Web Browsers

A Web browser is a software application which enables you to access and view information on the World Wide Web. Web pages are written in a language called HTML (for more information about HTML, refer to the topic HTML -- the Language of the Internet). The Web browser interprets (or "parses") the HTML, and displays the Web page that you see. With a Web browser, you can navigate from Web page to Web page ("browsing" or "surfing" the Internet). The two most popular Web browsers today are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.

• Internet Explorer is developed by Microsoft, and comes installed on most computers with the Windows operating system.
• Netscape Navigator was the prevalent browser in the early days of the Internet. Today, Netscape is owned by AOL/Time Warner.

Both of these browsers are available for free from their respective Web sites (www.microsoft.com and www.netscape.com).