Web Browsers

Technically, a Web browser is a client program that uses HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to make requests of Web servers throughout the Internet on behalf of the browser user. The first Web browser, called WorldWideWeb, was created in 1990. That browser's name was changed to Nexus to avoid confusion with the developing information space known as the World Wide Web. The first Web browser with a graphical user interface was Mosaic, which appeared in 1993. Many of the user interface features in Mosaic went into Netscape Navigator. Microsoft followed with its Internet Explorer (IE).

The Most browsers support e-mail and the File Transfer Protocol (FTP) but a Web browser is not required for those Internet protocols and more specialized client programs are more popular. Web browsers format HTML information for display, so the appearance of a Web page may differ between browsers.