Accessing and Using Internet

Information sheet 2
Key points:
 Web Browsers

Working on Web Browsers

A web browser/browser is software that is used to locate, access and
view Web pages/WWW files. Or it is used to display /obtain information
on the internet from the server to your client computer.
Example of web browsers is like:

 Internet Explorer (the most popular)

 Mozilla Firefox
 Google Chrome
 Safari, Opera ,Netscape etc.

 When we use browsers we need to enter/write the Web

Addresses/uniform resource Locator(URL) to the address bar of
the browser .
URL is the address of the document /web on the Internet.
Using a URL

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The address bar tells you where you are in the Internet. Furthermore, the
location of the site is called an address or URL which tells where a file is
located among all the computers that are part of the Internet.

The web address is commonly composed of three parts:-

1. Protocol
2. Domain name
3. Document Name
=> protocol://domain name/path(document name)
Example, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/help.html

Protocol domain name document name

Protocol: These are the rules that your computer and the computer that
is storing the document are using to communicate with one another.
HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. Other protocol is like FTP(File
Transfer Protocol) used to transfer file from server to client/your
computer
Domain name: This is the unique name of the computer/server (the
name of the network group) that is storing the document that you are
browsing /connecting to.
The last part of the domain name tells you what type of entity owns the
site eg. edu is used by educational institutions. Com(like
http://www.yahoo.com) is used by commercial businesses. Gov(like
http://www.whitehouse.gov) is used by the government(government)
website. Org(like http://www.w3c.org) is used by non-profit
organizations. In our example, the domain is microsoft.edu. The www
used as the first part of the domain name .

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 NB:It is common in many countries to include the country identifier in
the domain, such as .us for the United States, .fr for France, .et for
Ethiopia like http://www.erta.gov.et/
Document Name(path): The folders, subfolders, and file name of the
document that you are browsing. In our example, the document is stored
in the folder downloads. The document/File name is help.html.
NB:If no file name is listed at the end of the path, the browser will look
for the default file, usually named index.html .

Analyzing the Functions of Web Browsers

Basics of Internet Explorer(IE) and Mozilla Firefox

IE is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and

included as part of the Microsoft Windows operating systems, starting in
1995. It was first released in Windows 95(Internet Explorer 1). Later
versions were available as free downloads, or in service packs, Internet
Explorer has been the most widely used web browser since 1999,
attaining a peak of about 95% usage share during 2002 and 2003 with
Internet Explorer 5 and Internet Explorer 6. Since its peak of popularity,
its usage share has been declining in the face of renewed competition
from other web browsers specially Mozilla, and is currently 40.9% as of
June 2011.
The latest stable release is Internet Explorer 9, which is available as a free
update for Windows 7, Windows Vista SP2, Windows Server
2008.
Mozilla Firefox
It is a free and open source web browser managed by Mozilla
Corporation. As of September 2011, Firefox is the second most widely
used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web
browsers,Internet Explorer's vulnerability as a common target for

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hackers and virus writers. Microsoft regularly releases patches and
updates to fix security holes. Internet Explorer is still a bigger target for
hackers because more people use it, but Firefox becomes more popular,
One of the most popular features of Firefox is the fact that it's a very
secure browser.

If you're browsing in Internet Explorer 6, and you want to visit a new

Web site while keeping your current one open, you have to open a
completely new browser window. Firefox solves that by allowing sites to
open in separate tabs within the same browser window(tabbed browsing).
One feature of Firefox that's vital to some users is that it is a cross-
platform application. That means that Firefox works under several
different operating systems, not just Windows.