Internet basics

What is a Web Browser?

Before we explain what a web browser is, we have to first understand what the Internet and the World Wide Web are.

What is the Internet?
The Internet is the set of all devices connected to the network via a wired or wireless signal, and the set of protocols and standards by which these devices communicate. Your computer and mobile device are also part of the Internet.

What is the World Wide Web?
The most common service on the Internet is the World Wide Web or www. The World Wide Web are documents - web pages - uploaded to web servers and linked to each other by hyperlinks. Several web pages are linked into rounded units - websites. In order to access the websites, we need dedicated programs - web browsers.

So - what is a web browser?
The browser is therefore a program that allows us to access documents on the World Wide Web.

What browsers do we know?
Each operating system has its own web browser installed by default. Windows has the Edge web browser running, Apple's iOS and MacOS have a Safari web browser.
By default, different Android mobile phone providers install their own, different web browsers.

What are the differences between them?
Web browsers differ in the speed of page load, the CPU and memory usage whilst loading a page, how well they support international standards for web page rendering, and how well they take care of web security while loading a page.
There are many free web browsers that are better than the default ones, for example Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. These exist in versions for all devices in all operating systems.

Don’t panic
Although there is a large selection of browsers, the user experience is the same. Each has a title bar that contains the web address of the page we are currently viewing.
They all have navigation buttons to the previous and next pages. They all have buttons to stop loading and reloading of the current web page.
All browsers also allow you to browse multiple web pages at once. These are tabbed.

It makes sense to choose and use one web browser on all devices (computer, phone and tablet), so that we can share the most recently viewed documents (browsing history), saved or popular websites, stored usernames and registration passwords on all our devices.
If we choose to store our usernames and passwords in our browser, it is important that our device is protected by a good master password that will prevent unauthorized persons from accessing it.

We wish you safe and successful web browsing.