About web browsers. Some examples of a few web browsers and comparison between them.

1. Web Browsers
By:
Ahmed Hussain

2. Web Browsers
A web browser (commonly referred to as a browser) is a software
application for retrieving, presenting and traversing information
resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is
identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI/URL) and may be a
web page, image, video or other piece of content. Hyperlinks present
in resources enable users easily to navigate their browsers to related
resources.
Although browsers are primarily intended to use the World Wide Web,
they can also be used to access information provided by web servers
in private networks or files in file systems.
The major web browsers are Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google Chrome,
Opera, and Safari.

3. History of Web Browser.
The first web browser was invented in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
It was called WorldWideWeb and was later renamed Nexus. The
first commonly available web browser with a graphical user
interface was Erwise. The development of Erwise was initiated by
Robert Cailliau.
In 1993, browser software was further innovated by Marc Andreessen with the release of
Mosaic, "the world's first popular browser", which made the World Wide Web
system easy to use and more accessible to the average person. Andreesen's browser
sparked the internet boom of the 1990s. The introduction of Mosaic in 1993 – one of
the first graphical web browsers – led to an explosion in web use. Andreessen, the
leader of the Mosaic team at NCSA, soon started his own company, named Netscape,
and released the Mosaic-influenced Netscape Navigator in 1994, which quickly
became the world's most popular browser, accounting for 90% of all web use at its
peak.

4. History of Web Browser.(Cont.)
Microsoft responded with its Internet Explorer in 1995, also heavily
influenced by Mosaic, initiating the industry's first browser war.
Bundled with Windows, Internet Explorer gained dominance in the
web browser market; Internet Explorer usage share peaked at over
95% by 2002.
Opera debuted in 1996, it has never achieved widespread use, having
less than 2% browser usage share as of February 2012 according to
Net Applications. Its Opera-mini version has an additive share, in
April 2011 amounting to 1.1% of overall browser use, but focused on
the fast-growing mobile phone web browser market, being
preinstalled on over 40 million phones. It is also available on several
other embedded systems, including Nintendo's Wii video game
console.

5. Different Web Browsers
• Google Chrome.
• Mozilla Firefox.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer.
• Apple Safari.
• Opera.
• Netscape Navigator.

6. About Chrome.
• Developed by Google Inc.
• Initial release September 2, 2008
• Written in Assembly, C, C++, Java, JavaScript, Python.
• OS Android, iOS , Linux , OS X , Windows
• Engines Blink(WebKit on iOS), V8
• Platform x86, x64, 32-bit ARM
• Available in 53 language
• License is Freeware under Google Chrome Terms of Service

7. About Chrome.(Cont.)
Google Chrome is a freeware web browser developed by Google. It
used the WebKit layout engine until version 27 and, with the
exception of its iOS releases, from version 28 and beyond uses the
WebKit fork Blink. It was first released as a beta
version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and as a stable
public release on December 11, 2008.
As of July 2014, StatCounter estimates that Google Chrome has a 45%
worldwide usage share of web browsers so this estimate indicates it is
the most widely used web browser in the world.
In September 2008, Google released the majority of Chrome's source
code as an open-source project called Chromium, on which Chrome
releases are still based. A notable component that is not open source
is the built-in Flash player.

8. Development of Chrome.
Chrome was assembled from 25 different code libraries from Google
and third parties such as Mozilla's Netscape Portable
Runtime, Network Security Services, NPAPI, Skia Graphics
Engine, SQLite, and a number of other open-source projects.
The V8 JavaScript virtual machine was considered a sufficiently
important project to be split off (as was Adobe/Mozilla's Tamarin)
and handled by a separate team in Denmark coordinated by Lars
Bak at Aarhus.
According to Google, existing implementations were designed "for
small programs, where the performance and interactivity of the
system weren't that important", but web applications such
as Gmail "are using the web browser to the fullest when it comes
to DOM manipulations and JavaScript", and therefore would
significantly benefit from a JavaScript engine that could work faster.

9. Development of Chrome.(Cont.)
Chrome uses the Blink rendering engine to display web pages. Based on
WebKit, Blink only uses WebKit's "WebCore" components while
substituting all other components, such as its own multi-process
architecture in place of WebKit's native implementation.
Chrome is internally tested with unit testing, "automated user interface
testing of scripted user actions", fuzz testing, as well as WebKit's
layout tests (99% of which Chrome is claimed to have passed), and
against commonly accessed websites inside the Google index within
20–30 minutes.
Google created Gears for Chrome, which added features for web
developers typically relating to the building of web applications,
including offline support. However, Google phased out Gears in
favor of HTML5.

10. Chrome’s Features.
Google Chrome aims to be secure, fast, simple and stable. There are
extensive differences from its peers in Chrome's minimalistic user
interface, which is a typical of modern web browsers. For example,
Chrome does not render RSS feeds. One of Chrome's strengths is its
application performance and JavaScript processing speed, both of
which were independently verified by multiple websites to be the
swiftest among the major browsers of its time. Many of Chrome's
unique features had been previously announced by other browser
developers, but Google was the first to implement and publicly
release them. For example, a prominent graphical user
interface (GUI) innovation, the merging of the address bar and search
bar (the Omnibox), was first announced by Mozilla in May 2008 as a
planned feature for Firefox. Both Internet Explorer
9 and Safari (version 6) have since merged the search and address
bar.

11. Bookmarks and settings
synchronisation
Chrome allows users to synchronize their
bookmarks, history, and settings across all
devices with the browser installed by sending
and receiving data through a chosen Google
Account, which in turn updates all signed-in
instances of Chrome. This can be authenticated
either through Google credentials, or a sync
passphrase.

12. Chrome Security.
Chrome periodically retrieves updates of two blacklists (one for phishing and
one for malware), and warns users when they attempt to visit a site Chrome
sees as potentially harmful. This service is also made available for use by
others via a free public API called "Google Safe Browsing API".
Chrome uses a complex process-allocation model to allocate
different tabs to fit into different processes to prevent what happens in one
tab from affecting what happens in others. Following the principle of least
privilege, each process is stripped of its rights and can compute, but cannot
interact with sensitive areas (e.g. OS memory, user files) — this is similar to
the "Protected Mode" used by Internet Explorer 9 and 10. The Sandbox
Team is said to have "taken this existing process boundary and made it into
a jail." This enforces a computer security model whereby there are two
levels of multilevel security (user and sandbox) and the sandbox can only
respond to communication requests initiated by the user. On Linux
sandboxing uses the seccomp mode

13. Chrome Security.(Cont.)
Google introduced download scanning protection in
Chrome 17. Chrome tries to prevent malware with
Sandboxing. The Sandbox monitors each and every
webpage tab separately. When the user opens a
malicious website, Chrome contains the malware in an
area called a sandbox. The other tabs that the user has
open are unaffected. When the user closes the bad page,
the malware goes with it leaving other tabs and the
computer unaffected. Chrome also automatically updates
to the latest security features to maximize user
protection from malware.

14. Privacy mode
• The private browsing feature
called Incognito mode prevents the browser
from permanently storing
any history information or cookies from the
websites visited. Incognito mode is similar to
the private browsing feature in other web
browsers.

16. Mozilla Firefox
• Developed by Mozilla Foundation and contributors,
Mozilla Corporation
• Initial release September 23, 2002.
• Written in C++, JavaScript, C, Cascading Style
Sheets, XUL,XBL
• Operating system Windows, OS X, Linux, Android,
Firefox OS, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD,OpenIndiana.
• Engines Gecko, SpiderMonkey .
• Available in 79 languages
• License MPL

17. About Firefox.
Mozilla Firefox (known simply as Firefox) is a free and open-source
web browser developed for Windows, OS X, and Linux, with
a mobile version for Android, by the Mozilla Foundation and its
subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox uses the Gecko layout
engine to render web pages, which implements current and
anticipated web standards.
As of February 2014, Firefox has between 12% and 22% of
worldwide usage, making it, per different sources, the third most
popular web browser. According to Mozilla, Firefox counts over 450
million users around the world. The browser has had particular
success in Indonesia, Iran, Germany, and Poland, where it is the most
popular browser with 55%, 46%, 43%, and 41% of the market share,
respectively.

18. Firefox’s Features.
Features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental
find, live bookmarking, Smart Bookmarks, a download
manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (also
known as "geolocation") based 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.
Additionally, Firefox provides an environment for web
developers in which they can use built-in tools, such as the
Error Console or the DOM Inspector, or extensions, such
as Firebug.

19. Firefox Security.
Firefox uses a sandbox security model, and limits scripts from
accessing data from other web sites based on the same-origin
policy. It uses SSL/TLS to protect communications with web
servers using strong cryptography when using
the HTTPS protocol. It also provides support for web
applications to use smartcards for authentication purposes.
The Mozilla Foundation offers a "bug bounty" (up to 3000 USD
cash reward and a Mozilla T-shirt) to researchers who
discover severe security holes in Firefox. Official guidelines
for handling security vulnerabilities discourage
early disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential
attackers an advantage in creating exploits.

20. Firefox Security.(Cont.)
Because Firefox generally has fewer publicly known unpatched
security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, improved security is often
cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox. The
Washington Post reported that exploit code for known critical unpatched
security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in
2006. In comparison, exploit code for known, critical security vulnerabilities
in Firefox was available for nine days before Mozilla issued a patch to
remedy the problem.
A 2006 Symantec study showed that, although Firefox had surpassed other
browsers in the number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year
through September, these vulnerabilities were patched far more quickly than
those found in other browsers – Firefox's vulnerabilities were fixed on
average one day after the exploit code was made available, as compared to
nine days for Internet Explorer. Symantec later clarified their statement,
saying that Firefox still had fewer security vulnerabilities than Internet
Explorer, as counted by security researchers.

21. Licensing.
Firefox source code is free software, with most of it being released under the Mozilla
Public License (MPL).This license permits anyone to view, modify, and/or
redistribute the source code. As a result, several publicly released applications have
been built from it, such as Netscape, Flock, Miro, Iceweasel, and Songbird.
In the past, Firefox was licensed solely under the MPL, then version 1.1, which the Free
Software Foundation criticized for being weak copyleft, as the license permitted, in
limited ways, proprietary derivative works. Additionally, code only licensed under
MPL 1.1 could not legally be linked with code under the GPL. To address these
concerns, Mozilla re-licensed most of Firefox under the tri-license scheme of MPL
1.1, GPL 2.0, or LGPL 2.1. Since the re-licensing, developers were free to choose the
license under which they received most of the code, to suit their intended use: GPL
or LGPL linking and derivative works when one of those licenses is chosen, or MPL
use (including the possibility of proprietary derivative works) if they chose the MPL.
However, on January 3, 2012, Mozilla released the GPL-compatible MPL 2.0,and
with the release of Firefox 13 on June 5, 2012, Mozilla used it to replace the tri-licensing
scheme.
The crash reporting service was initially closed source, but switched with version 3 from
a program called Talkback to the open source Breakpad & Socorro.

23. Microsoft Internet Explorer.
• Original author Thomas Reardon.
• Developed by Microsoft.
• Initial release August 16, 1995.
• Written in C++.
• Engines Trident, Chakra.
• Available in 95 languages.
• License Proprietary, requires a Windows
license.

24. About IE.
Internet Explorer is one of the most widely used web browsers,
attaining a peak of about 95% usage share during 2002 and
2003. Its usage share has since declined with the launch
of Firefox (2004) and Google Chrome (2008), and with the
growing popularity of operating systems such as OS
X, Linux and Android that do not run Internet Explorer.
Estimates for Internet Explorer's overall market share range
from 27.4% to 54.13%, as of October 2012 (browser market
share is notoriously difficult to calculate). Microsoft spent
over US$100 million per year on Internet Explorer in the late
1990s, with over 1000 people working on it by 1999.

25. About IE.(Cont.)
Since its first release, Microsoft has added features and technologies
such as basic table display (in version .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 latest stable release is Internet Explorer 11, with an interface
allowing for use as both a desktop application, and as a Windows
8 application.

26. About IE.(Cont.)
Versions of Internet Explorer for other operating systems have also been
produced, including an Xbox 360 version called Internet Explorer for
Xbox and an embedded OEM version called Pocket Internet
Explorer, later rebranded Internet Explorer Mobile, which is based on
Internet Explorer 9 and made for Windows Phone,Windows CE, and
previously, based on Internet Explorer 7 for Windows Mobile. It
remains in development alongside the desktop versions. Internet
Explorer for Mac and Internet Explorer for UNIX (Solaris and HP-UX)
have been discontinued.
On April 26, 2014, Microsoft issued a security advisory relating to a
vulnerability that could allow "remote code execution" in Internet
Explorer versions 6 to 11. The vulnerability was resolved with a
security update May 1, 2014

27. IE’s Features.
Internet Explorer has been designed to view a
broad range of web pages and provide certain
features within the operating system,
including Microsoft Update. During the heyday
of the browser wars, Internet Explorer
superseded Netscape only when it caught up
technologically to support the progressive
features of the time.

28. IE’s Features.
Favicon:
Support for favicons was first added in Internet
Explorer 5. Internet Explorer supports favicons
in PNG, static GIF and native Windows
icon formats. In Windows Vista and later,
Internet Explorer can display native Windows
icons that have embedded PNG files.

29. Group Policy
IE’s Features.
Internet Explorer is fully configurable using Group Policy.
Administrators of Windows Server domains (for domain-joined
computers) or the local computer can apply and
enforce a variety of settings on computers that affect the user
interface (such as disabling menu items and individual
configuration options), as well as underlying security
features such as downloading of files, zone configuration,
per-site settings, ActiveX control behavior and others. Policy
settings can be configured for each user and for each
machine. Internet Explorer also supports Integrated Windows
Authentication.

30. IE Security.
Internet Explorer uses a zone-based security framework that groups sites based
on certain conditions, including whether it is an Internet- or intranet-based
site as well as a user-editable whitelist. Security restrictions are applied per
zone; all the sites in a zone are subject to the restrictions.
Internet Explorer 6 SP2 onwards uses the Attachment Execution
Service of Microsoft Windows to mark executable files downloaded from
the Internet as being potentially unsafe. Accessing files marked as such will
prompt the user to make an explicit trust decision to execute the file, as
executables originating from the Internet can be potentially unsafe. This
helps in preventing accidental installation of malware.
Internet Explorer 7 introduced the phishing filter, that restricts access
to phishing sites unless the user overrides the decision. With version 8, it
also blocks access to sites known to host malware. Downloads are also
checked to see if they are known to be malware-infected.

31. IE Security.(Cont.)
In Windows Vista, Internet Explorer by default runs in what is called Protected Mode, where the
privileges of the browser itself are severely restricted—it cannot make any system-wide
changes. One can optionally turn this mode off but this is not recommended. This also
effectively restricts the privileges of any add-ons. As a result, even if the browser or any add-on
is compromised, the damage the security breach can cause is limited.
Patches and updates to the browser are released periodically and made available through the
Windows Update service, as well as through Automatic Updates. Although security patches
continue to be released for a range of platforms, most feature additions and security
infrastructure improvements are only made available on operating systems which are in
Microsoft's mainstream support phase.
On December 16, 2008, Trend Micro recommended users switch to rival browsers until an
emergency IE patch was released to fix a potential security risk which "could allow outside
users to take control of a person's computer and steal their passwords". Microsoft
representatives countered this recommendation, claiming that "0.02% of internet sites" were
affected by the flaw.
On December 17, 2008, a fix to the security problem above became available, with the release of
the Security Update for Internet Explorer KB960714, which is available from Microsoft
Windows Update's webpage. Microsoft has said that this update fixes the security risk found by
Trend Micro the previous day.
In 2011, a report by Accuvant, funded by Google, rated the security (based on sandboxing) of
Internet Explorer worse than Google Chrome but better than Mozilla Firefox.

32. Apple Safari.
• Developed by Apple Inc.
• Initial release January 7, 2003
• Written in C++,Objective- COperating system
OS X, iOS
• Engines WebKit, Nitro
• License Freeware, some components GNU
LGPL

33. About Safari.(Cont.)
Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with
the OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public
beta on January 7, 2003, on the company's 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 iOS.
A version of Safari for the Microsoft Windows operating system was
first released on June 11, 2007, and supportedWindows XP Service
Pack 2, or later, but it has been discontinued. Safari 5.1.7, released on
May 9, 2012, is the last version available for Windows.
According to Net Applications, Safari accounted for 46.07% of mobile
web browsing traffic and 5.28% of desktop traffic in June 2014,
giving a combined market share of 12.32%.

34. Safari’s Features.
On Mac OS X, Safari is a Cocoa application. It uses Apple's WebKit for
rendering web pages and running JavaScript. WebKit consists of WebCore
(based on Konqueror's KHTML engine) and JavaScriptCore (originally
based on KDE's JavaScript engine, named KJS). Like KHTML and KJS,
WebCore and JavaScriptCore are free software and are released under the
terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. Some Apple
improvements to the KHTML code are merged back into the Konqueror
project. Apple also releases additional code under an open source 2-
clause BSD-like license.
Until Safari 6.0, it included a built-in web feed aggregator that supported
the RSS and Atom standards. Current features include Private Browsing (a
mode in which no record of information about the user's web activity is
retained by the browser),a "Ask websites not to track me" privacy setting,
the ability to archive web content inWebArchive format, the ability to e-mail
complete web pages directly from a browser menu, the ability to search
bookmarks, and the ability to share tabs between all Macs and iOS devices
running appropriate versions of software via an iCloud account.

35. Safari Security.
• Apple maintains a plug-in blacklist that it can
remotely update to prevent potentially
dangerous or vulnerable plug-ins from running
on Safari. So far, Apple has blocked versions of
Flash and Java.

36. Browser exploits
Safari Security.(Cont.)
In the PWN2OWN contest at the 2008 CanSecWest security conference in Vancouver,
British Columbia, a successful exploit of Safari caused Mac OS X to be the first OS
to fall in a hacking competition. Participants competed to find a way to read the
contents of a file located on the user's desktop, in one of three operating systems:
Mac OS X Leopard, Windows Vista SP1, and Ubuntu 7.10. On the second day of the
contest, when users were allowed to physically interact with the computers (the prior
day permitted only network attacks), Charlie Miller compromised Mac OS X through
an unpatched vulnerability of the PCRE library used by Safari. Miller had been
aware of the flaw prior to the beginning of the conference and worked to exploit it
unannounced, as is the common approach in these contests. The exploited
vulnerability was patched in Safari 3.1.1, among other flaws.
In the 2009 PWN2OWN contest, Charlie Miller performed another successful exploit of
Safari to hack into a Mac. Miller again acknowledged that he had advance
knowledge of the security flaw prior to the competition, and had done considerable
research and preparation work on the exploit. Apple released a patch for this exploit
and others on May 12, 2009 with Safari 3.2.3.

37. Safari on Mac.

38. Safari on iPod.

39. Safari on iPhone.

40. Safari on iPad.

41. Safari on Windows.

42. Safari on Linux.

43. pera.
• Developed by Opera Software.
• Initial release1995.
• Written in C++.
• Operating system Windows, OS X, Linux,
FreeBSD, iOS, Android, BlackBerry.
• Engines Blink, V8.
• Available in 42 languages.
• License Proprietary freeware
with open-source components.

44. About pera.
Opera is a web browser developed by Opera Software. The latest
version currently runs on Microsoft Windows and OS X operating
systems and uses the Blink layout engine. An earlier version using
the Presto layout engine is still supported, and additionally runs
on Linux and FreeBSD systems. As of August 2014, a Blink-based
Linux version is available on the developer stream. Editions of Opera
are available for devices running
the Android, iOS, Symbian, Maemo, Bada, BlackBerry and Windows
Mobile operating systems, and for Java ME capable devices.
According to Opera Software, the browser had more than 350 million
users worldwide (more than 270 million users with mobile versions)
in December 2013. Opera has been noted for originating many
features later adopted by other web browsers. A prominent example
is Speed Dial.

45. pera’s Features.
• Opera includes built-in tabbed browsing,
a bookmarks bar, add-ons, and a download
manager. Opera has "Speed Dial", which allows
the user to add an unlimited number of pages
shown in thumbnail form in a page displayed
when a new tab is opened. Speed Dial allows
the user to more easily navigate to the selected
web pages.

46. pera Security.
One security feature is the option to delete private data,
such as HTTP cookies, browsing history, items in cache
and passwords with the click of a button. This lets users
erase personal data after browsing from a shared
computer.
When visiting a site, Opera displays a security badge in the
address bar which shows details about the website,
including security certificates. The browser checks the
website that is being visited against blacklists
for phishing and malware, and displays a warning page
if it matches any of these lists.

47. pera Security.(Cont.)
To catch security flaws and other software bugs before they are
exploited or become a serious problem, the Opera Software
company maintains a public web form where users can
submit bug reports.
In January 2007, Asa Dotzler of the competing Mozilla
Corporation accused the Opera Software company of
downplaying information about security vulnerabilities in
Opera that were fixed in December 2006. Dotzler claimed
that users were not clearly informed of security
vulnerabilities present in the previous version of Opera, and
thus they would not realize that they needed to upgrade to
the latest version or risk being exploited. Opera responded to
these accusations the next day.

49. Netscape Navigator.
• Developed by Netscape Communications
Corporation.
• Initial release15 December 1994 .
• Cross-platform

50. About NN.
Netscape Navigator was a proprietary web browser. It was
the flagship product of the Netscape Communications Corp and was
the dominant web browser in terms of usage share in the 1990s, but
by 2002 its usage had almost disappeared. This was primarily due to
the increased usage of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser
software, and partly because the Netscape Corporation (later
purchased by AOL) did not sustain Netscape Navigator's technical
innovation after the late 1990s.
The business demise of Netscape was a central premise of Microsoft's
antitrust trial, wherein the Court ruled that Microsoft Corporation's
bundling of Internet Explorer with the Windows operating
system was a monopolistic and illegal business practice. The decision
came too late for Netscape however, as Internet Explorer had by then
become the dominant web browser in Windows.

51. About NN.
The Netscape Navigator web browser was succeeded
by Netscape Communicator. Netscape Communicator's 4.x
source code was the base for the Netscape-developed
Mozilla Application Suite, which was later
renamed SeaMonkey. Netscape's Mozilla Suite also served as
the base for a browser-only spinoff called Mozilla
Firefox and Netscape versions 6 through 9.
AOL stopped development of Netscape Navigator on 28
December 2007, but continued supporting the web browser
with security updates until 1 March 2008. AOL allows
downloading of archived versions of the Netscape Navigator
web browser family. AOL maintains the Netscape website as
an Internet portal.

52. Decline.
With the success of Netscape showing the importance of the web (more people were
using the Internet due in part to the ease of using Netscape), Internet browsing began
to be seen as a potentially profitable market. Following Netscape's lead, Microsoft
started a campaign to enter the web browser software market. Like Netscape before
them, Microsoft licensed the Mosaic source code from Spyglass, Inc.(which in turn
licensed code from University of Illinois). Using this basic code, Microsoft
created Internet Explorer (IE).
The competition between Microsoft and Netscape dominated the Browser Wars. Internet
Explorer, Version 1.0 (shipped in the Internet Jumpstart Kit in Microsoft Plus!
ForWindows 95) and IE, Version 2.0 (the first cross-platform version of the web
browser, supporting both Windows and Mac OS) were thought by many to be
inferior and primitive when compared to contemporary versions of Netscape
Navigator. With the release of IE version 3.0 (1996) Microsoft was able to catch up
with Netscape competitively, with IE Version 4.0 (1997) further improving in terms
of market share. IE 5.0 (1999) improved stability and took significant market share
from Netscape Navigator for the first time.

53. Decline.(Cont.)
At decade's end, Netscape's web browser had lost dominance over the Windows
platform, and the August 1997 Microsoft financial agreement to invest one
hundred and fifty million dollars in Apple required that Apple make Internet
Explorer the default web browser in new Mac OS distributions. The latest IE
Mac release at that time was Internet Explorer version 3.0 for Macintosh,
but Internet Explorer 4 was released later that year.
Microsoft succeeded in having ISPs and PC vendors distribute Internet Explorer
to their customers instead of Netscape Navigator, mostly due to Microsoft
using its leverage from Windows OEM licenses, and partly aided by
Microsoft's investment in making IE brandable, such that a customized
version of IE could be offered. Also, web developers used proprietary,
browser-specific extensions in web pages. Both Microsoft and Netscape
were found guilty of supporting this, having added many proprietary HTML
tags to their browsers, which forced users to choose between two competing
and almost incompatible web browsers.

54. Decline.(Cont.)
On 28 December 2007, the Netscape developers
announced that AOL had canceled development
of Netscape Navigator, leaving it unsupported
as of 1 March 2008. Despite this, archived and
unsupported versions of the browser remain
available for download. Firefox would go on to
win back market share from Internet Explorer
in the next round of the browser wars.

55. Netscape for Windows.

56. Netscape for Mac.

57. Comparison.

58. Browser compatibility.
• Google Chrome: Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
• Mozilla Firefox : Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
(Not compatible on iOS)
• Internet Explorer: Windows (7 & 8)
• Safari: Mac OS X (Safari 5.17 is available to
download for Windows)
• Opera : Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux

59. Benchmark Tests Compared

60. Browser Acid3 Sunspider Kraken
JavaScript
Octane 2.0 HTML
Compliance
Chrome 100 555.7 ms 1590.4 ms 23881 506/555
IE 100 91.8 ms 2234.2ms 14958 374/555
Firefox 100 164.5 ms 1316.0 ms 20757 467/555
Safari 100 280.4 ms 55.89 fps 5377 378/500
Opera 100 188.2 ms 1496.5 ms 23961 497/555

61. Popularity

63. Market Share

64. Browsers Rating (Users) Estimated
Marketshare
Marketshare
growth ( year over
year)
Chrome 4.0 32.5% 9.8%
IE 2.6 22% -34%
Firefox 4.3 12.6% -8.9%
Safari 3.6 12.7% 19.4%
Opera 4.6 0.61% 84.9%
Netscape 3.3 N/a N/a
By:- http://web-browsers.findthebest.com/

65. Chrome has maximum
Marketshare.