| A software
program that lets you see and hear what's on the web. Examples
include Netscape and Microsoft Internet Explorer.
A browser is an application
program that provides a way to look at and interact with all the
information on the World Wide Web. The word "browser" seems to have
originated prior to the Web as a generic term for user interfaces
that let you browse (navigate through and read) text files online.
By the time the first Web browser with a graphical user interface
was generally available (Mosaic, in 1993), the term seemed to apply
to Web content, too. Technically, a Web browser is a client program
that uses the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to make requests of
Web servers throughout the Internet on behalf of the browser user. A
commercial version of the original browser, Mosaic, is in use. Many
of the user interface features in Mosaic, however, went into the
first widely-used browser, Netscape Navigator. Microsoft followed
with its Microsoft Internet Explorer. Today, these two browsers are
the only two browsers that the vast majority of Internet users are
aware of. Although the online services, such as America Online,
originally had their own browsers, virtually all now offer the
Netscape or Microsoft browser. Lynx is a text-only browser for UNIX
shell and VMS users. Another recently offered and well-regarded
browser is Opera. |
