Web-browsing

Web Browser

A web browser is an application software or program designed to enable the user to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the internet.

User can access a particular page or content by entering its address known as a URL (Uniform resource locator). This particular page may contain text, image, video or hyperlinks to navigate to related resources.

There are following types of web browsers

Internet explorer
Google Chrome
Opera browser
Mozilla Firefox etc.

Internet Explorer (IE)- IE formerly known as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Windows Internet Explorer. It was developed by Microsoft as a series of graphical web browsers and it was included as the part of the Microsoft Windows operating system, starting in 1995 as an add-on package Microsoft Plus for Windows 95 and later versions of IE were available as free downloads, or in service packs for Windows 95 and later versions of Windows.

Advantages of Internet Explorer

It is pre-installed on computer
Faster with windows computers because it is integrated
Universal
Some applications are optimised for internet explorer

Disadvantages of Internet Explorer

No add-on support
Slows down with newer versions such as IE7
Maybe less secure than other browsers
Becomes buggy easily
Targeted by hackers

Google Chrome- Google Chrome Web browser is based on the open-source Chromium project. Google released Chrome in 2008. It is available for all platforms such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, and iOS operating systems. Google Chrome is a secure web browser. Each open website runs as its own process, which helps prevent malicious code on one page from affecting others. Google Chrome also supports Web standards such as HTML5 and cascading style sheets (CSS).

Advantages of Google Chrome

Chrome is an extremely fast web browser; it loads and displays pages very quickly.
Google Chrome has a very basic, simple design, making it easy to use.
The start-up page lists the most frequent pages we have visited and we can easily click and access them with ease.
Chrome automatically translates pages into a language we understand for our convenience.
We can search the internet through address bar at any time.
If a site crashes on one of our tabs, other open tabs will not be affected.
For private browsing, we can use Google Chrome Incognito mode feature
Unlike Firefox and safari, we can alter the color and theme of the browser.
Chrome is faster than Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Chrome takes only seconds to install.

Disadvantages of Google Chrome

Chrome uses up a lot of memory (RAM) when running it.
If we accidentally close the browser, Chrome will close all the tabs opened without warning.

Opera browser-Opera is a Web browser that provides some advantages over other browsers. It is much smaller in size, it is fast and stable. It is available for all Operating Systems including Windows, Mac, Linux, Android. It offers integrated searches and instant messaging, support for JavaScript, cascading style sheets, and email.

Advantages of Opera Browser

Fast web page downloading
Quick link page
Visual tabs
Secure browsing
Sharing center by Opera unite
Website compression for fast load Saves time

Disadvantages of Opera Browser

It is not compatible with all webpages
No add-ons

Mozilla Firefox- Firefox is a Web browser that is smaller, faster, and more secure. Compared to Internet Explorer it is the most popular Web browser. Firefox provides a cleaner interface and faster download speeds.

Advantages of Mozilla Firefox

Speed- Firefox is a faster web browser when it comes to downloading speed.
Security- Firefox is more secure and protects our computer from spyware and viruses.
Tabbed browsing and other advanced features- Provide Tabbed browsing and embedded memory feature which remember pages we had open and offer to get them back if computer turned off by mistake.

Disadvantages of Mozilla Firefox