Many people confuse “internet” and “browser”. In fact, many business users of computers seem to not know the term, “browser”. As a helpdesk analyst, I would frequently ask users to open their browser, and they’d have no idea what I was talking about. Once I finally explained it to them, they almost invariably respond with “Oh, you mean open the ‘Internet’!”.
No. I said browser, and I meant browser. Today’s post is dedicated to answering that distinction.
The Internet
The Internet is a collective term for all things online, across the world. Wikipedia defines it as follows:
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite <snip> It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope <snip>. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email.
(I’ve snipped a couple of points because those parts don’t contribute to this discussion)
So, let’s take the above cited paragraph, and make a few key notes:
- It is a global system, meaning it’s not just your home network, and it’s not your company’s network.
- It uses the Internet Protocol (or, IP) suite – this is the system it uses as a sort of “address” for computers and networks. It’s like a street address for your computer and/or network.
- It is an extensive range of information resources and services – it is NOT just email, or just Google, or just a place to download illegal music and movies. It is NOT the World Wide Web. It is ALL of these, and much, much more.
The Internet uses a variety of methods, but in short, it is what was noted above; a network of networks. Your computer and router and/or modem at home is a network, connected to the Internet. Your company’s system is probably a network. All of these are part of the Internet. The Internet is everything “online” that goes beyond the building in which you’re sitting/working.
The Browser
So, then, what is a browser?
A browser is a program, a tool that users and technicians alike use to view the World Wide Web (www) and Intranets alike (more on the difference between intranets and the Internet in a later post). The browser itself is not the Internet, but it is how a person views the Internet.
If a person were to look at a web page in its raw form, it would be mostly unintelligible to all except the geekiest of geeks:
1:
2: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
3: <html lang="en" dir="ltr" class="client-nojs" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
4: <head>
5: <title>Internet - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</title>
6: <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
7: <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
8: <meta name="generator" content="MediaWiki 1.20wmf10" />
9: <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="//en.wikipedia.org/apple-touch-icon.png" />
10: <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" />
11: <link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="/w/opensearch_desc.php" title="Wikipedia (en)" />
12: <link rel="EditURI" type="application/rsd+xml" href="//en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=rsd" />
13: <link rel="copyright" href="//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" />
14: <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="Wikipedia Atom feed" href="/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&feed=atom" />
All that code, and NONE of that actually shows anything on the screen yet (that’s only about 5% of the Wikipedia page I quoted above). But it is code for your browser to process and do different things with it. Some of that code allows it to show up better when searching for the page. Some changes how the page looks on the screen. Some simply point to other parts that process portions of the website.
What to take away from this, however, when a technician or analyst asks you to open the browser, they don’t necessarily mean “the Internet”. They mean the browser. The reasons for the distinction vary, but it is important for an end user to understand and apply the difference.
Types of Browsers In Use Today
Internet Explorer
This is by far the most common browser used today. Why? Because it come standard on all forms of Windows since 1995. And most people don’t change their browser if they’ve already got one that works.
Internet Explorer’s (IE) icon looks like this:
Safari
This is the most common browser in use by Mac users. Like Internet Explorer in use for Windows computers, Safari comes standard with Macs.
Safari’s icon looks like this:
Mozilla Firefox
Also just referred to as “Firefox”, this is probably the 2nd-most used browser in the world today. It is highly customizable, very effective, and free. It is also included in many distributions of Linux operating systems.
Firefox’s icon looks like this:
Opera
A growing browser, this is another free alternative to Internet Explorer and is also available on Linux and Mac computers, as well as Windows.
Opera’s icon looks like this:
Google Chrome
My current choice in browsers. Available for most all major operating systems (Windows, Mac, Linux, and even some mobile platforms). It is fast, customizable, and like all the others – Free.
Chrome’s icon looks like this:
There are hundreds of other browser options in the world today, each can be downloaded from the Internet. Feel to try them. So far, no browser worth using has ever cost money to download, so feel free to download, install and try them out! The only one you can’t uninstall is Internet Explorer (And even that can mostly be removed, but I won’t show you how…yet).
If you have any comments or questions, comment on this page, or email me at jakcrockblc+blog@gmail.com.
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