A Web browser is a software program that interprets the coding language of the World Wide Web in graphic form, displaying the translation rather than the coding. This allows anyone to “browse the Web” by simple point and click navigation, bypassing the need to know commands used in software languages.

The World Wide Web is written in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Viewed with software other than a Web browser, HTML looks nothing like its graphic translation. To take a peek, right-click on any empty space in a webpage. A small pop-up menu will appear. Choose View Page Source in FireFox, or View Source in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). When finished viewing the HTML coding, click the window closed to return to the Web browser window.

The first successful graphical Web browser, Mosaic, was written by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina in 1992 and released in 1993. At that time, the only popular graphical online services were offered by Prodigy, America Online (AOL), and Compuserv. These companies were closed networks that provided their own proprietary content, message boards, email programs, and interfaces, and did not provide access to the Internet.

The Mosaic Web browser opened the Internet to the general public. It provided a pleasurable means to navigate the World Wide Web and was free for personal use. To compete with the appeal of the Internet’s worldwide network, closed networks had to introduce a pipeline to the Internet and supply a graphic Web browser to interpret HTML. By the time this occurred in the mid 1990s, Andreessen had partnered with Jim Clark, former founder of Silicon Graphics, to create a new flagship Web browser called Netscape.

Netscape remained the Web browser of choice until Microsoft began pre-packaging their own Web browser into the Windows operating system. Internet Explorer (IE) was inferior to Netscape in many ways, particularly criticized for ongoing security issues, numerous bugs, and a lack of conformity to Web standard protocols. While this turned off many in the online community, the flood of new computer users knew too little to be aware or concerned. By 1998, Internet Explorer dominated as the most ubiquitous Web browser, due in large part to Microsoft’s ability to pre-load it into new computer systems.

At the same time, Netscape, then known as Netscape Communicator, released its source code to the public. The Web browser went through a massive rewrite over the next few years. It emerged as the open source Web browser known as Mozilla, under the Mozilla Organization, then owned by AOL. By 2003, AOL passed off oversight to the newly formed Mozilla Foundation, which renamed the Web browser to Phoenix and later to FireFox.

While the Microsoft Web browser held the market unchallenged in any great measure from 1998 to 2003, production to further improve IE effectively stalled. Meanwhile Mozilla/Phoenix/FireFox became the Web browser of choice among savvy computer users. Its expanded feature set, improved functionality, increased adherence to standards, and higher security make it superior in many ways to IE 6.0. Some believe that the growing public market share in FireFox influenced the development of Windows Internet Explorer (WIE) version 7.0, to be released in fall 2006. The new Microsoft Web browser will incorporate some of the features that have made FireFox so popular among its users, and it will also be compliant with Microsoft’s new operating system, Vista.

Due to the proprietary extensions that Microsoft builds into its Web browser, some webpages do not display correctly in other Web browsers. This occurs when webmasters design websites using IE’s proprietary Web browser coding rather than standard Internet conventions and protocols. What some see as Microsoft’s “passive-aggressive” effort to encourage the Internet to become a proprietary environment where only Microsoft products function correctly is, from an economic standpoint, an unhealthy path for consumers and a source of great criticism.

Conversely, the appeal of FireFox is that it is an open source project that conforms to Internet standards and protocols. This not only invites fair competition, but the coding can be examined by anyone, which also benefits the public. Programmers located worldwide can communicate in online, public forums to discuss loopholes, back doors, bugs, and other vulnerabilities that Mozilla regularly patches in a timely fashion.

A proprietary Web browser like IE, not examined by anyone but Microsoft coders, can hide vulnerabilities that can go unaddressed for extended periods of time, potentially putting millions of users at risk. Microsoft has also been criticized for being slow to provide patches for vulnerabilities, even after they have been publicly exposed. For these and other reasons, many savvy users prefer open source programs when given the choice, including an open source Web browser.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is free to download from Microsoft.com. The Mozilla FireFox Web browser is free from Mozilla.org. Some users keep both Web browsers installed and only use Internet Explorer when a page requires it.

Although IE and FireFox are not the only Web browsers, they are the two most popular. As a third alternative, Opera Software, located in Oslo, Norway, offers the Opera Web browser, a proprietary browser released in 1996. Opera was originally offered as shareware, then adware, and finally, as of September 2005, freeware. Opera has maintained a small market share, and as of 2006, it is partnering with Nintendo to provide an Internet Web browser for the Dual Screen, Developers’ System (DS) game console. There are also various other Web browsers available through search engines.