An Internet web browser is a piece of software that is used to access and display information, content, and files over the Internet. There are many such programs but the most popular ones are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari and Opera. Each of those modern web browsers is a fully-functional software suite that can interpret and display HTML Web pages, applications, JavaScript, AJAX and other content hosted on Web servers. Most web browser software has expanded capabilities via plug-ins so it can display multimedia (like Flash video and audio) or be more secure with anti-phishing filters and other security features. Internet web browser software can also be used to perform more complex tasks like video conferencing or designing websites. Internet web browsers are commonly found on mobile devices too. These mobile browsers are specifically designed to display Web content on smaller mobile device screens and to also perform efficiently on these devices which are somewhat underpowered. Mobile Internet Web browsers are usually “cut down” versions of Internet web browsers and offer less functionality in order to run well on mobile devices.
The Internet Browser Wars
The Browser wars is a metaphorical term that refers to the market share of the popular web browser software. The so-called Browser wars have been going on since the mass adoption of the Internet, but most often the term is used referring to the period after the early 2000s. Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 on October 18, 2006. It introduced features like tabs, a separate search bar, anti-phishing filter, and updated support for Internet standards. All that functionality was already included in previous versions of the Opera and Firefox browsers. On October 24, 2006, Mozilla Firefox 2.0 was released. This version introduced the ability to save the last closed tabs, a session restores feature to resume work where it had been left after a crash, a phishing filter and a spell-checker for text fields. On December 11, 2008, Google released the Chrome web browser software. It used the WebKit rendering engine like Apple Safari and a JavaScript engine called V8 which showed better performance. An open-sourced version for the Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms was released under the name Chromium. According to Net Applications, Chrome had gained a 3.6% usage share by October 2009. Until the end of 2011, it became the most popular browser worldwide taking a lead in the browser wars.