computer, internet and internet browsers – how much do you know?

i want to base my discussion
and teaching on computer web browsers used majorly by microsoft
windows, apple macintosh and unix os users.

let me start by defining web
browsers, web browsers can be defined in the following five ways:

1. a web browser is a piece of
computer software that you use to search for information on the internet, especially
on the world wide web.

2. a web browser is a software
application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on
the world wide web.

3. browser software provides you
with the means to view a web page. without browser software, you would not be
able to surf the internet

4. a web browser is an application
program which interprets html and presents the final web page; used to surf the
world wide web.

5. a web browser is a software
application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on
the world wide web. an information resource is identified by a uniform
resource identifier (uri) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece
of content. hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily navigate
their browsers to related resources, although browsers are primarily intended
to access the world wide web, they can also be used to access information
provided by web servers in private networks or files in file systems. some
browsers can be also used to save information resources to file systems.

i will like to continue by giving a
brief history of web browsers

the history of the web browser dates
back in to the late 1980s, when a variety of technologies laid the foundation
for the first web browser, worldwideweb, by tim berners-lee in 1991. that
browser brought together a variety of existing and new software and hardware
technologies, the introduction of the ncsa mosaic web browser in 1993 – one of
the first graphical web browsers – led to an explosion in web use. marc
andreessen, the leader of the mosaic team at ncsa, soon started his own
company, named netscape, and released the mosaic-influenced netscape navigator
in 1994, which quickly became the world’s most popular browser, accounting for
90% of all web use at its peak. microsoft responded with its browser internet
explorer in 1995 (also heavily influenced by mosaic), initiating the industry’s
first browser war. by bundling internet explorer with windows, microsoft was
able to leverage its dominance in the operating system market to take over the
web browser market; internet explorer usage share peaked at over 95% by
2002.internet explorer has 65% browser usage share as of october 2009 according
to net applications.

opera debuted in 1996; although it
has never achieved widespread use, having 2% browser usage share as of october
2009, it has a substantial share of the fast-growing mobile
phone web browser market, being preinstalled on over 40 million phones. it is
also available on several other embedded systems, including nintendo’s wii
video game console.in 1998, netscape launched what was to become the mozilla
foundation in an attempt to produce a competitive browser using the open source
software model. that browser would eventually evolve into firefox, which developed
a respectable following while still in the beta stage of development; shortly
after the release of firefox 1.0 in late 2004, firefox (all versions) accounted
for 7.4% of browser use.as of october 2009, firefox has a 24% usage
share.apple’s safari had its first beta release in january 2003; as of october
2009, it has a dominant share of apple-based web browsing, accounting for just
over 4% of the entire browser market. its rendering engine, called webkit, is
also running in the standard browsers of several mobile phone platforms,
including the iphone os, google android, nokia s60 and palm webos.the most
recent major entrant to the browser market is google’s webkit-based chrome,
first released in september 2008. as of october 2009, it has a 4% usage share.

best browsers to be used

the question of which browser is
best for comfortable web surfing is the question of the day now let’s go:

while only two or three browsers
dominate the web browser market, there are actually many different web browsers
available. if your current browser doesn’t provide the experience you want, it
might be worthwhile to try another one. let now view a brief summary of todays
web browsers

let’s start by viewing the summary
of

computer, internet and internet browsers – how much do you know?

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