Internet browsers and their popularity.
A web browser is an application that gives one access to the internet and to the hard disk of the computer. One can navigate through websites, files and folders. A single computer can have more than one web browser installed and multiple windows of the same browser can be opened.
The concept of a web browser is not new. The first ever web browser called NCSA Mosaic was introduced to public in 1993. Marc Andreessen (the leader of the Mosaic team at NCSA) formed his own company shortly after and released Netscape in 1994. Netscape then became most popular browser with 90% of all web usage. Microsoft was also fast to respond to newly created demand and launched Internet Explorer in 1995. By selling Internet Explorer together with Windows, Microsoft was able to become the dominant player in the market with 63.62% of market share in Dec 2009.
In the old days, browsers supported basic/simple version of HTML. Throughout the time, browsers have become more advanced and now support a standard HTML, de facto HTML and XHTML.
This is the most widely-used and known type of web browsers. In fact, so known, that many people think that it is the only possible way of browsing the Internet, unaware of other types. Internet Explorer was originally released by software giant Microsoft back in 1995. Today, it is known as Windows Internet Explorer or IE. If we look at statistics, its usage share from 1999 to 2004 was roughly 95%. Microsoft is trying to stay on top and fight the competition with other software developers by regularly releasing new versions of IE with enhanced capabilities. For example, the "favicon" (favourite's icon) was introduced in IE and then was adopted by other web browsers. Tabbed browsing was not originally supported by IE, but now it can be used even in the older versions by installing a toolbar.
Owned by Mozilla Corporate, Mozilla Firefox is the 2nd most famous browser after Internet Explorer. This browser had numerous name changes throughout its life (Phoenix, Firebird and now Firefox) due to name clashes with other products. As of 3rd December 2009, Firefox has 24.72% of market share and has forced the sales of Internet Explorer to decrease substantially (IE is still the leader though). It is an open source software, allowing anyone to download it free of charge. Similar to IE, users can open multiple sites in the same window and regain access to the open tabs after the browser window has been closed.
This web browser is owned by Apple Inc. and is compatible with Mac OS X operating system, Microsoft Windows and the iPhone OS. Released by Apple in January 2003, it has reached a market share of 4.36% by December 2009. There are many features available to users, such as LiveConnect, JavaScript support, VoiceOver Screen Ready, CSS Canvas and many others. Other functions available in other web browsers are also supported.
Developed by Opera Software back in 1996, this browser is primarily used in PDAs, Smartphone and Internet activated mobile phones. Opera is also used in several embedded systems such as Nintendo`s Wii video game console. Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, Microsoft Windows are all compatible with Opera. Functions such as content blocking, zoom, download manager (BitTorrent) are available. Opera itself is much faster than other browsers.
Developed by Google, the commercial version of Google Chrome was released to the public in 43 languages in September 2008 for Microsoft Windows (versions XP and later only). It is 4th widely used web browser with 3.39% of market share (as of 3rd December 2009) and claims to improve security, speed and stability. It is indeed much faster than other popular browsers today (including IE 8.0 Beta 2, Firefox 3.0.1 and others)
Netscape Navigator (Netscape)
Introduced by Netscape Communications Corporation (later purchased by AOL) in 1994, Netscape browser was very popular in 1990s. Due to lack of technical innovations and increased competition from the likes of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari etc, since the beginning of the 2000 its market share has decreased dramatically and has in fact almost disappeared today. AOL has formally haulted further developments of Netscape on 28 December 2007; users can still download the archived versions. Parts of Netscape have been used in Google Chrome and it is the base for Firefox.
