A browser is an application that provides a way to look at and interact with all the information on the World Wide Web. Technically, a web browser uses HTTP to make requests of web servers throughout the Internet on behalf of the browser user. In other words, a web browser is a software application that allows one to view pages on the World Wide Web.
The history of the web browser can be traced back to 1991, when a computer guru named Tim Berners-Lee invented the very first web browser. It premiered on February 26, 1991, and ran on NeXSTEP. It was called WorldWideWeb, but was later renamed Nexus in an effort to avoid confusion with the World Wide Web.
There are different web browsers that are available and in use today and they all come with a variety of features. Some of the available web browsers include Amaya, AOL Explorer, Arachne, Arlington Kiosk, Avant, Camino, Dillo, Elinks, Epiphany, Flock, Galeon, iCab, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer for Mac, K-Meleon, KioWare, Konqueror, Links, Lynx, Maxthon, Mosaic, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, OmniWeb, SeaMonkey, Safari, Opera and Off By One. Most of these web browsers are free, but there are five of them that do have a purchase price.
Web browsers also come with some features. Some common features that are included with web browsers are spell checkers, search engine toolbars, download managing, password managing, bookmark managing, as well as form managing. Accessibility features that may be included with many web browsers include page zooming, ad filtering, pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, incremental finding, HTML access keys, voice controls, mouse gestures, spatial navigation, text to speech, and caret navigation.
With so many web browsers being available, there are a number of different technologies that are supported. Some of them are frames, Java, XSLT, XForms, RSS, Atom, SVG, WML, VoiceXML, MathML, and XHTML. Also, with many web browsers, support for different languages is possible, and some of the different languages that are supported by web browsers include English, Slovak, Arabic, German, Dutch, Turkish, Swedish, Chinese, French, Spanish, Thai, Hebrew, Italian, Greek, Russian, Polish, Welsh, as well as hundreds more.
A web browser is a powerful tool, and isn’t just used for personal computers anymore; there are web browsers that can be used on mobile phones, handheld game systems, as well as pocket PC’s.
Web browsers can also be personalized to an individuals needs by utilizing web browser accessories that are not included with the initial browser software. These applications are referred to as “plug ins”, and a few of the more popular ones are Beatnik, QuickTime, RealPlayer, Shockwave, VivoActive Player, as well as Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Beatnik is utilized to receive high-quality sound and audio from websites. QuickTime, which is a product of Apple, Inc., works as a delivery system for such things as 3D animation, audio, movies, MIDI soundtracks, and virtual reality. RealPlayer delivers on demand audio and video without the hassle of waiting for downloads to complete. Shockwave allows multimedia files to be viewed directly in a web browser. VivoActive allows viewing of on demand audio and video from sites that offer VivoActive content, and Adobe Acrobat Reader allows access to PDF files on the World Wide Web.
Knowing all of the web browsers and their specific uses, it will become easy to understand how choosing the right web browser can enhance the Internet experience.
Watch the video related to types of browsers
This video is part of a course on information structure using XML taught by Bob Boiko at the University of Washington. For more information contact bob@metatorial.com
Help answer the question about types of browsers
How can I check how my website will look in different browsers/computers?Is there a way to check to see if your website will look the same in all types of computers/internet browsers?
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September 25th, 2009 on 8:31 am
let me just say, i feel your pain, as do millions of other people out there…
coding a site that will look good on all the different browsers is tricky business. as you mentioned, different versions of IE will display things differently from each other, and differently than FF. it really depends on what you're trying to put on the site. IE and FF render styles from CSS differently, unfortunately. however, you can do conditional styles…which ease your pain a little bit.
if you make a style sheet for each browser, one for IE, one for FF, you can by default load the stylesheet that works well with FF, but you can override it with something like this:
<!–[if IE]>
load your style sheet
<![endif]–>
can you post anything specific you're trying to put on the site?
September 25th, 2009 on 8:49 am
Use the Import/Export features.
September 25th, 2009 on 8:53 am
firefox hands down!
September 25th, 2009 on 8:55 am
the shit firefox
September 25th, 2009 on 9:22 am
Safari owns
September 25th, 2009 on 11:13 am
FireFox is the best
September 25th, 2009 on 1:18 pm
This is a HUGE subject, far too big to deal with here. The first thing that you should do, if you are serious about making your web site as accessible as possible, is to download the major browsers so that you can check your design in each one. So you want IE (unfortunately, you can't have IE 6 & 7 on the same computer!), Firefox, Netscape and perhaps Opera. If you can get it right in these, you will satisfy the vast majority of people.
The secret to compatibility is to make your pages compliant with the standards laid down by the w3c. The majority of browsers work to those standards. In the past, it was necessary to include a number of "tweaks" on the page to allow for the peculiarities of some browsers (particularly earlier versions of IE) but this is becoming less the case.
As well as checking your pages yourself, there is a validator available for your HTML through the w3 web site – first link below.
The second link takes you to a series of tutorials which I'm sure you will find helpful.
Incidentally, it's not just browsers that you have to satisfy. Users have a wide range of screen resolution and, unless you are careful, you may find that a page which looks perfect on one PC will break up on a smaller screen.
Really, it's a minefield – good luck!
September 25th, 2009 on 7:50 pm
browsershots as said above is ok, but has limitations.
Personally, I have the latest issues of IE, FF, Opera, Chrome and Safari. These cover 99.5% of ww users: enough for me…
I test my sites on each of them, at different resolutions.
September 26th, 2009 on 5:35 am
When you make a request to a Web browser, it responds with a file.
At the very beginning of its response is a header. The header is a few lines of text that tells the Web browser all sorts of things about the file being sent back. Among the things sent back is the content type.
Content-type tells the browser what the Web server thinks the file is. The browser uses the content-type response to determine how it will handle the file: Try to display it, ask another program to open it, prompt you to save it to your disk drive, etc.
What the content-type line sent by a server contains depends on how the server is set up. Most Web servers have a "default" content-type list; what is sent is usually dependent on the file name / extension, but not always. Also, the Web server's admin can change what content-types are sent for specific file types.
You can also forge content-type information from a programming standpoint. It is very common, for example, for Web programmers to "dynamically" create data files (such as comma-delimited files), or even images, on the server, and then feed a person's Web browser a content-type specific to that file, overriding what the Web server would have sent.
A previous answerer stated the server sends a MIME type. That's not correct.
MIME is a methodology for e-mail programs to handle attachments. Both MIME and HTTP 1.1 have Content-type attributes, and they use the same format. They are very closely interrelated, but not the same thing.
September 26th, 2009 on 1:12 pm
I assume you mean without registry editing
Open IE, Tools, Internet Options, Programs Tab, Click "Make Default"
September 27th, 2009 on 1:27 am
Unfortunately, no. That is, not without jailbreaking your phone first. The iPhone's "security features" give applications limited freedom to save to the file system and give you limited freedom to access files saved, and therefore Safari doesn't support it.
September 27th, 2009 on 2:33 am
Google chrome
September 27th, 2009 on 9:31 am
September 27th, 2009 on 9:48 am
google chrome (statisticly the fastest, but no security)
Mozilla Firefox (the best and also very fast)
Internet Explorer ( the worst)
Opera (decent but not great)
Apple Safari ( very fast, not very popular except with MAC users)
There are a few other ones too but are not even worth mentioning
September 27th, 2009 on 10:24 am
Firefox took about 200,000 meg of ram from my pc
September 27th, 2009 on 10:43 am
i use lunascape
September 28th, 2009 on 1:58 am
opera
September 28th, 2009 on 2:13 am
i use firefox