Also known as a web browser . It is a program or software, generally free, where we can view web pages through the internet or on the computer itself, it also allows access to other information resources that are present on web servers, such as images, videos, audios and XML files.

The browser interprets the code, generally HTML , in which the web page is written and presents it on the screen so that the user can interact with its content and navigate to other parts of the network through hyperlinks or links.

Function

The main functionality of a web browser is to allow the viewing of text documents , probably with embedded multimedia resources. The documents can be located on the user’s computer or through the internet, and that it has the necessary resources for the transmission of documents (software or a web server).

These documents, generally called web pages , contain hyperlinks that relate a portion of text or an image to another document, usually related to the text of the image.

The follow-up of links from one page to another, present on any computer connected to the Internet, is called navigation, from which the name “browser” comes (applies both to the program and to the person who uses it, who is also referred to as called netizen). On the other hand, scout is a literal translation of the original English “browser”, although this term is rarely used.

Source

The first browser, emerged at CERN in the late 1990s and early 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee, was quite graphically sophisticated, but it only worked on NeXT stations.

The Mosaic browser, which initially worked in UNIX environments over X11, was the first to spread because NCSA quickly prepared versions for Windows and Macintosh. Although, shortly after Netscape Navigator entered the market, which quickly surpassed Mosaic in speed and capabilities. This browser has the advantage of in most UNIX, and in the same way in Windows environments.

Internet Explorer was basically an afterthought by Microsoft in order to enter the market and today it has managed to unseat Netscape Navigator among Windows users. In recent years it has been possible to observe a high growth of browsers, which offer more and more inclusion with the environment of windows that do not run. Netscape Communications Corporation released the source code for your browser, thus creating the Mozilla project.

Finally Mozilla was rewritten from scratch after deciding to develop and use as a base a new set of multiplatform widgets based on XML called XUL and this made it take much longer to emerge than initially expected, presenting a version 1.0 of good quality and for many platforms at the same time on June 5, 2002.

At the end of 2004, Firefox appeared on the market, a development branch of Mozilla that intends to develop with part of the Internet Explorer market. It is a lighter browser than its older brother.

Characteristics

How do browsers work?

Browsers communicate with web servers using the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) to access Internet addresses (URLs) through search engines.

Most web browsers accept other network protocols such as HTTPS (the secure version of HTTP), Gopher, and FTP, as well as the HTML and XHTML standards or marketplace languages ​​of web documents. Browsers also interact with applications or plug-ins to support flash files and Java applets.

Common functions of browsers

All browsers contain most of the following features: tabbed browsing, pop-up blocker, keyboard shortcuts, upload manager, search engine support, bookmarks, and keyboard shortcuts. To preserve privacy, almost all browsers offer easy ways to delete cookies, web caches, and history.

Internet suites are web browsers that include integrated programs capable of reading Uneset news, emails, and IRC, which are real-time text chats of the IMAP, NNTP and POP protocols.

Examples of internet browsers

There is a thorough list of browsers, rendering engines, and other topics related to the associated category.

• Internet Explorer and derivatives

1. Slim Browse
2. Avant Browser
3. Internet explorer
4. AOL Explorer

• Text-based web browsers

1. Lynx
2. Links
3. Netrik
4. w3m

• KHTML

1. Konqueror (KHTML default), based on Web Kit (KHTML fork)
2. Google Chrome
3. Safari
4. Epiphany
5. Midori