webbrowsers

Web browsers are software applications used to retrieve, render, and interact with resources on the World Wide Web. They fetch content via the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (and secure variants), interpret markup languages such as HTML and XML, apply style with CSS, and execute client-side scripts in JavaScript, enabling interactive pages. Browsers also allow navigation through hyperlinks, manage bookmarks, and store data such as cookies, cached resources, and local databases.

Core components include a user interface, a networking stack, a rendering engine, a JavaScript engine, and a storage subsystem. The rendering engine converts web content into visual output, while the JavaScript engine executes scripts to enable dynamic behavior. Many browsers support multiple tabs, sandboxed processes, and developer tools for debugging.

Major engines are Blink (used by Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera), Gecko (Mozilla Firefox), and WebKit (Apple Safari). Historically, Internet Explorer used its own Trident engine, its successor Edge switched to Blink.

History: The early web relied on Mosaic and Netscape; later Internet Explorer dominated for years, followed by a multi-engine landscape led by Chrome and Firefox that intensified competition around performance, security, and standards support.

Privacy and security: modern browsers isolate processes, enforce same-origin policy, support secure TLS connections, and offer privacy features such as tracking protection, private browsing modes, and site permissions for cookies and data.

Impact and usage: browsers implement web standards including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and provide developer tools. They are available across desktops and mobile devices and support extensions or add-ons, which extend functionality but can raise security concerns.