Browser

A Web Browser is a software tool used to browse the Internet. It is a special application program that brings information from any part of the world through the Internet to your computer screen. Using a browser, you can communicate with any computer over the Internet.

A browser does the work of connecting to the Internet and locating and displaying web pages. It allows navigation from one page to another. Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Mozilla are some examples of the browser applications that are commonly used.

Each web site has a distinct, separate and unique address. This address is known as the Uniform Resource Locator or URL in short. You can connect directly to a web site by typing the URL of that site in the address bar or location bar of the web browser.

The first part of the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) presents the “protocol” used to connect to the resource. Protocols are rules for exchanging data between computers. The protocol “http://” is the most widely used Web protocol. The second part presents the “domain name”. It is the name of the server where the resource is located. The last part of the domain name following the dot is called the “top-level domain (TLD)”. It identifies the type of organization or what country the website is from. For example “.com” indicates a commercial site and “.in” indicates India.

Most browsers have a Graphical User Interface (GUI). This allows easy viewing of text, images, and animations, playing audio and video files and running programs.