What is a Browser?

If we are to understand what a browser is and what it does for us in the Internet world, we should probably know more about the word itself. “Browser” comes from the word “browse.” The dictionary definition states that “to browse” means “to eat, nibble at or feed on (leaves, tender shoots or other soft vegetation); to graze, pasture on; to look through or glance at casually: He’s browsing the shelves for something to read.” (www.dictionary.com)

This agricultural/rural definition has roots in the 1400s and the languages of Middle English and France. The original word was “brost” or “brust,” both of which referred to new growth or a plant coming into bud. Cows and other animals grazed on these new plants and were said to be “brosting” or “brusting.” This eventually transformed into browsing, the word we know today.

So, when we are browsing the World Wide Web are we eating new growth or fresh plants. Of course not! But the term has been applied to our actions because it is much like the activity of browsing through the books on a library shelf or in a bookstore. We are looking for something new and fresh so the action is compared to actual browsing in a pasture.

It follows then that the tool we use to look around on the Internet would be called a browser. The word was invented, in a manner of speaking. The individual doing the looking could also be called a browser, but the software program does it for us. This software looks for and retrieves information then shows it to us on the computer screen.

How does this program work? Think of a person looking through a shelf of books. He or she uses the alphabet to find a title or an author. In a library we might use the shelving system of numbers to find books in a certain category. Traditionally this has been the Dewey Decimal System.

A Web browser uses a word-and-number system as well. This is the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) or the Uniform Resource Locator (URL). The reference used above, www.dictionary.com is an example. By focusing on this standard method the software can locate particular Web pages, photos, documents and so on.

Web browsers have been around for about 30 years. In fact the first browser went by the name WorldWideWeb (Tim Berners-Lee). Browsers have been fine-tuned and refined in the last couple of decades so that they can find and display options in a matter of seconds. Commonly used browsers include Firefox, Internet Explorer and a few others.

Browser must also use certain guidelines, such as “http,” which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol or “ftp,” which stands for File Transfer Protocol. So the bottom line is: a browser is a software program that helps us look for and identify information that is stored on other computers, even those thousands of miles away. This electronic search-and-find system has brought the libraries of the world to our desktop, so to speak.