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A Web browser is a software application
Application software

Application software is any tool that functions and is operated by means of a computer, with the purpose of supporting or improving the software user 's work....
 which enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music, games and other information typically located on a Web page
Web page

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.This information is usually in HyperText Markup Language or eXtensible HyperText Markup Language format, and may provide Navigation bar to other web pages via hypertext Hyperlink....
 at a Web site
Website

A Web site is a collection of related Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are hosted on one Web server, usually accessible via the Internet....
 on the World Wide Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
 or a local area network
Local area network

A local area network is a computer network covering a small physical area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school, or an airport....
. Text and images on a Web page can contain hyperlink
Hyperlink

In computing, a hyperlink, usually shortened to link, is a directly followable reference within a hypertext document.The area from which the hyperlink can be activated is called its anchor; its target is what the link points to, which may be another location within the same page or document, another page or document, or a...
s to other Web pages at the same or different Web site. Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many Web pages at many Web sites by traversing these links.






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A Web browser is a software application
Application software

Application software is any tool that functions and is operated by means of a computer, with the purpose of supporting or improving the software user 's work....
 which enables a user to display and interact with text, images, videos, music, games and other information typically located on a Web page
Web page

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.This information is usually in HyperText Markup Language or eXtensible HyperText Markup Language format, and may provide Navigation bar to other web pages via hypertext Hyperlink....
 at a Web site
Website

A Web site is a collection of related Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are hosted on one Web server, usually accessible via the Internet....
 on the World Wide Web
World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a very large set of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a Web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain writing, s, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks....
 or a local area network
Local area network

A local area network is a computer network covering a small physical area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school, or an airport....
. Text and images on a Web page can contain hyperlink
Hyperlink

In computing, a hyperlink, usually shortened to link, is a directly followable reference within a hypertext document.The area from which the hyperlink can be activated is called its anchor; its target is what the link points to, which may be another location within the same page or document, another page or document, or a...
s to other Web pages at the same or different Web site. Web browsers allow a user to quickly and easily access information provided on many Web pages at many Web sites by traversing these links. Web browsers format HTML
HTML

HTML, an Acronym and initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for Web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document?by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on?and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded '...
 information for display, so the appearance of a Web page may differ between browsers.

Web browsers are the most-commonly-used type of HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol

Hypertext Transfer Protocol is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. Its use for retrieving inter-linked resources led to the establishment of the World Wide Web....
 user agent
User agent

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 Wide Web, but other systems such as Session Initiation Protocol use the term user agent to refer to the user's phone....
. Although browsers are typically used to access the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by Web server
Web server

The term web server can mean one of two things:# A computer program that is responsible for accepting Hypertext Transfer Protocol requests from clients , and Server them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as Hypertext Markup Language documents and linked objects ....
s in private network
Private network

In Internet terminology, a private network is typically a network that uses private IP address space, following the standards set by RFC 1918 and RFC 4193....
s or content in file system
File system

In computing, a file system is a method for store and organize computer files and the data they contain to make it easy to find and access them....
s.

History

The history of the Web browser dates back to late 1980s, when a variety of technologies laid the foundation for the first Web browser, the WorldWideWeb
WorldWideWeb

WorldWideWeb was the world's first web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor. It was introduced on February 26, 1991, by UK scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and ran on the NeXTSTEP platform....
, by Tim Berners-Lee
Tim Berners-Lee

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, Order of Merit, Order of the British Empire, Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering, Royal Society of Arts is an English people computer scientist and MIT professor credited with inventing the World Wide Web....
 in 1991. That browser brought together a variety of existing and new software and hardware technologies.

Over the following years, Web browsers were introduced by companies like Netscape
Netscape

Netscape Communications is a United States computer services company, best known for its web browser. The browser was once dominant in terms of Usage share of web browsers, but lost most of that share to Internet Explorer during the browser wars....
, Microsoft
Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is a multinational corporation computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of computer software products for computing devices....
, Mozilla Foundation
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....
, Apple, and Opera
Opera Software

Opera Software is a Norwegian corporation, primarily known for its Opera family of web browsers. Opera Software is also involved in promoting Web standards through participation in the World Wide Web Consortium....
. More recently, Google entered the browser market with Chrome.

Current Web browsers

Some of the Web browsers currently available for personal computer
Personal computer

A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose original sales price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator....
s include Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer , commonly abbreviated to IE, is a series of graphical user interface web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995....
, Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Official versions are distributed under the terms of the proprietary EULA....
, Safari
Safari (web browser)

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc.. First released as a 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, commonly known as "OS X Panther." Apple has also made Safari the native browser for the iPhone OS....
, Opera
Opera (web browser)

Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by the Opera Software company. Opera handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, IRC online chatting, downloading files via BitTorrent , and reading web feeds....
, Avant Browser
Avant Browser

Avant Browser is a popular freeware web browser from a China programmer named Anderson Che, which unites the Trident built into Microsoft Windows with an interface intended to be more feature-rich, flexible and ergonomic than Microsoft's Internet Explorer ....
, Konqueror
Konqueror

Konqueror is a web browser, file manager and file viewer designed as a core part of the KDE. It is developed by volunteers and can run on most Unix-like operating systems....
, Lynx
Lynx (web browser)

Lynx is a free open-source, text-only World Wide Web web browser for use on cursor-addressable, character cell computer terminal. Supported protocols are Gopher , [], [], FTP, Wide area information server, and NNTP....
, Google Chrome
Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google and based on the WebKit layout engine and application framework.In February 2009, it had a share of 1.15% of the web browser market....
, Maxthon
Maxthon

Maxthon is a China-based freeware web browser for Microsoft Windows. From its early MyIE2 roots, Maxthon has developed a growing user base, especially in China, and in 2006 it received commercial backing for Maxthon 2.0....
, Flock
Flock (web browser)

Flock is a web browser built on Mozilla Firefox codebase that tends to specialize in providing Social network service and Web 2.0 facilities built into its user interface....
, Arachne
Arachne (web browser)

Arachne is a full-screen Internet suite containing a graphical web browser, email client, and dialer. It primarily runs on DOS based operating systems, but includes builds for Linux as well....
, Epiphany, K-Meleon
K-Meleon

K-Meleon is a web browser for the Microsoft Windows platform. Based on the same Gecko layout engine as Mozilla Firefox, K-Meleon uses native Windows Application programming interface to create the user interface , and as a result, is tightly integrated into the look and feel of the Windows desktop; this approach is similar to that of Galeon...
 and AOL Explorer
AOL Explorer

AOL Explorer, previously known as AOL Browser, is a graphical web browser based on the Trident layout engine and was released by AOL. In July 2005, AOL launched AOL Explorer as a free download and as an optional download with AOL Instant Messenger version 5.9....
.

Protocols and standards

Web browsers communicate with Web server
Web server

The term web server can mean one of two things:# A computer program that is responsible for accepting Hypertext Transfer Protocol requests from clients , and Server them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as Hypertext Markup Language documents and linked objects ....
s primarily using Hypertext Transfer Protocol
Hypertext Transfer Protocol

Hypertext Transfer Protocol is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. Its use for retrieving inter-linked resources led to the establishment of the World Wide Web....
 (HTTP) to fetch Web pages. HTTP allows Web browsers to submit information to Web servers as well as fetch Web pages from them. The most-commonly-used version of HTTP is HTTP/1.1, which is fully defined in RFC
Request for Comments

In computer network engineering, a request for comments is a memorandum published by the Internet Engineering Task Force describing methods, behaviors, research, or innovations applicable to the working of the Internet and Internet-connected systems....
 2616. HTTP/1.1 has its own required standards that Internet Explorer does not fully support, but most other current-generation Web browsers do.

Pages are located by means of a URL
Uniform Resource Locator

In Information technology, a Uniform Resource Locator is a type of Uniform Resource Identifier that specifies where an identified resource is available and the mechanism for retrieving it....
 (Uniform Resource Locator, RFC 1738), which is treated as an address, beginning with http: for HTTP transmission. Many browsers also support a variety of other URL types and their corresponding protocols, such as gopher: for Gopher
Gopher protocol

Gopher is a Distributed computing document search and retrieval network protocol designed for the Internet. Its goal is to function as an improved form of Anonymous File Transfer Protocol, enhanced with Hyperlink#Hyperlinks_in_other_technologies features similar to those of the World Wide Web....
 (a hierarchical hyperlinking protocol), ftp: for File Transfer Protocol
File Transfer Protocol

File Transfer Protocol is a network protocol used to transfer data from one computer to another through a network such as the Internet.FTP is a file transfer protocol for exchanging and manipulating files over a Transmission Control Protocol computer network....
 (FTP), rtsp: for Real-time Streaming Protocol
Real Time Streaming Protocol

The Real Time Streaming Protocol , developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force and created in 1998 as RFC 2326, is a communications protocol for use in streaming media systems, which allows a client to remotely control a streaming media server, issuing VCR-like commands such as "play" and "pause", and allowing time-based access to files...
 (RTSP), and https: for HTTPS
Https

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol and a secure communication protocol.HTTP operates at the highest layer of the TCP/IP model, the Application layer; but the security protocol operates at lower sublayer, encrypting an HTTP message prior to transmission and decrypting a message upon arriva...
 (HTTP Secure, which is HTTP augmented by Secure Sockets Layer or Transport Layer Security
Transport Layer Security

Transport Layer Security and its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer , are cryptographic protocols that provide security and data integrity for communications over Internet Protocol Suite networks such as the Internet....
).

The file format
File format

A file format is a particular way to encode information for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa....
 for a Web page is usually HTML
HTML

HTML, an Acronym and initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for Web pages. It provides a means to describe the structure of text-based information in a document?by denoting certain text as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, and so on?and to supplement that text with interactive forms, embedded '...
 (HyperText Markup Language) and is identified in the HTTP protocol using a MIME
MIME

Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions is an Internet standard that extends the format of electronic mail to support:* Text in character sets other than ASCII...
 content type. Most browsers natively support a variety of formats in addition to HTML, such as the JPEG
JPEG

In computing, JPEG is a commonly used method of for photographic images. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image quality....
, PNG and GIF image formats, and can be extended to support more through the use of plugin
Plugin

In computing, a plug-in consists of a computer program that interacts with a host application software to provide a certain, usually very specific, function "on demand"....
s. The combination of HTTP content type and URL protocol specification allows Web-page designers to embed images, animations, video, sound, and streaming media
Streaming media

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by, and normally presented to, an End-user while it is being delivered by a streaming provider ....
 into a Web page, or to make them accessible through the Web page.

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-based and de facto
De facto

De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning the fact" or in practice but not necessarily ordained by law. It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or technique that are found in the common experience as created or developed without or contrary to a regulation....
 HTML and XHTML
XHTML

The Extensible Hypertext Markup Language, or XHTML, is a markup language that has the same depth of expression as HTML, but also conforms to XML syntax....
, which should be rendered in the same way by all browsers. No browser fully supports HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.x or CSS 2.1 yet. Many sites are designed using WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG , is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed during editing appears very similar to the final output, which might be a printed document, web page, slide presentation or even the lighting for a theatrical event....
 HTML-generation programs such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft FrontPage

Microsoft FrontPage is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems....
. Microsoft FrontPage often generates non-standard HTML by default, hindering the work of the W3C
World Wide Web Consortium

The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web . It is arranged as a consortium where member organizations maintain full-time staff for the purpose of working together in the development of standards for the World Wide Web....
 in promulgating standards, specifically with XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets
Cascading Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets is a stylesheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can be applied to any kind of XML document, including Scalable Vector Graphics and XUL....
 (CSS), which are used for page layout. Dreamweaver and other more modern Microsoft HTML development tools such as Microsoft Expression Web
Microsoft Expression Web

Microsoft Expression Web, code-named Quartz, is a WYSIWYG HTML editor and general web design program by Microsoft, replacing Microsoft FrontPage....
 and Microsoft Visual Studio
Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment from Microsoft. It can be used to develop Console application and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft W...
 conform to the W3C standards.

Some of the more popular browsers include additional components to support Usenet
Usenet

Usenet, a portmanteau of "user" and "network", is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It evolved from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name....
 news, Internet Relay Chat
Internet Relay Chat

Internet Relay Chat is a form of real-time Internet text messaging or synchronous conferencing. It is mainly designed for Many-to-many in discussion forums, called #Channels, but also allows One-to-one via instant messaging, as well as chat and data transfers via Direct Client-to-Client....
 (IRC), and e-mail
E-mail

Electronic mail, often abbreviated as e-mail, email, E-Mail, or eMail, is any method of creating, transmitting, or storing primarily text-based human communications with digital communications systems....
. Protocols supported may include Network News Transfer Protocol
Network News Transfer Protocol

The Network News Transfer Protocol or NNTP is an Internet application Protocol used primarily for reading and posting Usenet articles , as well as transferring news among news servers....
 (NNTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is an Internet standard for E-mail transmission across Internet Protocol networks. SMTP was first defined in RFC 821 , and last updated by RFC 5321 , which describes the protocol in widespread use today, also known as extended SMTP ....
 (SMTP), Internet Message Access Protocol
Internet Message Access Protocol

The Internet Message Access Protocol or IMAP is one of the two most prevalent Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval, the other being Post Office Protocol....
 (IMAP), and Post Office Protocol
Post Office Protocol

In computing, the Post Office Protocol version 3 is an application layer Internet standard protocol used by local e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a remote mail server over a Internet protocol suite connection....
 (POP). These browsers are often referred to as "Internet suite
Internet suite

An Internet suite is an Internet-related software suite. Internet suites usually include a web browser, e-mail client , download manager, HTML editor, and an Internet Relay Chat....
s" or "application suites" rather than merely Web browsers.

See also

  • Acid3
    Acid3

    Acid3 is a test page from the Web Standards Project that checks how well a web browser follows certain web standards, especially relating to the Document Object Model and JavaScript....
  • Browser wars
    Browser wars

    The term "browser wars" refers to the competition for dominance in the web browser marketplace. The term is used to denote two specific periods of time: the competition between market-dominating Netscape Navigator and its eventual defeat by Microsoft Internet Explorer during the late 1990s, and the competition from 2003 onwards between the d...
  • Comparison of Web browsers
    Comparison of web browsers

    The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of web browsers. Please see the individual products' articles for further information....
  • History of the Internet
    History of the Internet

    Prior to the widespread internetworking that led to the Internet, most communication networks were limited by their nature to only allow communications between the stations on the network, and the prevalent computer networking method was based on the central mainframe computer model....
  • Layout engine
    Layout engine

    A layout engine, or rendering engine, is software that takes Markup language content and formatting information and displays the formatted content on the screen....
  • List of Web browsers
    List of web browsers

    The following is a list of web browsers....
  • Mobile browser
  • RSS
    RSS

    RSS is a three-letter abbreviation that can stand for a wide variety of terms....
  • Timeline of Web browsers
  • Universal edit button
    Universal edit button

    The Universal Edit Button is a green pencil icon in the address bar of a web browser that indicates whether a web page is editable. It is similar to the orange "broadcast" RSS icon that indicates that there is an web feed available....
  • Usage share of Web browsers
    Usage share of web browsers

    Usage share, in web browser statistics, is the percentage of visitors to a group of web sites that use a particular browser. For example, when it is said that Internet Explorer has 67% usage share, it means Internet Explorer is used by 67% of visitors that visit a given set of sites....