A browser is a kind of application software used to access web resources, such as HTML documents, text, file, audio, video or other similar documents on the world wide web(www) through Internet. Browser sends the http request to a targeted website to fetch a required response which may be subsequently displayed, shared, downloaded and interfaced in a user-friendly way. This apparatus is a must to handle web pages and documents.
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Who Invented Web Browser?
The first web browser called world wide web(www) was designed , developed and created by an English computer scientist Sir Tim Berner-Lee in 1990. He actually wanted to exchange research based information among a number of computers using computer network. To achieve this he invented this interfacing software. Lee’s browser developed in 1990 and operated on Nextstep Operating System. It was both a browser and an editor. It couldn’t work on other system except Nextstep Operating System.
Historical Development of Browser
Browser’s development led the software companies to an intense intercompetition that yielded a number of compatible, user-friendly, multi-platform oriented searching browsers in a short span of time, namely, a decade. World Wide Web was the first web browser though there is a difference between www( as a website ) and www( as a browser ). To mark the confusion the browser( www ) was named ‘Nexus‘ in later.
Burner Lee made an explanation of world wide web on 6th Aug, 1991 and also published with the assistance of Francois Groff a code library known as Libwww which later became a great milestone for browser developers.
Nicola Pellow, too, made a Line Mode Browser that could work both on UNIX and MS-DOS networks released in 1991.
Erwise was also an earlier browser made by four Finnish students in 1991 and was published in 1992.It could search words on pages and handle geographical interface.
Violaww was encoded in viola( Visually Interactive Object Oriented Language ) scripting by Pie-Yuan-Wei at the University of California in 1992. It had many advanced features, such as embedding Java-based Applet features on websites.
The Lynx browser, a kind of text-based browser, was invented in 1992. It couldn’t display graphical content.
Mosaic or NCSA Mosaic was developed by NCSA( National Center for Super Computing Applications) in late 1992 and finally released in 1993. It supported various internet protocol such as File Transfer Protocol( FTP ), Network News Transfer Protocol etc. The browser was very popular on MS Operating System and could display images with inline text as it was a graphical web browser.
Another landmark in the history of browser war, was the release of Netscape Navigator which was encoded in Java scripting( client-side scripting) published in 1994.
‘Netscape web browser was once dominant, but it lost to Internet Explorer and other competitor in the so-called first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90% in the mid 1990 to less than 1% in 2006.”
The Microsoft Corporation introduced Internet Explorer in 1995. Opera started a research project in 1994 and launched its first web browser on 1st April, 1995. It claims to be the fastest browser in the world.
Apple’s Safari was released on June 30, in 2003, for Macintosh Computer.
Mozilla foundation built a high quality browser—–the Firefox as Netscape Navigator in 2004. First of all released on 23rd Sept,2002, as beta, then it changed to “Mozilla Browser “. Its coded name was ‘Phoenix’. The browser could prevent malware.
Mobile Safari was released as Apple’s mobile browser in 2007.
UC Browser was launched in 2004 by UC web, a Chinese/Singapore based company. It is compatible with various devices such as android, ios etc. The browser is most popular in South Asia especially in India where there were 100 million active users in 2016 as per wikipedia.
Google Chrome is a open-source browser released in the web world in 2008 by Google. This supports various platforms like Linux, Windows, Mac Osx, Android and ios Operating System.
Amazon Silk launched on Nov 15, 2011, developed for Fire OS devices and has many features similar to Google Chrome.
Microsoft Edge was released in 2015. Its code name is ‘Spartan’. The browser was introduced with Microsoft Windows 10.
What Are the Features of Browser?
All the browsers available in the web have some common features, such as bookmark, sync service, home button, refresh button, search button, history, stop button, web address bar, incognito, new tab, setting, find in page etc. For more clarification each one elaborated as follows.
Bookmark: Bookmark is a kind of Uniform Resource Identifier(URI) that stores data, webpages, text or any kind of web resource which may be retrieved later time.
Sync Service : Browser sync is a kind of feature that allows a user to share settings and data across multiple installs and devices. It has also some other features, such as live reloading, customizing interaction, logging url history etc.
Home Button : The home button helps users to bring the predefined pages when browser is first opened in a website.
Refresh Button : When someone visits a webpage, the page is stored as a local copy through caching mechanism. So, when a user wants to visit the same page, he can use the refresh button to allow the page to be reloaded as fast as possible and also it works in case of error of loading a page. While browsing a page in a website, sometimes the targeted page doesn’t load in the browser on account of network error or technical problem. In such a circumstances, that page may be reloaded swiftly with refresh button. It’s conducive too, to get updated information of webpages.
Search Button : Search button in a browser opens the default search page against a search query placed into the search box. Now the developed browsers’ vendors provided inbuilt omnibox into the address bar.
History : History is a feature of browser by tapping which you can see again the previsited webpages unless you haven’t cleared or deleted the browsing history. Very often if you want to visit and read a particular webpage, then you don’t need to search it on the browser or search engine provided that you have already visited that page. Just go through the browsing history, mark the title, click on it and the page will be reloaded from cache on your browser. It saves time. All visited web resources are stored as cache in browser.
Stop Button : This button used to prevent loading any harmful content into the browser by disconnecting link from the server. To do this the user has to tap the stop button so that the loading content can be stopped instantly.
Web Address Bar : It’s a place on the browser to enter a url in order to visit a targeted webpage.
Incognito :
Download Link of Browsers
You can download browsers from the following authentic links. In order to run in your pc or laptop a program you should check the source whether it is from the developer’s source or not. I gave you the updated version of the all application program referred to in this section.
- Google Chrome download
- Firefox download
- Safari download
- Internet Explorer download
- Microsoft Edge download
- Amazon Silk download
- UC browser download
- Opera download
Functions of Browser
Whatever you do in internet, you need a browser to sail through the vast ocean of world wide web. Here the user is obliged to perform various kind of work based on need and necessity. So, browser is used, to access( a website), to login, to view multimedia, to link from one website to another one etc. Besides, it’s used to visit page/site, print document, send article/email, download anything else you may like and so on. Browser serves many kind of works, so it has many button, each one of it has its own specific purpose.
How Does a Browser Work?
Browsers fetch data and information from the world wide web in response to a query sent to a server. What you see, read or interact with on the screen of an android, smartphone, pc or laptop is processed through a request-response model. An end user when searches a keyword, it goes to the server as request via an internet protocol such as http or https. Search engine crawlers find out various types of response of which the most suitable one is sent back as response. Browser retrieves, interprets and displays this response on the user’s side using Hyper Text Markup Language(HTML). If the text is hyperlinked, it will point to another resource if someone taps or clicks on the hyperlink.Thus a lot of webpages are interlinked to one another through this tactics. The most modern browsers are built with advanced dynamic functionality like flagging a webpage/url insecure in case it is sent through http. On the other hand, a secured web url begins with https where the information sent being encrypted.
Every web resource, be it a text, a document, an audio or a video has its own URL that occupies a specific location within a server. While typing any query on a browser, it’s gone to the Domain Name Server as a client request using predefined IP address. The concerned web server sends back response against the query with URL and IP(predefined) on user’s display. All browsers do follow the web standards as maintained by the browser’s forum though there may exist difference as to browser’s performance and mode of actions.
