[edit] Brief Description

[edit] Wiki description

Description

Web browsers are software applications that allow users to view and interact with web pages. Browsers use HTTP to send the name of the page the user requested to the server.

Web pages are written in HTML, a standardized language that allows browsers to correctly interpret them.

History

The world's first browser - Mosaic - was released back in February 1993 and written by Marc Andreessen (from the National Center for Supercomputer Applications) and was able to display text, pictures, video and sounds.

Mosaic quickly became very popular so later on Andreessen started his own company called Netscape and aimed to develop even more web software. His product, Netscape Navigator, competed with the famous Microsoft Internet Explorer for many years. Presently, America Online owns Netscape Communications Corp after buying it for $4.2 billion in 1998.

How do browsers work?

There are several steps to be completed until the user can see the actual web page. Most browsers display the progress they made with each step in a status line at the bottom of the screen.

1. First of all, the web browser has to get the IP address of the website form the DNS.
2. When DNS replies with the IP address, the browsers makes a TCP connection to port 80 on that IP.
3. It then makes another request for the index HTML file.
4. The server sends the index file
5. The TCP connection is released
6. Finally the browser fetches and displays all the text and the images in the file.

File types

Almost every browser out there supports multimedia file types like GIF, JPEG, PNG, MP3 and MPEG.

Types of browsers

• graphical
• nongraphical, such as Lynx, mostly used for search engine optimization analysis.
• voice based

Browser engines

Standard Features

• Navigation menu - with buttons like Back, Forward, Homepage
• Bookmarks - links saved in a list that can be quickly opened later
• History - displays recently visited websites; some browsers, like FireFox allow users to organize or search their history
• Print Preview - allows users to see how the web page would look on paper before printing it
• Search function - look for a specific phrase on the current page
• Tabbed browsing - users can visualize multiple websites in a single browser window
• Spell checker - usually the text that you spelled wrong will appear underlined
• Auto Complete - based on what you usually type browsers suggest web addresses, form entries and search queries
• RSS reader - some browsers allow users to subscribe to and view web feeds
• Pop-up blocker - block annoying commercials that keep popping out
• Protection form phising and spyware - most browsers won't allow websites to download stuff to your computer without specific agreement
• Cookie manager - features for blocking and allowing cookies
• Accessibility - features that make web pages easily accessible to users with physical impairments

How to choose

Security

Security is a very important issue. Web browsers store on the user's computers small files called cookies that could contain confidential information like credit card numbers, social security numbers. Imagine the damage if this kind of data would leak all over the Internet.

Speed

Linux

Windows

Mac

Mac OS X

Mac OS 9

Statistics

Microsoft Internet Explorer still remains the most popular browser on the market, but according to the statistics, FireFox is catching up pretty fast. In July 2007, reports showed that IE had a market share of 58.5%. Many people complained about the security and stability of IE 7 so the IE 6 share was still up:

• Internet Explorer 7 -> 20.1%
• Internet Explorer 6 -> 36.9%
• Internet Explorer 5 -> 1.5%

Mozilla (renamed back in 2005) and Firefox gathered a 35.9% share. Mozilla is obviously obsolete and probably will disappear soon

• Firefox -> 34.5%
• Mozilla -> 1.4%

We shouldn't forget about Safari, now compatible with Microsoft Windows, Netscape, the most popular browser of early Internet and Opera, that recently transformed into an open source project

• Opera -> 1.9%
• Safari -> 1.5%
• Netscape -> 0.1%

Here's a comparison of the January 2007 and October 2007 statistics, provided by W3C:

Top products

Mozilla FireFox is a fast and user friendly cross-platform (running on Microsoft Windows 98, Me, 2000, XP, 2003 Server, Linux, MacOS X, BSD - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and PC-BSD, Solaris - x86 and SPARC, BeOS, OS/2, AIX, SkyOS şi IRIX) browser that makes browsing easy and fun. Standard FireFox features include tabbed browsing, a pop-up blocker, integrated Google search and private data control. Mozilla FireFox was developed by the Mozilla Foundation and was released in 2002 under the name "Pheonix". This is also one of the most popular open source software applications, with over 300.000.000 downloads so far.

Internet Explorer was developed by Microsoft. IE is the most popular browser and comes packaged with Windows in spite of its numerous bugs and security flaws. The security architecture of IE is responsible for the spread of most of the spyware and computer viruses on the Internet. The latest version, IE 7, is the least standards-compliant browser on the market. IE 7 only works on Windows Vista and Windows XP even if previous versions, like IE 3.0 and IE 4.0 used to work on Mac and Unix too. Internet Explorer can not be uninstalled from Windows.
	Safari
Opera claims to be one of the fastest and most secure browsers on the market. However, test prove that this is an incomplete statement, as it is the fastest browser *for Windows*. Opera wasn't always free: until late 2005 users had to pay for a license or use the ad-sponsored version. Opera Software also developed browsers for mobile devices, such as Opera Mobile for Smartphones and PDAs, Nintendo DS Browser for Nintendo and Opera Mini that works on mobile phones.

Communities

Mozilla FireFox

• Official MozzilaZine forums
• Official FireFox Blog
• Support forum for Mozilla FireFox in German
• Mozilla Press Center

Opera

• Opera blogs
• Opera community forums
• Official Opera community groups
• The Opera Community people

Internet Explorer

• Internet Explorer thread on the TechSupport Forums
• Microsoft Communities for Home Users
• The Internet Explorer blog
• The Internet Explorer Developer Center

Further reading

• List of web browsers on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers
• Opera homepage: http://www.opera.com/
• Mozilla FireFox official homepage: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
• Web browsers article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Browser
• More about Operating Systems