Informatics Practices · Ch 5 — Internet and Web
Browser
Browser
A browser is a software application whose job is to fetch and display web pages. When you type a web address or click a link, the browser contacts the web server, retrieves the requested data, and renders it on your screen. In short, it is the tool that lets you see and interact with the information stored on the Internet.
Commonly used web browsers include Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge. Each of these works on the same basic principle — they take HTML documents and present them as visual pages.
What a browser displays is essentially an HTML document. That document can contain text, images, audio, video, and hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are what let you jump from one web page to another with a single click.
The very first browsers, like Mosaic, could only handle plain text. They displayed what we now call static websites — pages that looked the same every time you visited them.
Modern browsers are far more powerful. They can handle interactive and dynamic websites — pages that change content based on user input, time, or other factors. They also support a wide range of visual effects, making web pages look rich and polished. …
Drawn by us to help you understand the concept clearly, and verified to make sure it's accurate. For exams, practice from your textbook's own diagram.
A gallery of the software side of the web: five commonly used browsers — Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera and Apple Safari — each shown by its logo above its name. The figure's point is that a browser is a category of application, not a single product: many different programs perform the same job of opening and displaying web pages, and users can choose among them. Showing the logos also builds practical recognition, since thes …