Foundation The Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit organization that exists to support and provide leadership for the open source Mozilla project. The organization sets the policies that govern development, operate key infrastructure and control trademarks and other intellectual property. It owns two taxable for-profit subsidiaries: the Mozilla Corporation, in an attempt to produce a competitive browser using the open source Open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology. Before the term open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; open source software model. That browser would eventually evolve into Firefox Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. As of June 2010[update], Firefox was the second most widely used browser, with 23.81% of worldwide usage share of web browsers, according to Net Applications. Other sources put Firefox's usage share between 20% and, which developed a respectable following while still in the beta A software release is the distribution of an initial or upgraded version of a computer software product. The software engineers and company doing the work decide on how to distribute the program or system, or changes to that pre downloads and compact discs. A release in general contains code, documentation, and certification stage of development; shortly after the release of Firefox 1.0 in late 2004, Firefox (all versions) accounted for 7.4% of browser use.^[3] As of April 2010, Firefox has a 25% usage share.^[4]

Apple Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. Apple software includes the Mac OS X operating system; the iTunes media browser; the iLife suite's Safari Safari is a graphical web browser developed by Apple and included as part of the Mac OS X operating system. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther." Safari is also the native browser for the iPhone OS. A had its first beta release in January 2003; as of October 2009, it has a dominant share of Apple-based Web browsing, accounting for just under 5% of the entire browser market as of April 2010.^[4] Its rendering engine, called WebKit WebKit is a layout engine designed to allow web browsers to render web pages. The WebKit engine provides a set of classes to display web content in windows, and implements browser features such as following links when clicked by the user, managing a back-forward list, and managing a history of pages recently visited, is also running in the standard browsers of several mobile phone platforms, including the iPhone OS iPhone OS is a mobile operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is the default operating system of the iPhone, the iPod Touch, and the iPad, Google Android Android is a mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel. It was initially developed by Google and later the Open Handset Alliance. It allows developers to write managed code in the Java language, controlling the device via Google-developed Java libraries, Nokia S60 and Palm WebOS Palm webOS is Palm's flagship mobile operating system running on the Linux kernel.

The most recent major entrant to the browser market is Google Google Inc. is a multinational public cloud computing, Internet search, and advertising technologies corporation. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program. The company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, often dubbed the "'s WebKit-based Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine and application framework. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on 2 September 2008, and the public stable release was on 11 December 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web, first released in September 2008. As of April 2010, it has a 7% usage share.^[4]

Function

The primary purpose of a web browser is to bring information resources to the user. This process begins when the user inputs a Uniform Resource Identifier In computing, a Uniform Resource Identifier is a string of characters used to identify a name or a resource on the Internet. Such identification enables interaction with representations of the resource over a network (typically the World Wide Web) using specific protocols. Schemes specifying a concrete syntax and associated protocols define each (URI), for example http://en.wikipedia.org/, into the browser. The prefix of the URI determines how the URI will be interpreted. The most commonly used kind of URI starts with http: and identifies a resource to be retrieved over the Hypertext Transfer Protocol The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is an Application Layer protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems (HTTP). Many browsers also support a variety of other prefixes, such as https: for HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol with the SSL/TLS protocol to provide encryption and secure (website security testing) identification of the server. It uses port 443. HTTPS connections are often used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web and for sensitive transactions in corporate, ftp: for the File Transfer Protocol File Transfer Protocol is a standard network protocol used to copy a file from one host to another over a TCP/IP-based network, such as the Internet. FTP is built on a client-server architecture and utilizes separate control and data connections between the client and server applications, which solves the problem of different end host, and file: The file URI scheme is a URI scheme specified in RFC 1630 and RFC 1738, typically used to retrieve files from within one's own computer for local files. Prefixes that the web browser cannot directly handle are often handed off to another application entirely. For example, mailto: URIs are usually passed to the user's default e-mail application, and news: URIs are passed to the user's default newsgroup reader.

In the case of http, https, file, and others, once the resource has been retrieved the web browser will display it. HTML HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items. It allows images and objects to be embedded and can be used to create interactive forms is passed to the browser's layout engine to be transformed from markup to an interactive document. Aside from HTML, web browsers can generally display any kind of content that can be part of a web page. Most browsers can display images, audio, video, and XML files, and often have plug-ins to support Flash applications and Java applets. Upon encountering a file of an unsupported type or a file that is set up to be downloaded rather than displayed, the browser prompts the user to save the file to disk.

Interactivity in a web page can also be supplied by Javascript, which usually does not require a plugin. Javascript can be used along with other technologies to allow "live" interaction with the web page's server via AJAX.

Information resources may contain hyperlinks to other information resources. Each link contains the URI of a resource to go to. When a link is clicked, the browser navigates to the resource indicated by the link's target URI, and the process of bringing content to the user begins again.

Features

Available web browsers range in features from minimal, text-based user interfaces with bare-bones support for HTML to rich user interfaces supporting a wide variety of file formats and protocols. Browsers which include additional components to support e-mail, Usenet news, and Internet Relay Chat (IRC), are sometimes referred to as "Internet suites" rather than merely "web browsers".^[5][6][7]

All major web browsers allow the user to open multiple information resources at the same time, either in different browser windows or in different tabs of the same window. Major browsers also include pop-up blockers to prevent unwanted windows from "popping up" without the user's consent.^{[8][9][10][11]}

Most web browsers can display a list of web pages that the user has bookmarked so that the user can quickly return to them. Bookmarks are also called "Favorites" in Internet Explorer. In addition, all major web browsers have some form of built-in web feed aggregator. In Mozilla Firefox, web feeds are formatted as "live bookmarks" and behave like a folder of bookmarks corresponding to recent entries in the feed.^[12] In Opera, a more traditional feed reader is included which stores and displays the contents of the feed.^[13]

Furthermore, most browsers can be extended via plug-ins, downloadable components that provide additional features.

User interface

Most major web browsers have these user interface elements in common:^[14]

• Back and forward buttons to go back to the previous resource and forward again.
• A refresh or reload button to reload the current resource.
• A stop button to cancel loading the resource. In some browsers, the stop button is merged with the reload button.
• A home button to return to the user's home page
• An address bar to input the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) of the desired resource and display it.
• A search bar to input terms into a search engine
• A status bar to display progress in loading the resource and also the URI of links when the cursor hovers over them, and page zooming capability.

Major browsers also possess incremental find features to search within a web page.

Privacy and security

Most browsers support HTTP Secure and offer quick and easy ways to delete the web cache, cookies, and browsing history. For a comparison of the current security vulnerabilities of browsers, see comparison of web browsers.

Standards support

Early web browsers supported only a very simple version of HTML. The rapid development of proprietary web browsers led to the development of non-standard dialects of HTML, leading to problems with interoperability. Modern web browsers support a combination of standards-based and de facto HTML and XHTML, which should be rendered in the same way by all browsers.

See also

• Browser wars
• Comparison of web browsers
• Geobrowsing
• Internet suite
• Layout engine
• List of web browsers
• Mobile browser
• Timeline of web browsers
• Usage share of web browsers

References

1. ^ Jacobs, Ian; Walsh, Norman (15 December 2004). "URI/Resource Relationships". Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One. World Wide Web Consortium. http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/#id-resources. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
2. ^ Stewart, William. "Web Browser History". http://www.livinginternet.com/w/wi_browse.htm. Retrieved 5 May 2009.
3. ^ ^{a b} Searchenginejournal.com
4. ^ ^{a b c d e} Hitslink.com
5. ^ "The SeaMonkey Project". Mozilla Foundation. 7 November 2008. http://www.seamonkey-project.org/. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
6. ^ "Cyberdog: Welcome to the 'doghouse!". 5 July 2009. http://www.cyberdog.org/. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
7. ^ Teelucksingh, Dev Anand. "Interesting DOS programs". Opus Networkx. http://www.opus.co.tt/dave/internet.htm. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
8. ^ Andersen, Starr; Abella, Vincent (15 September 2004). "Part 5: Enhanced Browsing Security". Changes to Functionality in Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2. Microsoft. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb457150.aspx#EEAA. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
9. ^ "Pop-up blocker". Mozilla Foundation. http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Pop-up+blocker. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
10. ^ "Safari: Using The Pop-Up Blocker". Mac Tips and Tricks. WeHostMacs. 2004. http://www.mactipsandtricks.com/tips/display.lasso?mactip=137. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
11. ^ "Simple settings". Opera Tutorials. Opera Software. http://www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/settings/#tabs. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
12. ^ Bokma, John. "Mozilla Firefox: RSS and Live Bookmarks". http://johnbokma.com/firefox/rss-and-live-bookmarks.html. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
13. ^ "RSS newsfeeds in Opera Mail". Opera Software. http://www.opera.com/mail/rss/. Retrieved 30 June 2009.
14. ^ "About Browsers and their Features". SpiritWorks Software Development. http://www.about-the-web.com/shtml/browsers.shtml. Retrieved 5 May 2009.

External links

• Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One
• WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project
• What is browser? Video by Google
• How browsers work

Categories: Web browsers

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