Technical Tuesday: What is a Web Browser?

Do you remember the time of clicking the AOL Web browser and seeing the little yellow man running across the screen? Or the time spent sitting waiting for that picture to appear line by line? I Do.

And it is pretty amazing how far we have come in the last 15 years. The internet used to be a novelty but now everyone has it. Even our pets have their own social media accounts. We even had to create a digital storage that exist inside the Internet called the Cloud, because we like to save things so often.

But what is a web browser and how do you use it?

A web browser is a way to access the internet. The actual definition is: A web browser is a software application for accessing information on the World Wide Web. Each individual web page, image, and video is identified by a distinct Uniform Resource Locator (URL), enabling browsers to retrieve these resources from a web server and display them on the user’s device.

Did you get all of that? I know Geek Speak is so long.

So let’s break this down… a Web Browser connects you to the internet and gives you a way to navigate the internet. Period, End of Story.

There are four main browsers Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Safari. But there are over 40 actual browsers to get online with. But many people only use one or two of them. They are distinguishable by their logos and some small features.

Now all of them have the same parts and that’s what we are going to focus on in this post.

For these examples, I am going to use Microsoft Edge as that comes standard on a Windows PC.

 

 

So what can you do with your browser?

Inside the image below you will see that I have labeled certain parts of the page. The reason why I did this is to show that you can do many different things from one page.

But the first thing you need to know is that there are two places, where you can type the Web Address or the name of the item that you are searching for.

You can also open Multiple Windows (or TABS) from the top of this one page. This allows you to do many things at one time.

On this first page (also known as a HOME PAGE) you will notice a small section called My Feed. This is where if you are signed in with a Microsoft account. You will see news and lifestyle stories that may matter to you. Microsoft has been working on this one feature to improve it for many years and I think they finally got it right. I personally enjoy this page. I also love that the weather for the town and state are right there on the front page.

The thing that I enjoy the most about using Microsoft Edge is that I can earn points via my Microsoft account just for searching the web. This is done by logging into Microsoft and sometimes you can even earn gift cards and other items. Not all Web Browsers do this. This is something that Microsoft does as an incentive to use their Browser.

Anyway, Now that you know the different parts of a Web Browser and exactly what one is. I strongly encourage you to check out the post-Connecting With The World Around You.

And if you have any questions about your specific Web Browsers let me know in the comments below.