Introduction:

A web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is application software for accessing the World Wide Web. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the web browser retrieves the necessary content from a web server and then displays the page on the user's device. Web browsers commonly include an address bar or search bar, the ability to open multiple web pages in different tabs, and other user interface features for navigating the web.

History:

The first web browser, called WorldWideWeb, was created in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He then recruited Nicola Pellow to write the Line Mode Browser, which displayed web pages on dumb terminals. The Line Mode Browser was the world's second browser, released in 1991. In 1993, Mosaic, credited as "the world's first popular browser," was released. Its innovative graphical interface made the World Wide Web system easy to use and thus more accessible to the average person. This, in turn, sparked the Internet boom of the 1990s, when the Web grew at a very rapid rate. In 1994, Marc Andreessen, the leader of the Mosaic team, started his own company, Netscape, which released the Mosaic-influenced Netscape Navigator. Navigator quickly became the most popular browser. Microsoft debuted Internet Explorer in 1995, leading to a browser war with Netscape. Microsoft gained a dominant position in the browser market because it bundled Internet Explorer with its popular Windows operating system and did so as freeware with no restrictions on usage. In 1998, Netscape launched what would become the Mozilla Foundation to create a new browser using the open source software model.

2000s:

In 2002, the market share of Internet Explorer peaked at over 95%. The following year, Apple released its Safari browser. Safari remains the dominant browser on Apple devices, though it did not become popular elsewhere. In 2004, the Mozilla Foundation released the first version of the Firefox browser. It was downloaded over 100 million times in its first year and peaked at 32% of the market share in 2010. In 2008, Google debuted its Chrome browser, which steadily took market share from Internet Explorer and became the most popular browser in 2012. Chrome has remained dominant ever since.

2010s:

In 2011, Mozilla launched the stable version of Tor Firefox for navigating the dark web. Microsoft released its Edge browser in 2015 as part of the Windows 10 release, advertising a "more secure and more modern browsing experience" than its predecessor, Internet Explorer. (Internet Explorer is still used on older versions of Windows.) Browsers have greatly expanded their HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and multimedia capabilities since the 1990s. One reason has been to enable more sophisticated websites, such as web applications. Another factor is the significant increase of broadband connectivity, which enables people to access data-intensive web content, such as YouTube streaming, that was not possible during the era of dial-up modems.