A web browser is a program for displaying content on the Internet and allows you to navigate the web. One can roughly distinguish graphical and textual browsers.
Textual browser
Textual browser can display only text and thus have only limited formatting options. In particular, colors and styles such as italic or bold, are not always possible.
The best known member of this group is Lynx, which is available for virtually any operating system. It is quite instructive to look at a site once in text mode. You get an idea of what is presented to the appropriate users, but also search engines. And if they can work with the site.
Textual browser often form the basis for acoustic browser (screen reader) or braille browser.
Graphical browsers
Graphical browsers nowadays represent the standard and there are many providers with more versions and extensions. The most popular browsers are:
- Internet Explorer from Microsoft brought the former domination of Netscape Navigator and was afterwards a leader for long time.
- Mozilla Firefox from Mozilla enjoys great popularity in many areas and has taken the lead. The popularity is also due his open approach and the available extensions for all sorts of tasks.
- Opera from Opera has only a relatively small market share, however, but is long time known for compactness, speed, innovation and standard fidelity. It is therefore very popular among web designers, that prefer web standards and emphasize their use.
- Apple’s Safari is Apple’s browser from the house of the producer, who is now also available for other operating systems. He is among the fastest browsers ever.
- Google Chrome uses the Webkit underlying Safari and combines it with an optimized JavaScript engine V8. It is characterized by its simple user interface and the approach to give each tab its own process. Thus, a tab will not negatively affect others.
In addition there are many varieties and clones, that use the display routines of these well known browsers and combine it with own functions and own user interface.
