Web Browsers

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 easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.

Although browsers are primarily intended to use the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by web servers in private networks or files in file systems. The major web browsers are Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari.

Web browser, a software application used to locate, retrieve and also display content on the World Wide Web, including Web pages, images, video and other files. As a client/server model, the browser is the client run on a computer that contacts the Web server and requests information. The Web server sends the information back to the Web browser which displays the results on the computer or other Internet-enabled device that supports a browser.

Today's browsers are fully-functional software suites that can interpret and display HTML Web pages, applications, JavaScript, AJAX and other content hosted on Web servers. Many browsers offer plug-ins which extend the capabilities of a browser so it can display multimedia information (including sound and video), or the browser can be used to perform tasks such as videoconferencing, to design web pages or add anti-phishing filters and other security features to the browser.

The two most popular browsers are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox. Other major browsers include include Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Opera. While most commonly use to access information on the web, a browser can also be used to access information hosted on web servers in private networks.   

Also, there are a number of browsers that are designed to access the Web using a mobile device. These mobile browsers ("Microbrowser") are optimized to display Web content on smaller mobile device screens and to also perform efficiently on these devices which have far less computing power and memory capacity as Desktop or laptop computers. Mobile browsers are typically "stripped down" versions of Web browsers and offer fewer features in order to run well on mobile devices.