CompTIA A+® Certification All-In-One For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

4.5. Installing and Configuring Browsers

Internet Explorer (IE) is the default Web browser for most Windows computers, partly because it comes installed with that OS. With this boost, Microsoft won the browser wars of the 1990s, which saw the main battle between IE and Netscape Navigator (even though both owed their roots to NCSA Mosaic). Although many different browsers were available in the beginning, these two products quickly rose to the top of the pile and battled it out.

Right around the turn of the century, Netscape released the source code for the core Netscape engine — Mozilla — to the open source community. This powerful engine quickly formed the core of many open source products, and one product — Mozilla Firefox — gained widespread adoption by the open source market. Firefox offers many features not originally included in Microsoft products, such as pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing, plus the ability to choose from thousands of add-ons (extensions) written by the open source community. This product was released at a time when IE was experiencing several security problems, and many people wanted a product that did not suffer from the same problems.

Like with all browser wars (and all wars), products are continually enhanced, and the next version of IE will include many features that have lured people to Firefox. You can find Firefox at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox, and the latest version of IE is at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie. Both sites have links you ...