This assignment looks at web browsers: What they are, what they do, , and which ones we use, and which ones are most popular.
Part 1: What is a browser?
A browser is a software program that allows your computer to access and interpret information on the Internet. Once simply a vehicle that simply displayed content, browsers now have many built-in features that purport to make your internet browsing experience faster, more productive, and more enjoyable. One of these features is a built-in search function. Chrome, made by Google, uses its own search function; others partner with search sites and embed them therein. For example, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer uses Bing for quick search. Another handy tool now standard in web browsers is the bookmark. You can save the links for the web pages you visit most often, either in a list or, as I prefer, on the toolbar itself, so that one click takes you to the site you want. The toolbar itself can be customized with everything from the bookmarks just mentioned to plug-ins, like Amazon’s “Wish List,” which will add an item from any site you are viewing to its user-created list on Amazon.com, and Evernote, which will take the information you select from any web page and copy it to be filed digitally as you choose.
Part 2: What browser do you use most often?
I use Mozilla Firefox 3.6 most often, mostly because I have been told by AUM computer folks that it is the most compatible browser with Blackboard, and I am taking most of my grad school classes online. It annoys me, though, that when people send me links or when I click on links from Twitter or Facebook, almost all of them open in Internet Explorer 8. I have bookmarks on Firefox, and they are updated from the bookmarks I had when I used IE on a regular basis. So this back-and-forth unnecessarily complicates things for me when I am working with the web.
Part 3: What are the 4 most popular browsers?
The four most popular browsers are Firefox, developed by Mozilla; Google’s Chrome browser; Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE); and Safari, which comes standard on Macintosh machines. According to June 2011 numbers, Firefox is the most popular of these four browsers with a market share of about 42 percent, while Safari has the smallest share, at just under 4 percent. Each of these browsers has held its share basically steady since at least the beginning of the year. But there are definite trends concerning the other two. IE began the year leading Chrome by about 2.5 percent, but Chrome overtook IE in April. It was just a matter of time until that occurred. Chrome has enjoyed 31 straight months of growth since November 2008, two months after its introduction. Conversely, since achieving its all-time market share high of 88 percent in March 2003, IE suffered the continual erosion of its dominance, staved only by a 0.4 percent increase in September 2010. The once-ubiquitous Internet Explorer is now the third most popular web browser, with a comparatively meager (and still shrinking) 23.2 percent market share.
Browser statistics taken from "Web Statistics and Trends," http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp.
