Web 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.computerlanguage.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.

It Started with 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.

Best Viewed By...
In the early days of the Web, a site would often say "best viewed by Netscape" or "best viewed by Internet Explorer." It meant that the pages were programmed for that particular browser. Using the other browser would ignore some of the page's visual features until a subsequent release supported them. This notice is rarely seen these days as all browsers support a set of standards sufficient to render almost all Web pages in the same manner. See Mosaic, Opera, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, Maxthon, hyperlink, World Wide Web, HTML and microbrowser.

The Most Well Known

Internet Explorer and Netscape are the two major browsers used to access the Web. Similar in features and function, each new version includes enhancements that the other generally catches up to in its next release. (Web page examples courtesy of Pyramid Studios, www.artistexpo.com)

There Are Others

Opera is a highly respected Web browser from Norway that offers many unique features, including the ability to magnify the image as shown here (see Opera). (Web page example courtesy of Pyramid Studios, www.artistexpo.com)

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(World-Wide Web)

web browser - A browser for the World-Wide Web.