Introduction to web browser

 

What is web browser?

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related resources. A web browser can also be defined as an application software or program designed to enable users to access, retrieve and view documents and other resources on the Internet.

Although browsers are primarily intended to access the World Wide Web, they can also be used to access information provided by web servers in private networks or files in file systems. The major web browsers are Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari. 

     The major web browsers

      
    
    

search engine

 

 

A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web and FTP servers. The search results are generally presented in a list of results often referred to as SERPS, or "search engine results pages". The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike web directories, which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain real-time information by running an algorithm on a web crawler.

Directories

   

     Subjects

•           built by human selection -- not by computers or robot programs 
•             organized into subject categories, classification of pages by subjects -- subjects not standardized and vary according to the scope of each directory 
•             NEVER contain full-text of the web pages they link to -- you can only search what you can see (titles, descriptions, subject categories, etc.) -- use broad or general terms 
•             small and specialized to large, but smaller than most search engines -- huge range in size 
•             often carefully evaluated and annotated (but not always!!)