INTERNET EXPLORER Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year. Later versions were available as free downloads, or in service packs, and included in the OEM service releases of Windows 95 and later versions of Windows. Internet Explorer has been the most widely used web browser since 1999, attaining a peak of about 95% usage share during 2002 and 2003 with Internet Explorer 5 and Internet Explorer 6.[citation needed] Since its peak of popularity, its usage share has been declining in the face of renewed competition from other web browsers, and is 34.27% as of January 2012. It had been slightly higher, 43.55% as of February 2011, just prior to the release of the current version. Microsoft spent over $100 million USD per year on Internet Explorer in the late 1990s,[1] with over 1000 people working on it by 1999. Since its first release, Microsoft has added features and technologies such as basic table display (in version 1.5); XMLHttpRequest (in version 5), which aids creation of dynamic web pages; and Internationalized Domain Names (in version 7), which allow Web sites to have native-language addresses with non-Latin characters. The browser has also received scrutiny throughout its development for use of third-party technology (such as the source code of Spyglass Mosaic, used without royalty in early versions) and security and privacy vulnerabilities, and both the United States and the European Union have alleged that integration of Internet Explorer with Windows has been to the detriment of other browsers. The Internet Explorer project was started in the summer of 1994 by Thomas Reardon,[7] using source code from Spyglass, Inc. Mosaic, an early commercial web browser with formal ties to the pioneering NCSA Mosaic browser.[8][9] In late 1994, Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic for a quarterly fee plus a percentage of Microsoft's non-Windows revenues for the software.[9] Although bearing a name similar to NCSA Mosaic, Spyglass Mosaic had used the NCSA Mosaic source code sparingly.[10] Microsoft has been sued by Synet Inc. in 1996 over the trademark infringement. FIREFOX Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. As of December 2011, Firefox is the second most widely used browser, according to different estimates, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers. The browser has had particular success in Germany and Poland, where it is the most popular browser with 52% usage and 45% respectively. To display web pages, Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine, which implements most current web standards in addition to several features that are intended to anticipate likely additions to the standards. Features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (also known as "geolocation") based exclusively on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through extensions, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users. Firefox runs on various operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and many other platforms. Its current stable release is version 10.0, released on January 31, 2012. The Firefox project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by Dave Hyatt, Joe Hewitt and Blake Ross. They believed the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer- driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser.To combat what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird. NETSCAPE Netscape Browser is the name of a proprietary Windows web browser published by AOL, but developed by Mercurial Communications. It is the eighth major release in name of the Netscape series of browsers, originally produced by the defunct Netscape Communications Corporation. While Netscape Browser's version numbers start at 8, it is based on Mozilla Firefox, whereas Netscape 6 and 7 were based on Mozilla Application Suite, itself a complete rewrite of the codebase developed in versions 1 through 4 - Netscape Navigator and Netscape Communicator. As with other recent versions, it incorporates support for AOL Instant Messenger, and other AOL-related features. The Netscape Browser series was succeeded by Netscape Navigator 9. However, on December 28, 2007, Netscape developers announced that AOL would discontinue the web browser on February 1, 2008. The Netscape browser was first released in October 1994. In mid-1994, Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark had begun collaborating with Marc Andreessen to found Mosaic Communications, named after a University of Illinois software project. (The company was later renamed Netscape Communications.) Within about 6 months, many of the resources from the university's National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Mosaic Project were working for Netscape, and a Mosaic-based browser was released to the public. Version 8.0 was made generally available on May 19, 2005. A minor update known as version 8.0.1 was released a few hours later to incorporate the key security patches added in Firefox 1.0.4. MOSAIC Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, NNTP, and gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened up the Web to the general public. Mosaic was also the first browser to display images inline with text instead of displaying images in a separate window. While often described as the first graphical web browser, Mosaic was preceded by the lesser-known Erwise and ViolaWWW. Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)[4] at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign beginning in late 1992. NCSA released the browser in 1993,and officially discontinued development and support on January 7, 1997. However, it can still be downloaded from NCSA. Fifteen years after Mosaic's introduction, the most popular contemporary browsers, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, retain many of the characteristics of the original Mosaic graphical user interface (GUI) and interactive experience. Netscape Navigator was later developed by James H. Clark and many of the original Mosaic authors; however, it intentionally shared no code with Mosaic. Netscape Navigator's code descendant is Mozilla. Mosaic was the web browser which led to the Internet boom of the 1990s. Robert Reid underscores this importance stating, "while still an undergraduate, Marc wrote the Mosaic software ... that made the web popularly relevant and touched off the revolution" OPERA On January 28, 2003,[22] Opera 7 was released, introducing the new "Presto" layout engine, with improved CSS, client-side scripting, and Document Object Model (DOM) support. Mac OS 9 support was dropped. Version 7.0 saw Opera undergo an extensive rewrite with the faster and more powerful Presto layout engine. The new engine brought almost full support for the HTML DOM meaning that parts of, or a whole, page can be re-rendered in response to DOM and script events. A 2004 review in The Washington Post described Opera 7.5 as being excessively complex and difficult to use. The review also criticized the free edition's use of obtrusive advertisements when other browsers such as Mozilla and Safari were offered free of charge without including advertisements. In August 2004, Opera 7.6 began limited alpha testing. It had more advanced standards support, and introduced voice support for Opera, as well as support for Voice XML. Opera also announced a new browser for Interactive Television, which included a fit to width option Opera 8 introduced. Fit to Width is a technology that initially utilized the power of CSS, but it is now internal Opera technology. Pages are dynamically resized by making images and/or text smaller, and even removing images with specific dimensions to make it fit on any screen width, improving the experience on smaller screens dramatically. Opera 7.6 was never officially released as a final version. On January 12, 2005, Opera Software announced that it would offer free licenses to higher education institutions,[24] a change from the previous cost of $1,000 USD for unlimited licenses. Schools that opted for the free license included Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, University of Oxford, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Duke University. Opera was commonly criticized for having been ad-sponsored, since this was seen as a barrier to gaining market share. In the newer versions the user was allowed a choice of generic graphical banners, or text-based targeted advertisements provided by Google based upon the page being viewed. Users could pay a license fee to remove the advertisement bar. GOOGLE CHROME Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers.[citation needed] As of January 2012, Chrome is the second most widely used browser, having overtaken Firefox in November 2011, with a 28.4% worldwide usage share of web browsers and is the most popular browser in Pakistan, Russia, India[3] and South America, according to StatCounter.