History+of+Web+Browser

__What is Web Browser?__

A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information resources on the web. Today's web browser are faster and feature - rich than ever before.

. **__Timelines of Web Browser:__** __** 1991 – World Wide Web is released **__

World Wide Web is a system of Internet servers that support specially formatted documents. The documents are formatted in a markup language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language) that supports links to other documents, as well as graphics, audio, and video files. This means you can jump from one document to another simply by clicking on hot spots. Not all Internet servers are part of the World Wide Web.

There are several applications called Web browsers that make it easy to access the World Wide Web; Two of the most popular being Firefox and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

World Wide Web is not synonymous with the Internet.


 * What is The Internet?**

The Internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.


 * What is The Web (World Wide Web)?**

The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the the Web to share information. The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, to access Web documents called Web pages that are linked to each other via hyper-links. Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.The Web is just one of the ways that information can be disseminated over the Internet. The Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail, which relies on SMTP, Usenet news groups, instant messaging and FTP. So the Web is just a portion of the Internet, albeit a large portion, but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.

__**1993 – Mosaic is released**__



Mosaic was the first commercial software that allowed graphical access to content on the internet. Designed by **Eric Bina** and [|**Marc Andreessen**]at the University of Illinois’s National Center for Supercomputer Applications, Mosaic was originally designed for a Unix system running X-windows. By 1994, Mosaic was available for several other operating systems such as the Mac OS, Windows and AmigaOS.



__**1994 – Netscape is formed**__



In mid-1994, Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark collaborated with Marc Andreessen to found Mosaic Communications (later renamed to Netscape Communications.) Andreessen had just graduated from the University of Illinois, where he had been the leader of a certain software project known as "Mosaic". By this time, the Mosaic browser was starting to make splashes outside of the academic circles where it had begun, and both men saw the great potential for web browsing software. Within a brief half-year period, many of the original folk from the NCSA Mosaic project were working for Netscape, and a browser was released to the public.

Netscape quickly became a success, and the overwhelming market share it soon had was due to many factors, not the least of which was its break-neck pace of software releases (a new term was soon coined - "internet time" - which described the incredible pace at which browsers and the web were moving.) It also created and innovated at an incredible pace. New HTML capabilities in the form of "extensions" to the language were introduced. Since these capabilities were often flashier than what other run-of-the-mill browsers could produce, Netscape's browser helped cement their own dominance. By the summer of 1995, it was a good bet that if you were browsing the Internet, you were doing so with a Netscape browser - by some accounts Netscape had as much as an 80%+ market share.

With the launch of Windows 95 and a web browser of its own (Internet Explorer) in August 1995, Microsoft began an effort to challenge Netscape. For quite a while, Internet Explorer played catch-up to Netscape's continual pushing of the browsing technological envelope, but with one major advantage: unlike Netscape, Internet Explorer was free of charge. Netscape version 2.0 introduced a bevy of must-have breakthrough features (frames, Java, Javascript and Plug-ins) which helped distance it from the pack, even with its attendant price tag. Mid-1995 to late-1996 was a very busy time for both browsers; it seemed like every week one company or the other was releasing a new beta or final version to the public, each seemingly trying to one-up the other.

But slowly, Internet Explorer gained market share ground. By the fourth generations of both browsers, Internet Explorer had caught up technologically with Netscape's browser. As time went on, Netscape's market share diminished from its once-towering percentages.


 * In January 1998, Netscape made an announcement that their browser would thereafter be free**, and also that the development of the browser would move to an open-source process. This came as wonderful news to many on the Internet. But the time between this announcement, and the actual delivery of Mozilla 1.0 would be a long road (over 4 years.) The process ended up taking much longer than originally anticipated, what with the Netscape/AOL merger and the late-hour decision to integrate an entirely new next-generation HTML rendering engine.

Even with the tantalizing promise for authors of finally having a wide-distribution browser that completely adheres to the official language standards for HTML, CSS, DOM and ECMAScript, the market-share that Netscape once held has mostly evaporated (by many accounts its market share is now down below 20%.) Its initial release of Netscape 6.0 was considered slow and buggy, and adoption was slow to occur. Now that Mozilla has finally reached what it considers to be a significant milestone in its development process (1.0 - which Netscape 7.0 is based on), perhaps those market share usage numbers will increase again...certainly the latest releases are very stable, much faster and support an ever-growing variety of standards and features. In November, 1998, under great pressure from Microsoft and their development of Internet Explorer, Netscape was sold to America Online. A few attempts were made to keep the commercial code base going, but soon fizzled out.


 * Netscape Navigator 9**

Netscape Navigator 9 (based on Mozilla Firefox 2) was released in October 2007.

New features in Netscape 9: 1) Firefox Features - full support for all Firefox add-ons and plugins 2) URL Correction - automatically correct common typos in URLs 3) Link Pad - A sidebar feature allowing you to save URLs without cluttering your bookmarks 4) Sidebar Mini Browser - Bookmarks and links can be opened in the sidebar 5) Resizeable Textarea - Drag the bottom-right corners of text fields in forms to add more typing space 6) Tab History - Opening a link in a new tab will give the new tab the same history as the source tab 7) OPML Support - import and export your bookmarks in OPML format.


 * The Netscape Problem**

Netscape's 4.x series of browsers had a poor support for CSS and no support for XML. It took Netscape over three years after the release of 4.0, to produce its next-generation browser. This delay clearly hurt Netscape's possibilities to dominate the browser market.

__** 1995 – Internet Explorer, 1st Browser War **__

In the early 90s—the dawn of history as far as the World Wide Web is concerned—relatively few users were communicating across this global network. They used an assortment of shareware and other software for Microsoft Windows® operating system.

In 1995, Microsoft hosted an Internet Strategy Day and announced its commitment to adding Internet capabilities to all its products. In fulfillment of that announcement, Microsoft Internet Explorer arrived as both a graphical Web browser and the name for a set of technologies.


 * 1995: Internet Explorer 1.0**

In July 1995, Microsoft released the Windows 95 operating system, which included built-in support for dial-up networking and TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol), key technologies for connecting to the Internet. In response to the growing public interest in the Internet, Microsoft created an add-on to the operating system called Internet Explorer 1.0. When Windows 95 with Internet Explorer debuted, the Internet became much more accessible for many more people.

Internet Explorer technology originally shipped as the Internet Jumpstart Kit in Microsoft Plus! For Windows 95. Internet Explorer replaced the need for cumbersome, manual installation steps required by many of the existing shareware browsers.


 * 1995: Internet Explorer 2.0**

In November 1995, Microsoft released its first cross-platform browser, Internet Explorer 2.0, which supported both Macintosh and 32-bit Windows users.

With Internet Explorer 2.0 came a new set of fledgling Internet technologies that offered Web developers and designers the power to design secure, media-rich Web sites with tracking capabilities. Internet Explorer 2.0 technology introduced Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol as well as support for HTTP cookies, Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), and Internet newsgroups.


 * 1996: Internet Explorer 3.0**

In August 1996, Microsoft released its completely rebuilt Internet Explorer technology, which included features that were revolutionary for the time. Designed for Windows 95, Internet Explorer 3.0 technology offered useful components that immediately appealed to users, including Internet Mail and News 1.0 and Windows Address Book. Later, Microsoft NetMeeting® and Windows Media Player were added. Now the Internet Explorer browser could display GIF and JPG files, play MIDI sound files, and play streaming audio files without the assistance of helper applications.

For Web developers, Internet Explorer 3.0 technology delivered a flexible programming model with a choice of scripting languages. Web designers also received more predictable results, thanks to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Moreoever, Internet Explorer 3.0 was designed to allow Web developers to extend it easily at a time when Internet standards were quickly evolving.


 * 1997: Internet Explorer 4.0**

Designed for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT®, Internet Explorer 4.0 technology was a significant move forward. For Web developers, the addition of Dynamic HTML (DHTML) heralded the next step in Web design. DHTML gave Web developers more control over content and style and created opportunities that previously had been possible only with software applications.

Suddenly Web pages became much more interactive—users could expand menus with a click or drag images and objects around. The Web started to look more like the applications and games that people were accustomed to and less like a static series of pages.

With Internet Explorer 4.0, Microsoft Outlook® Express 4.0 was also installed for the first time as an upgrade to Internet Mail and News. This built-in component improved the way users sent, received, and organized their e-mail and address book.


 * 1998: Internet Explorer 5.0**

With the September 1998 release of Internet Explorer 5.0 technology, developers gained the ability to design richer Web applications. DHTML capabilities were expanded, giving Web developers more flexibility and power to create interactive Web sites.

Now personalization became a key focus as Web applications based on DHTML emerged. Users encountered rich applications on the Web—for example, an expense report could automatically configure itself based on a user's personalized settings. With expanded programming capabilities such as these, Internet Explorer 5.0 technologies helped usher in a new era of e-commerce.


 * 2001: Internet Explorer 6**

Internet Explorer 6 technology was released with Windows XP in 2001 as a more private, reliable, and flexible technology than previous versions. Because privacy and security had become customer priorities, Microsoft implemented tools that support Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), a technology under development by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

From the home user simply browsing content on the Web, to the IT administrator deploying and maintaining a rich set of Windows Internet technologies, to the Web developer creating rich Web content, Internet Explorer 6 technologies provide the freedom to experience the best of the Internet.

Internet Explorer 7.0 was released in November 2006. IE7 was the standard browser in Windows XP with Service Pack 2.
 * 2006: Internet Explorer 7**


 * New features:**
 * - Advanced printing - automatically scales a webpage for printing**
 * - Instant Search box**
 * - Favorites Center**
 * - RSS feeds - automatically detects RSS feeds**
 * - Tabbed browsing - view multiple sites in a single browser window**
 * - Quick Tabs**
 * - Tab Groups**
 * - Page zoom**


 * 2009: Internet Explorer 8**

Internet Explorer 8 was released in March 2009.

- **Accelerators** - quick access to web services. E.g. On a restaurant web site, click within the page to get maps, news, information, or share it on Facebook - **Web Slice** - keep up with changes to the sites you care about most - **Compatibility View** - shows the page as in IE7 - **Search Suggestions** - get suggested content as you type - **New Tab features** - reopen accidentally closed tabs, and group related tabs together with color codes - **Tab isolation** - prevents a faulty web site from crashing the whole browser. Only the tab with the error will close - **InPrivate Browsing** - browse the web without saving any data (like passwords, cookies, browsing history, etc.) - **SmartScreen Filter** - protects you against installation of malware, or malicious software which can compromise your data, privacy, and identity, and also damaging your computer and valuable data
 * New features:**

IE 8 has full support for CSS 2.1. In addition, it has fixed many cross-browser inconsistencies such as get/set/removeAttribute, default attributes, Attribute object and the tag.

__**1996 – Opera is released to the public**__



The Opera browser started out in 1994 as a research project in Norway's telecom company, Telenor. Independent development was continued by Opera Software ASA in 1995. The first public release of the Opera Browser was version 2.12 although earlier demo versions have been found and screenshots of the 1.0 version are available on the web.

Opera's co-founder Jon von Tetzchner made the first public announcement of Opera on usenet on July 14th 1996. He used the following introduction, which after many years of development still capture the core qualities of Opera! Are you looking for an alternative to Netscape and Microsoft Explorer? Do you like the idea of having an MDI user interface and being able to browse in multiple windows? Care for a full keyboard interface for your browsing? Want to start up with multiple windows? Is your browser slow? Try Opera at http://opera.nta.no/opera.

This page tries to give a short overview of Opera's history, from the early beginnings up to the most recent state of the art releases. Opera Software now provides their own Feature History page, which is much more detailed (and up-to-date) than this page.


 * Opera Series 1**

Though not publicly released there are screenshots of the then-called MultiTorg Opera. It's fun to recognise the features that are still present in Opera's current form. In serverlogs across the web evidence of a Multitorg Opera 1.0b4 can be found. I'm still hoping to find it one day.


 * Opera Series 2**

The first public versions of Opera was the 2-series. They are of course extremely outdated but test-driving them you can witness the birth of the legend that is called Opera. The oldest version found is a Norwegian demo version of Opera 2.0 which was included with a PC Magazine. It will only load local pages but you can already see a lot of key features that have made Opera famous! This is serious test-driving fun!


 * Opera Series 3**

The Opera 3 series saw Opera evolve from a geek's tool to a powerful browsing machine with a climax in features, stability and speed with version 3.62. This version was long regarded as a the standard to which future version of Opera were compared. It was far ahead of its time in CSS support, but unfortunately not equally strong in the JavaScript department.


 * Opera Series 4: "Fly the web!" / "The Best Internet Experience on any Device"**



Opera 4 was long-awaited the first browser based on a new cross-platform core which facilitated the release of Opera for different Operating Systems and thus speeding up Project Magic. The core supported more standards such as CSS1, CSS2, HTML4, XML and WML and a new integrated e-mail client was included.

The O4 browser was meant as the leap towards the larger public. Unfortunately the earlier versions were very unstable and buggy and didn't do Opera's reputation much good, though the later maintenance release 4.02 was very usable. **Opera Series 5: "The fastest browser on earth"**



The 5 series really made the jump to the large public due to the new ad-sponsored version instead of the 30-day trial period. Furthermore Opera 5 was stable and during following releases it gained new features such as the integrated Instant Messaging, the fantastic mouse-gestures, hotlist panels and the integrated search. The 5 series ended with the 5.12 release which was a good and mature release.


 * Opera Series 6: "Simply the best Internet Experience"**



The Opera 6 series introduced the long-awaited unicode support. Also a new SDI/MDI interface was introduced, facilitating the transition from the SDI-browsers to Opera's unfulpraised MDI-interface. During the later bugfixreleases the kioskmode was enhanced, the integrated searches became editable and a lot of printing problems were solved. When it retired, the Opera 6 series was stable and feature rich and formed an increasingly strong competition for Netscape and Internet Explorer.

**Opera Series 7: "Hey Presto!"**



Opera 7 was released in early 2003. It featured a brand new rendering engine under the name Presto, which enhanced and expanded its support for standards. The major changes included support for W3C DOM, reflow capabilities allowing for more dynamic pages, and BiDi (right-to-left) support (Opera 7.20), as well as the Small Screen Rendering technique for handheld devices. The entire interface was redone, making use of a custom cross-platform skinning system and the entire UI became configurable: keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, menus and toolbars! With the new combined SDI/MDI interface the user has even more power at his command and new innovative features such a FastForward, Notes and Slideshow make the user experience even more enjoyable.

An especially noteworthy change in Opera 7 is the new mail and news client, called M2. This e-mail client is based on a powerful filtering system and offers revolutionizing mail organizing abilities, which for many people changed the way they handle their e-mail.

Opera 7.5 introduced a brand new default skin as well as a revamped interface that removed a lot of clutter. A RSS newsreader as well as an IRC chat client was introduced and M2 was optimized for speed. With the 7.60 beta version, Opera introduced their first iteration of a multimodal browser that can be operated by voice commands alone and that can obey aural CSS while reading pages aloud. A true step forward!

**Opera Series 8: "Free at last, free at last!"**



Opera 8 was released in early 2005, and in September that year the ad banners were removed and Opera is now completely free!

The interface was further improved: more focus on the tabbed interface, security features in the interface, the introduction of the Trash can on the pagebar, which allows for easy retrieval of previously closed pages and blocked pop-ups, and the Start bar providing access to common features such as bookmarks. Under the hood, it included the new ERA system, which allows for seamless display of various media types, and is more commonly known as "Fit to window width", a feature that eliminates horizontal scrollbars. Other technological improvements were support for XMLhttprequest (the technology behind for instance GMail) and User JavaScript. User JavaScript allows users to alter pages dynamically, for instance to fix problems, or introduce new features: a feature for the future!

**Opera Series 9: "Your web, your choice"**



Opera 9 is the first of the next generation of browsers.

Aside from many bugfixes, new core technologies include XSLT 1.0, XPath, some CSS3 selectors, CSS3 opacity, and contentEditable for rich text editing interfaces. It also contains initial WebForms 2 support, and the element from the WebApps spec. SVG support was increased to 1.1 Basic

An important change is the new Preferences back-end: all settings can now be changed from opera:config, and Site Specific Preferences are now also available, making it possible to have true SSP stylesheets and settings. New features further include a simple source editor, improved history, and an interface for adding and editing searches: simply right-clicking in a search field allows the addition of new searches. Another major new feature is the content blocker: remove ads from pages in a powerful way, not on an image-by-image setting, but for a full domain. This version also introduced widgets: small webpages that run outside of Opera, interact with webservices and are completely platform independent.

The Opera 9.10 update introduced a fraud-filter, which checks pages for trustworthiness.

Opera 9.20 introduced Speed Dial; when opening a new tab, thumbnails of your favourite sites appear, providing unprecedented easy access to them.


 * Opera 9.5 — Kestrel**

Codenamed 'Kestrel', Opera 9.5 possibly deserved a new version number as it improved a great deal and added numerous features. Major work was done to the rendering engine, including a new JavaScript engine, full support for CSS3 selectors, dynamically updated media queries, several CSS3 features such as text-shadow and background-size, basic MathML support and overall standards improvements. The new developer tools, Opera Dragonfly, also make their first (alpha) appearance; completely written in HTML/CSS/JS, it is a locally cached web application that will also work when you are offline.

A major new feature is Quick Find, which indexes the content of every page you visit, making it easier to retrieve pages from history. The advanced history search is automatically available in the addressbar. Furthermore, Opera Link is introduced, which allows you to automatically synchronize bookmarks, notes and Speed Dial settings between Opera installations on desktop and Opera Mini. In the Security corner, Opera now comes with Netcraft anti-phishing and Haute Secure anti-malware filters, and supports the Extended Validation (EV) for websites. Receiving a major internal overhaul is Opera Mail (M2) with improved performance and stability. To cap it all off, Opera 9.5 comes with a fully redesigned skin, marking the big changes under the hood with a big change in the UI.

The follow-up release, Opera 9.6, mostly included work on the Opera Mail client, such as Low Bandwidth Mode and ability to follow threads. It also introduced Feed Preview, which effectively styles RSS News Feeds, enabling the user to decide whether or not to subscribe to the feed. Hidden in the preferences, the new Scroll Marker improved the readability of long pages.


 * Opera Series 10**

Developed under the 'Peregrine' moniker, Opera 10 moved up its standard support a notch and passed the Acid 3 test. A notable CSS improvement was the introduction of Webfonts support, which included SVG fonts. Support for alpha-transparency was also improved, in the form of RGBA and HSLA support.

More striking changes were introduced in the UI, which underwent another default skin change, partly prompted by the development of Visual Tabs, which show thumnail previews of open pages. Speeddial was given some configuration options, inline spellchecking was added, Opera Mail received HTML editing capabilities. Also introduced to this release was an Auto Update feature, integrated crashlogger and Opera Turbo. This service speeds up slow (dial-up) connections, by sending the page through Opera's proxy servers which compress.

The beta of Opera 11, released today, continues Opera Software’s long tradition of innovating in the browser space by introducing a neat new feature: tab stacking. The idea is that users can stack tabs to group them by site or by theme, reducing clutter; something that “taboholics” should appreciate.
 * Opera Series 11 **

Tab stacking is a good idea that’s been implemented well. It works in a very intuitive way: just drag one tab on top of another to build a stack. Hovering your mouse over a tab will cause the stack to expand in a visual preview (as shown in the screenshot above), while clicking an arrow icon expands the current stack across the tab bar. Tabs can also be dragged from the stack back to the tab bar.

In addition to the new tab stacking feature, Opera 11 introduces browser extensions, visual mouse gestures, better HTML5 support and greater performance. Extensions are a very welcome addition, although I find it somewhat surprising that it’s taken Opera this long to include them. Obviously, it will be some time before opera can come anywhere near matching the huge extension ecosystems of Firefox and Chrome that make those browsers so useful.

__**1998 – Mozilla is formed**__




 * Where It Began**

Long before this runaway train of adoration left the station, there was the release of Phoenix v0.1 in September 2002. The Phoenix browser, which would eventually become known as Firefox in later releases, started out looking like a stripped down version of the browser we know today.

Although lacking many of the features that make Firefox so popular today, the initial release of Phoenix did contain tabbed browsing and a download manager which were far from commonplace in browsers at that time. As later versions of Phoenix were made available to beta testers, the enhancements began to come in bunches. By the time Phoenix v0.3 was released in mid-October of '02, the browser already contained support for extensions, a sidebar, an integrated search bar, and more.


 * Let's Play The Name Game**

After several months of polishing the existing features and fixing bugs, Mozilla ran into a roadblock with the name of the browser in April 2003. It turned out that a company named Phoenix Technologies had developed their own open-source browser and they in fact owned a trademark for the name. It was at this point Mozilla was forced to change the project's name to Firebird.

The first release under the browser's new moniker, Firebird 0.6, became the first version available for Macintosh OS X in addition to Windows, giving the Mac community a taste of what was to come. Released May 16, 2003, version 0.6 introduced the very popular Clear Private Data feature and also included a new default theme. For the next five months, three more versions of Firebird would come out containing tweaks to plugin control and automatic downloading among others, as well as a collection of bug fixes. As the browser inched closer toward its first public release, another naming snafu would cause Mozilla to shift gears once again.

**The Saga Continues**

An open-source relational database project in existence at the time bore the Firebird label as well. After initial resistance from Mozilla, the database's development community eventually applied enough pressure to prompt yet another name change for the browser. For the second and final time, the browser's name was officially changed from Firebird to Firefox in February of 2004.

Mozilla, seemingly frustrated and embarrassed about the naming issues, released this statement after the change was made: "We've learned a lot about choosing names in the past year (more than we would have liked to). We have been very careful in researching the name to ensure that we will not have any problems down the road. We have begun the process of registering our new trademark with the US Patent and Trademark office."

With the final alias in place, Firefox 0.8 was introduced on February 9, 2004 containing the new name and new look. In addition, it contained the offline browsing feature as well as a Windows installer which replaced the previous .zip delivery method. Over the next several months intermediate versions were released to address some remaining defects and security glitches as well as to introduce features such as the ability to import Favorites and other settings from Internet Explorer.

In September, the first public release version was made available, Firefox PR 0.10. Several search engine choices were added to the search bar, including eBay and Amazon. Among other features, the RSS capability in Bookmarks made its debut.


 * Millionaires**

It took only five days after the public release for Firefox to pass the one million download mark, exceeding expectations and beating Mozilla's self-imposed 10-day goal to hit the coveted mark.


 * It's Official!**

After two release candidates were presented on October 27th and November 3rd, the much anticipated official launch finally happened on November 9, 2004. Firefox 1.0, available in over 31 languages, was well received by the public. Mozilla even raised money from thousands of donors to promote the launch, and a New York Times ad that ran in mid-December rewarded them by displaying their names along with the Firefox symbol.


 * Mozilla Firefox, Part Deux**

The browser underwent more changes and new features were continuously added since that day in late 2004, leading up to the major release of version 1.5 and finally version 2.0 on October 24, 2006.

Firefox 2.0 introduced enhanced RSS capabilities, spell-checking within forms, improved tabbed browsing, a sleeker new look, Phishing Protection, Session Restore (which restores your open tabs and web pages in the event of a browser crash or accidental shutdown), and more. This new version really caught on with both the public and with add-on developers, who seemed to produce an endless supply of extensions almost overnight. The power of Firefox continued to grow with the help of a passionate and ingenuitive development community as these add-ons continued to take the browser to new heights.

Firefox, named after the Red Panda found in the Himalayas, Nepal, and southern China, continues to move up the charts in its chase of Internet Explorer and it is going to be exciting to see what comes next.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is a version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser released on June 17, 2008 by the Mozilla Corporation.
 * Mozilla Firefox 3.0**

Firefox 3.0 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements many new web APIs compared to Firefox 2.0. Other new features include a redesigned download manager, a new "Places" system for storing bookmarks and history, and separate themes for different operating systems.

Firefox 3.0 had over 8 million unique downloads the day it was released, and by July 2008 held over 5.6% of the recorded usage share of web browsers. Current estimates of Firefox 3.0's global market share as of February 2010 are generally in the range of 4-5%. and dropping as users migrate to Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and more recently Mozilla Firefox 3.6. Partially as a result of this, between mid-December 2009 and the end of January 2010, Firefox 3.5 was the most popular browser (when counting individual browser versions) passing Internet Explorer 7.

Mozilla ended support for Firefox 3 on March 30, 2010 with the release of 3.0.19.

//__Changes and Features of Mozilla Firefox 3.0__//

__A) Backend changes__

One of the big changes in Firefox 3 is the implementation of Gecko 1.9, an updated layout engine. The new version fixes many bugs, improves standard compliance, and implements new web APIs. In particular, it makes Firefox 3 the first official release of a Mozilla browser to pass the Acid2 test, a standards-compliance test for web-page rendering. It also gets a better score on the Acid3 test than Firefox 2.

Some of the new features are defined in the WHATWG HTML 5 specification, such as support for web-based protocol handlers, a native implementation of the getElementsByClassName method, support for safe message-passing with postMessage, and support for offline web applications. Other new features include APNG support, and EXSLT support.

A new internal memory allocator, jemalloc, is used rather than the default libc one.[citation needed]

Gecko 1.9 uses Cairo as a graphics backend, allowing for improved graphics performance and better consistency of look and feel on various operating systems. Because of Cairo's lack of support for Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me and Windows NT (versions 4.0 and below), and because Microsoft ended support for Windows 98 and Windows Me on July 11, 2006, Firefox 3 does not run on those operating systems. Similarly, the Mac version of Firefox 3 runs only on Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, but, unlike previous versions, has a native Cocoa widget interface.

__B) Frontend changes__

New Firefox 3 Download Manager in Ubuntu Studio.

As for the frontend changes, Firefox features a redesigned download manager with built-in search and the ability to resume downloads. Also, a new plug-in manager is included in the add-ons window and extensions can be installed with a package manager. Microformats are supported for use by software that can understand their use in documents to store data in a machine-readable form.

New location bar auto-complete feature in Firefox 3.

The password manager in Firefox 3 asks the user if they would like it to remember the password after the log on attempt rather than before. By doing this users are able to avoid storing an incorrect password in the password manager after a bad log on attempt.

Firefox 3 uses a "Places" system for storing bookmarks and history in an SQLite backend. The new system stores more information about user's history and bookmarks, in particular letting the user tag the pages. It is also used to implement an improved algorithm for the new location bar auto-complete feature (dubbed the "Awesomebar").

The Mac version of Firefox 3 supports Growl notifications, the Mac OS X spell checker, and Aqua-style form controls.

__C) Themes__

To give the browser a more native look and feel on different operating systems, Firefox 3 uses separate themes for Mac OS X, Linux, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. When running on GNOME, Firefox 3 displays icons from the environment; thus, when the desktop environment icon theme changes, Firefox follows suit. Additional icons were also made to be used when no appropriate icon exists; these were made following the Tango Desktop Project guidelines. Additionally, the GTK version has replaced the non-native tab bar that was implemented in Firefox 2.0 and instead uses the native GTK+ tab style.

The default icons and icon layout for Firefox 3 also changed dramatically, taking on a keyhole shape for the forward and back buttons by default on two of the three platforms. However, the keyhole shape does not take effect in Linux or in the small-icon mode. The Iconfactory created the icons for the Microsoft Windows platform. In addition, separate icons sets are displayed for Windows XP and Vista.



__D)Breakpad__

Mozilla Crash Reporter on Debian with Xfce4

Breakpad (previously called "Airbag") is an open-source crash reporter utility which replaced the proprietary Talkback. It is being developed by Google and Mozilla, and used in Firefox and Thunderbird.[30][31] This product is significant because it is the first open source multi-platform crash reporting system.[citation needed]

During development Breakpad was first included May 27, 2007, in Firefox 3 trunk builds on Windows NT and Mac OS X, and, weeks later, on Linux.[32] Breakpad replaced Talkback (also known as the Quality Feedback Agent) as the crash reporter used by the Mozilla software to report crashes of its products to a centralized server for aggregation or case-by-case analysis.[33] Talkback was proprietary software licensed to the Mozilla Corporation by SupportSoft.


 * Mozilla Firefox 4**

Mozilla Firefox 4 is an upcoming version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser, expected for release in early 2011. The first beta was made available on July 6, 2010, and the current version (beta 9) was released on January 14, 2011. It is codenamed Tumucumaque.

The primary goals for this upgrade include improvements in performance, standards support and the user interface.

On October 13, 2006, Brendan Eich, Mozilla's Chief Technology Officer, wrote about the plans for "Mozilla 2", referring to the most comprehensive iteration (since its creation) of the overall platform on which Firefox and other Mozilla products run. Most of the objectives were gradually incorporated into Firefox through versions 3.0, 3.5, and 3.6. The largest changes, however, were deferred to Firefox 4.0.

In early May 2010, Mozilla's plans for Firefox 4.0 were officially detailed through a blog post by Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox. The main goals included making Firefox "fast, powerful, and empowering".

__**2002 – Internet Explorer usage reaches dominating proportions**__

Safari is a graphical web browser developed by Apple and included as part of the Mac OS X operating system. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the native browser for its iDevice's iOS. A version of Safari for the Microsoft Windows operating system, first released on June 11, 2007, supports Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. The latest stable release of the browser is 5.0.3, which is available as a free download for both Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Until 1997, Apple Macintosh computers were shipped with the Netscape Navigator and Cyberdog web browsers only. Internet Explorer for Mac was later included as the default web browser for Mac OS 8.1 and onwards, as part of a five year agreement between Apple and Microsoft. During that time, Microsoft released three major versions of Internet Explorer for Mac that were bundled with Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9, though Apple continued to include Netscape Navigator as an alternative. Microsoft ultimately released a Mac OS X edition of Internet Explorer 5, which was included as the default browser in all Mac OS X releases from Mac OS X DP4 until Mac OS X v10.2.
 * __2003 – Apple’s Safari makes its debut__**


 * Safari 1**

On January 7, 2003, at Macworld San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed their own web browser, called Safari. It was based on Apple's internal fork of the KHTML rendering engine, called WebKit. Apple released the first beta version for OS X that day. A number of official and unofficial beta versions followed, until version 1.0 was released on June 23, 2003. Initially only available as a separate download for Mac OS X v10.2, it was included with the Mac OS X v10.3 release on October 24, 2003 as the default browser, with Internet Explorer for Mac included only as an alternative browser.

The last version of Safari to support Mac OS X v10.2 is Safari 1.0.3, released on August 13, 2004. The last version to support Mac OS X v10.3 is 1.3.2, released January 12, 2006.


 * Safari 2**

In April 2005, Dave Hyatt, one of the Safari developers at Apple, documented his progress in fixing specific bugs in Safari, thereby enabling it to pass the Acid2 test developed by the Web Standards Project. On April 27, 2005, he announced that his development version of Safari now passed the test, making it the first web browser to do so.

Safari 2.0 was released on April 29, 2005 as the only web browser included with Mac OS X v10.4. This version was touted by Apple as possessing a 1.8x speed boost over version 1.2.4, but did not yet include the Acid2 bug fixes. The necessary changes were not initially available to end-users unless they downloaded and compiled the WebKit source code themselves or ran one of the nightly automated builds available at OpenDarwin.org. Apple eventually released version 2.0.2 of Safari, which included the modifications required to pass Acid2, on October 31, 2005.

In June 2005, after some criticism from KHTML developers over lack of access to change logs, Apple moved the development source code and bug tracking of WebCore and JavaScriptCore to OpenDarwin.org. WebKit itself was also released as open source. The source code for non-renderer aspects of the browser, such as its GUI elements, remains proprietary.

The final stable version of Safari 2, Safari 2.0.4, was released on January 10, 2006 for Mac OS X. It was only available as part of Mac OS X Update 10.4.4. This version addresses layout and CPU usage issues, among others. Safari 2.0.4 was the last version to be released exclusively on Mac OS X.


 * Safari 3**

On January 9, 2007, at Macworld SF, Jobs announced Apple's iPhone, which would use a mobile version of the Safari browser.

On June 11, 2007, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Jobs announced Safari 3 for Mac OS X v10.5, Windows XP, and Windows Vista. During the announcement, he ran a benchmark based on the iBench browser test suite comparing the most popular Windows browsers, hence claiming that Safari was the fastest browser. Later third-party tests of HTTP load times would support Apple's claim that Safari 3 was indeed the fastest browser on the Windows platform in terms of initial data loading over the Internet, though it was found to be only negligibly faster than Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox when loading static content from local cache.

The initial Safari 3 beta version for Windows, released on the same day as its announcement at WWDC 2007, had several known bugs and a zero day exploit that allowed remote execution.The addressed bugs were then corrected by Apple three days later on June 14, 2007, in version 3.0.1 for Windows. On June 22, 2007, Apple released Safari 3.0.2 to address some bugs, performance issues and other security issues. Safari 3.0.2 for Windows handles some fonts that are missing in the browser but already installed on Windows computers, such as Tahoma, Trebuchet MS, and others.

The iPhone was formally released on June 29, 2007. It includes a version of Safari based on the same WebKit rendering engine as the desktop version, but with a modified feature set better suited for a mobile device. The version number of Safari as reported in its user agent string is 3.0,in line with the contemporary desktop versions of Safari.

The first stable, non-beta release of Safari for Windows, Safari 3.1, was offered as a free download on March 18, 2008. In June 2008, Apple released version 3.1.2, addressing a security vulnerability in the Windows version where visiting a malicious web site could force a download of executable files and execute them on the user's desktop.

Safari 3.2, released on November 13, 2008, introduced anti-phishing features and Extended Validation Certificate support. The final version of Safari 3 is 3.2.3, released on May 12, 2009.


 * Safari 4**



On June 2, 2008, the WebKit development team announced SquirrelFish,a new JavaScript engine that vastly improves Safari's speed at interpreting scripts. The engine is one of the new features in Safari 4, released to developers on June 11, 2008. The new JavaScript engine quickly evolved into SquirrelFish Extreme, featuring even further improved performance over SquirrelFish, and was eventually marketed as Nitro. A public beta of Safari 4 was released on February 24, 2009, with new features such as the Top Sites tool (similar to Opera's Speed Dial feature), which displays the user's most visited sites on a 3D wall. Cover Flow, a feature of Mac OS X and iTunes, was also implemented in Safari. In the public beta versions, tabs were placed in the title bar of the window, similar to Google Chrome. The tab bar was moved back to its original location, below the URL bar, in the final release. The Windows version adopted a native Windows theme, rather than the previously employed Mac OS X-style interface. Also Apple removed the blue progress bar located in the address bar (later reinstated in Safari 5). Safari 4.0.1 was released for Mac on June 17 and fixed problems with Faces in iPhoto '09. Safari 4 in Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard" has 64-bit support, which can make JavaScript loading up to 50% faster. It also has built-in crash resistance unique to Snow Leopard; crash resistance will keep the browser intact if a plug-in like Flash player crashes, such that the other tabs or windows will be unaffected. Safari 4.0.4, released on November 11, 2009 for both OS X and Windows, further improves JavaScript performance.

Safari was one of the twelve browsers offered to EU users of Microsoft Windows in 2010. It is also one of the 5 browsers displayed on the first page of browser choices along with Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.


 * Safari 5**

Safari displaying its Reader view of a Wikipedia article.

Apple released Safari 5 on June 7, 2010, featuring the new Safari Reader for reading articles on the web without distraction (based on Arc90's Readability tool), a 30 percent Javascript performance increase over Safari 4, and an additional search engine, Bing. Safari 5 includes improved developer tools and supports more than a dozen new HTML5 technologies, focused on interoperability. With Safari 5, developers can now create secure Safari Extensions to customize and enhance the browsing experience. Apple also re-added the progress bar behind the address bar in this release. Safari 5.0.1 enabled the Extensions PrefPane by default, previously users had to enable it via the Debug menu.

Apple also released Safari 4.1 concurrently with Safari 5, exclusively for Mac OS X Tiger. The update includes the majority of the features and security enhancements found in Safari 5. It does not, however, include Safari Reader or Safari Extensions.

__**2004 – Firefox 1.0 is released and 2nd Browser War**__

__**2006 – Internet Explorer 7 is released**__

__**2008 – Present Google Chrome, Browser War intensifies**__

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine and application framework. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on 2 September 2008, and the public stable release was on 11 December 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers. As of December 2010, Chrome was the third most widely used browser, with 14.85% of worldwide usage share of web browsers, according to Statcounter.

In September 2008, Google released a large portion of Chrome's source code, including its V8 JavaScript engine, as an open source project entitled Chromium.This move enabled third-party developers to study the underlying source code and to help convert the browser to the Mac OS X and Linux operating systems. Google also expressed hope that other browsers would adopt V8 to improve web application performance.The Google-authored portion of Chromium is released under the permissive BSD license, which allows portions to be incorporated into both open source and closed source software programs. Other portions of the source code are subject to a variety of open source licenses. Chromium implements the same feature set as Chrome, but lacks built-in automatic updates and Google branding, and most noticeably has a blue-colored logo in place of the multicolored Google logo.

__1. Multiple Processes__ Each tab is treated as a single process within Chrome, much like programs within an operating system. Hence you can continue working at full capacity while a busy website in one tab recovers. Should the tab freeze or crash, it’s an isolated event that doesn't affect any of the other tabs, or the browser as a whole.
 * Features of Google Chrome **

__2. Task Manager__ Chrome has its own Task manager accessible via >Control >Developer or [Shift] + [Esc]. The Task manager reveals which tabs or plug-ins are running and what they are doing. If a process is taking up too much memory, you can close it via that Task manager.

__3. Web-kit__ Google applied the rendering engine Webkit (Safari) rather than Gecko (Mozilla).

__4. V8 Javascript Virtual Machine__ For Chrome, Google developed their own virtual machine.

__5. Tab Design__ The tabs sit at the top of the browser window, thus all the controls below, including the “URL box” (Omnibox), are individual for each tab.

__6. Omnibox__ When you start typing into the box, it will suggest links based on what sites you have visited before or what’s popular on Google. You can enter both URLs and search terms, the latter will launch a Google search per default. You can select another search engine under >Customize and control >Options >Basics.

__7. New Tab Page__ When you open a new tab, it won’t be blank. New tabs show the most visited sites and the pages you search on most.

__8. Incognito Surfing__ When opening an incognito window, Chrome switches to privacy or read-only mode. No history or cookies will be saved.

__9. Sandboxing__ Chrome rigorously restricts the rights of processes running in each tab. Each tab acts as a jail within which applications can compute, but they can not write or read files outside the tab.

__10. Phishing Protection__ With its computing power Google collects lists of harmful websites, so it can warn its users as soon as possible in case they are about to access such a page.

__11. Open Source__ All of these “inventions” are free to copy.

**The Latest Version of Google Chrome: Google Chrome 7**

Google Chrome is a fast moving name in the web browser world now. It is undoubtedly the best web browser around and with the Google backing; it has made a reputed position for itself. The development cycle has undergone a considerable change and Chrome has attracted bug fix bounty hunters just like Firefox. In short, Google Chrome is on a perfect roadmap.

Keeping up with this, Google Chrome has moved to the next version with the release of a development version of Google Chrome 7, named 7.0.497.0. A test version of this is available already and the dev channel version is scheduled to arrive this week.

The settings and the look and feel of version 7 is the same as that of Chrome 6 till now. However, expected features like the support for web applications and the Chrome store are missing as well! They are scheduled to arrive later in September this year.

Google recently fixed ten security bugs in Chrome and spiced up the process with bounties amounting to a total of ten thousand dollars.

With the chrome web store coming in October and web-application support coming in September, Chrome has a busy year ahead of itself.

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