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Web Browsers

Web Browsers

Last update on: 05-07-2008
A web browser is the program you use to view pages and navigate the World Wide Web. A wide array of web browsers is available for just about every platform you can imagine. Most browsers are freeware or shareware (try before you buy) or have a lenient licensing policy.Microsoft Internet Explorer, for example, is included with Windows and Safari is included with Mac OS X. Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Navigator, and Opera are all available for free. Currently, the most widely used is Microsoft Internet Explorer (sometimes called just Internet Explorer or IE). Despite the fact that Internet Explorer has the lion's share of the market, however, it isn't the only browser on the Web. This point will become important later, when you learn how to design Web pages and learn about the diverse capabilities of different browsers. Assuming that Internet Explorer is the only browser in use on the Web and designing your pages accordingly limits the audience you can reach with the information you want to present.

Microsoft Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox
Netscape Navigator

Choosing to develop for a specific browser, such as Internet Explorer, is suitable when you know a limited audience using the targeted browser software will view your website. Developing this way is a common practice in corporations implementing Intranets. In these situations, it's a fair assumption that all users in the organization will use the browser supplied to them and, accordingly, it's possible to design the web pages on an Intranet to use the specific capabilities of the browser in question.
What the Browser Does

The core purpose of a web browser is to connect to web servers, request documents, and then properly format and display those documents. Web browsers can also display files on your local computer, download files that are not meant to be displayed, and in some cases even allow you to send and retrieve email. What the browser is best at, however, is dealing with retrieving and displaying web documents. Each web page is a file written in a language called the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) that includes the text of the page, a description of its structure, and links to other documents, images, or other media. The browser takes the information it gets from the web server and formats and displays it for your system. Different browsers might format and display the same file in diverse ways, depending on the capabilities of that system and how the browser is configured.

Retrieving documents from the Web and formatting them for your system are the two tasks that make up the core of a browser's functionality. Depending on the browser you use and the features it includes, however, you also might be able to play Flash animations, multimedia files, run Java applets, read your mail, or use other advanced features that a particular browser offers.

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Microsoft's browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer, is included with Microsoft Windows. It was also included with the Mac OS, but has since been discontinued. You can still install and use other browsers if you want, but if you're not picky, you don't need to do anything more.

If you're serious about web design, you should install all the popular browsers on your system and use them to view your pages after you've published them. That way, you can make sure that everything is working properly. Even if you don't use a particular browser on a day-to-day basis, your site will be visited by people who do. If you are interested in checking cross-browser compatibility issues, you should start with Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, and perhaps include Opera as well.

Microsoft Internet Explorer has become the most widely used web browser, in large part due to the fact that it has been tightly integrated with the latest versions of Windows. As of January 2006, Internet Explorer makes up more than 80% of the overall browser market.

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is the new kid on the web browser block. In 1998, Netscape Communications opened the source code to their web browser and assigned some staff members to work on making it better. Seven years and many releases later, the result of that effort is Mozilla Firefox. Netscape Communications, since acquired by America Online, no longer has any official ties to the Mozilla Foundation, which is now an independent nonprofit organization.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6 in October 2001. Firefox and its predecessor Mozilla have seen many revisions over that time, and currently offer more comprehensive support for web standards than does Internet Explorer. Firefox is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, and is a free download at

Internet Explorer still dominates the web browser market, but Firefox is becoming increasingly popular, especially with people who create websites.

Netscape Navigator

Once the dominant web browser, Netscape Navigator is now a version of Mozilla Firefox that has been modified to have the Netscape brand rather than the Mozilla brand. In terms of how they display web pages, Netscape Navigator and Mozilla Firefox are identical. You can download Netscape at http://browser.netscape.com

The important thing to remember about Netscape is that the browser has a long history, and once dominated the market. Netscape went nearly four years between browser releases, and at one time Netscape 4.7 was extremely popular. Unfortunately, now it exists mainly to cause pain to web designers. The problem with Netscape 4.7 is that it's old, and its support for current web standards is woefully lacking. With Firefox, much effort was put into making it adhere as closely as possible to published standards. When Netscape 4.7 was released, Netscape was taking a more cavalier attitude toward standards. The bottom line is that pages that look great in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and other current browsers can look awful in Netscape 4.7. You'll have to decide whether you take this into consideration as you design your pages.

understanding the web's lessons:

How The World Wide Web Works
Web Browsers
Web Servers
Uniform Resource Locators

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