What is a Browser?

Internet

What is a Browser?

The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example,www.ebizelindia.com , and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. The home page is an index to other pages on that site that you can jump to by clicking an underlined hyperlink or an icon. Links on that site may take you to other related sites.

Bookmarks

Browsers have a Bookmark or Favorites feature that lets you store references to your favorite sites. Instead of having to type in the URL to visit the site again, you select the bookmark.

Mosaic

The Mosaic browser put the Web on the map in 1993, but by the mid-1990s, Netscape Navigator (commonly called "Netscape") had 80% of the market. Vying for top spot, Netscape and Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) constantly added new features and functions that fragmented Web sites into competing camps.

Today, IE, which is included with every Windows PC, has approximately 90% of the market. Netscape is still popular among devotees, and it spawned Mozilla and Firefox, the latter gaining a lot of attention when released in 2004. Opera also has a nice following, and Safari is the browser for Mac OS X. Maxthon is also quite popular, and there are others.