What is a web browser?
Overview
A web browser is a software program that you use to access, display, and navigate the web resources like web pages on the World Wide Web.
History
The first graphical user-friendly browser called Mosaic was developed at the NCSA( National Center for Supercomputing Applications) in the early 1990s at the University of Illinois. NCSA Mosaic is an Internet information graphical browser and a web client.
Despite Mosaic’s popularity, it only lasted a few years in the market before being replaced by Netscape Navigator.
Web browser Examples
Some examples of web browser software are as follows:
- Google Chrome
- Mozilla Firefox
- Microsoft Edge
- Safari
- Internet Explorer
- Opera
Internet Explorer
Screenshot of Internet Explorer browser window:
IE Toolbar
- Back – The Back button returns you to the previously navigated web page
- Forward – The Forward button goes forward after you have visited a few web pages
- Stop – The Stop button stops loading the web page
- Refresh – The Refresh button reloads the web page you requested, and ignores contents of your local cache (to ignore higher levels of cache, press Ctrl + Refresh button)
- Home – The Home button returns you to the homepage
- Search – links you to a search engine (more about searching later)
- Favorites – Favorites are the list of website links you have visited and bookmarked because you may like to revisit
- History – Browser history is the record of the websites that you have visited by Day, Week, and Month.
Microsoft Edge
The future of Internet Explorer is the Microsoft Edge browser. Microsoft retired Internet Explorer and is no longer supported on recent versions of Windows operating systems like Windows 10, and 11. Microsoft Edge browser is faster and more modern than Internet Explorer.