WorldWideWeb for NeXT computer was the first browser (1991) ^[1]

A web browser is a software application which enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music and other information typically located on a Web page at a website on the World Wide Web or a local area network. Application software is a subclass of Computer software that employs the capabilities of a computer directly and thoroughly to a task that the user wishes to perform A web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a Web browser. A website (alternatively web site or Web site, a back-construction from the Proper noun World Wide Web) is a collection of Web pages The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked Hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. Text and images on a Web page can contain hyperlinks to other Web pages at the same or different website. In computing a hyperlink is a Reference or Navigation element in a Document to another Section of the same document or to another Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many Web pages at many websites by traversing these links. Web browsers format HTML information for display, so the appearance of a Web page may differ between browsers. HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant Markup language for Web pages It provides a means to describe the structure

Some of the Web browsers currently available for personal computers include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera, Flock and AOL Explorer. A personal computer ( PC) is any Computer whose original sales price size and capabilities make it useful for individuals and which is intended to be operated Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer abbreviated MSIE) commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical Safari is a Web browser developed by Apple Inc and included in Mac OS X. Opera is a Web browser and Internet suite developed by the Opera Software company Flock is a Web browser built on Mozilla’s Firefox Codebase that specializes in providing social networking and Web 2 ^[2] Web browsers are the most commonly used type of HTTP user agent. Hypertext Transfer Protocol ( HTTP) is a Communications protocol for the transfer of information on the Internet. A user agent is the client application used with a particular Network protocol; the phrase is most commonly used in reference to those which access the World Although browsers are typically used to access the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by Web servers in private networks or content in file systems. The term web server can mean one of two things A Computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from web clients which are In Internet terminology a private network is typically a network that uses private IP address space following the agreed standard of RFC 1918 In Computing, a file system (often also written as filesystem) is a method for storing and organizing Computer files and the data they contain to make

History

Main article: History of the web browser

The history of the web browser dates back to 1991 with the development of the first web browser, the WorldWideWeb, by Tim Berners-Lee. The history of the web browser dates back to late 1980s when a variety technologies laid the foundation for the first web browser the WorldWideWeb, by Tim Berners-Lee WorldWideWeb was the world's first Web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor. Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA (born 8 June 1955 is an English computer scientist who is credited

Protocols and standards

Web browsers communicate with Web servers primarily using HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) to fetch webpages. The term web server can mean one of two things A Computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from web clients which are Hypertext Transfer Protocol ( HTTP) is a Communications protocol for the transfer of information on the Internet. A web page or webpage is a resource of information that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a Web browser. HTTP allows Web browsers to submit information to Web servers as well as fetch Web pages from them. The most commonly used HTTP is HTTP/1. 1, which is fully defined in RFC 2616. In Computer network Engineering, a Request for Comments (RFC is a Memorandum published by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF describing HTTP/1. 1 has its own required standards that Internet Explorer does not fully support, but most other current-generation Web browsers do. Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer abbreviated MSIE) commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical

Pages are located by means of a URL (uniform resource locator, RFC 1738 ), which is treated as an address, beginning with http: for HTTP access. Uniform Resource Locator is an URI which also specifies where the identified resource is available and the protocol for retrieving it Many browsers also support a variety of other URL types and their corresponding protocols, such as gopher: for Gopher (a hierarchical hyperlinking protocol), ftp: for FTP (file transfer protocol), rtsp: for RTSP (real-time streaming protocol), and https: for HTTPS (an SSL encrypted version of HTTP). For other uses see Gopher. Gopher is a distributed Document search and retrieval Network protocol designed The Real Time Streaming Protocol ( RTSP) developed by the IETF and created in 1998 as RFC 2326 is a protocol for use in Streaming media Transport Layer Security ( TLS) and its predecessor Secure Sockets Layer ( SSL) are Cryptographic protocols that provide secure

The file format for a Web page is usually HTML (hyper-text markup language) and is identified in the HTTP protocol using a MIME content type. A file format is a particular way to encode information for storage in a Computer file. HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant Markup language for Web pages It provides a means to describe the structure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions ( MIME) is an Internet standard that extends the format of e-mail to support text in Character Most browsers natively support a variety of formats in addition to HTML, such as the JPEG, PNG and GIF image formats, and can be extended to support more through the use of plugins. Portable Network Graphics ( PNG) is a bitmapped image format that employs Lossless data compression. The combination of HTTP content type and URL protocol specification allows Web page designers to embed images, animations, video, sound, and streaming media into a Web page, or to make them accessible through the Web page. Streaming multimedia is Multimedia that is constantly received by and normally presented to an end-user while it is being delivered by a streaming provider (the

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 Web interoperability. Modern Web browsers support a combination of standards- and defacto-based HTML and XHTML, which should display in the same way across all browsers. The Extensible Hypertext Markup Language, or XHTML, is a No browser fully supports HTML 4. 01, XHTML 1. x or CSS 2. 1 yet. Currently many sites are designed using WYSIWYG HTML generation programs such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage. WYSIWYG (ˈwɪziwɪg or /ˈwɪzɪwɪg/ is an Acronym for W hat Y ou S ee I s W hat Y ou G Adobe Dreamweaver is a Web development application originally created by Allaire Systems who was acquired approximately 1998 by Macromedia and is now owned Microsoft FrontPage (later full name Microsoft Office FrontPage) is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and Web site administration tool from Microsoft Microsoft FrontPage often generates non-standard HTML by default, hindering the work of the W3C in developing standards, specifically with XHTML and CSS (cascading style sheets, used for page layout). Dreamweaver and other more modern Microsoft HTML development tools such as Microsoft Expression Web and Microsoft Visual Studio conform to the W3C standards. Microsoft Expression Web, code-named Quartz, is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and general Web design program by Microsoft, replacing Microsoft Visual Studio is the main Integrated Development Environment (IDE from Microsoft.

Some of the more popular browsers include additional components to support Usenet news, IRC (Internet relay chat), and e-mail. Usenet, a Portmanteau of "user" and "network" is a world-wide distributed Internet discussion system Electronic mail, often abbreviated to e-mail, email, or originally eMail, is a Store-and-forward method of writing sending receiving Protocols supported may include NNTP (network news transfer protocol), SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol), IMAP (Internet message access protocol), and POP (post office protocol). The Network News Transfer Protocol or NNTP is an Internet application protocol used primarily for reading Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ( SMTP) is a De facto standard for electronic mail (e-mail transmissions across the Internet. The Internet Message Access Protocol or IMAP is one of the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for E-mail retrieval the other being POP3 In Computing, local E-mail clients use the Post Office Protocol version 3 ( POP3) an application-layer Internet standard protocol These browsers are often referred to as Internet suites or application suites rather than merely Web browsers. An Internet suite is an Internet -related Software suite. Internet suites usually include a Web browser, E-mail client (often with a News

See also

• History of the Internet
• Timeline of web browsers
• Mobile browser
• Usage share of web browsers
• Comparison of web browsers
• List of web browsers
• Browser wars
• Acid3

References

External links

• evolt.org - Browser Archive
• Macintosh Web Browsers
• Viewable with Any Browser: Campaign