Thursday 19 January 2012

2.2 Discover Internet Components


2.2.1Discover various types of browser

Internet Explorer

This is the most widely-used web browser by people around the world. It was developed by Microsoft in 1994 and released in 1995 as a supportive package to Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It is presently known as Windows Internet Explorer, was formerly called Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), and more is commonly known as IE. People have a misconception that browsing the Internet is possible only through Internet Explorer. They are unaware of various web browsers that are available. This simply proves that Internet Explorer is used by the majority. According to statistics, its usage share from 1999 to 2003-04 was around 95%. Since then, there has been a lot of competition in the market, with many software companies coming up with web browsers that challenge IE in their features and usage. Microsoft occasionally releases updates to their previous versions of IE, which have some enhanced capabilities. The latest version is Internet Explorer 8 which is a free update. The 'favicon', which is the favorites icon was introduced first in IE, and was later adopted by many other web browsers. Initially, IE did not support tabbed browsing, but today, it can be used even in the older versions, by installing toolbars.



Mozilla Firefox

It is owned by Mozilla Corporation and was the result of an experimentation. This browser has gone through many name changes due to name clashes with other products. 'Mozilla Firefox' was officially announced in February 2004. It was earlier named Phoenix, Firebird, and eventually Firefox. It is the second-most famous browser after Internet Explorer, as there were around 100 million downloads within a year of its release. Until November 2008, 700 million downloads were recorded. Since the release of Firefox, the sale of Internet Explorer has gone down drastically. It has around 22% of the market share at present. It has undergone many updates and version changes that were made to improve usability to the universal users. It can be used on most operating systems, but was found to be more prone to vulnerabilities. However, the problems were fixed in the newer versions. As it is an open source software, its source code is available,thus allowing everyone to access the code. It supports tabbed browsing that allows the user to open multiple sites in a single window. Session storage is also an important feature of Firefox, which allows the user to regain access to the open tabs after he has closed the browser window. Apart from these, there are many user-friendly features that Firefox offers.



Google Chrome

This web browser was developed by Google. Its beta and commercial versions were released in September 2008 for Microsoft Windows. It has soon become the fourth-most widely used web browser with a market share of 1.23%. The browser versions for Mac OS X are under development. The browser options are very similar to that of Safari, the settings locations are similar to Internet Explorer 7, and the window design is based on Windows Vista.


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