Web Browsers Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words - 1

Web Browsers - Research Paper Example Over time their usability has increased. Though, their main function is to act as browsers for the web, they are also used in different networking solutions. The first web browser was introduced in 1993 by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina. It was named Mosaic and made to run on UNIX platform (Rosen et al. 290). Mosaic Communications Corporation was founded and later named Netscape Communications Corporation and hence, the browser was renamed Netscape. Functionality was added over time and it was fairly simple. Various bundles were added along with the browser to improve its functionality and enable it to connect with an email client and for composing a webpage. In 1995, Microsoft countered Netscape with the introduction of Internet Explorer for its Windows platform. The browser was based on the original Mosaic browser. The two companies fought for dominance for almost three years and a race started between the two. This war for dominance is known as the Browser War (Ensor 164). Over this time new features were introduced and the development of feature rich modern browsers started. Microsoft gained dominance by including Internet Explorer fr ee in its Windows operating system and furthermore, developed a version for the UNIX foundation also available free of cost. Netscape could not sustain damages and was sold to Mozilla Foundation; the maker of Firefox. Over time, other browsers joined in the list. Most notable of them are Apple’s Safari, which was introduced in 2003 and the more recently Google’s Chrome introduced in 2008. The major web browsers in use today include Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Safari. The basic functionality of all these browsers is to enable user navigation in a webpage. Different features have been added over time and they are all different from each other in operation, features and interface. The most common features besides supporting HTML files include; built in search