CYBER QUIZ - 4: Browsing the Web

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Dear All,

My Best Wishes to You for A Very Merry Christmas.

And what follows is my Christmas present!

Read it and enjoy it this festive season. Feedback is always welcome.

Dr D.C.Misra
December 23, 2004.

P.S. There will no doubt a New Year Cyber Quiz. But can you guess the topic?_____________________________________________________________________
CYBER QUIZ–4: Browsing the Web by Dr D.C.Misra
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A browser is what enables us to surf the World Wide Web–enabling us to jump from one link to another and getting packaged pages withclick of a mouse. The technology track has been very short –Mosaic – Mozilla – Netscape Navigator / Internet Explorer, a journey from revolutionary beginnings in 1993 to a dead end in 1995 till late in 2004 when Firefox suddenly exploded on the scene. Let us check.
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1. (a) What is a browser, and (b) What is the difference between information retrieval and browsing?

2. What is the difference between surfing and browsing?

3. What is a layout engine and how does a browser differ from it?

4. Which was the first browser and what was explosive about it?

5. What is the original name of Netscape's Web browser which is now called Netscape Navigator?

6. Who released Netscape 1.1 and when?

7. Which were the three most popular Web browsers in (a) 2000, and (b) 2004?

8. Which were the latest versions of the Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer in 2001?

9.What is Netscape Gecko?

10.Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator are well known Webbrowsers. Name any other five Web browsers?

11.What is the name of the multi-media Web browser designed in 1993 by Marc Andreesen, a twenty-three year old programmer, and his colleagues at the University of Illinois which enabled us to browsethe Web?

12.When was Opera 1.1 launched?

13.What do the following browser error messages indicate: (a) 400,(b) 401, (c) 403, (d) 404, (e) 500, (f) 502, and (g) 503?

14.What are the following: (a) iCab, (b) Sensus, (c) Cello, (d)WinZip, and (e) Grail?

15.What do the following have in common:(a)ChiBrow, (b)Bounce,and(c)Prowler?

16.And what do the following have in common: (a) Mozilla, (b)Konqueror, (c) Amaya, (d) Enigma, and (e) Arena?

17.What is a microbrowser and how many of them are currentlyavailable?

18.What are the following: (a) Yospace, (b) WAPalizer, (c) WinWAP,(d) WAPMan, (e) WAPsody, and (f) WAPsilon?

19.Named after a famous Indian mythological bird, this company is thefirst Indian company to come out with a palm-top browser and thirdcompany in the world to do so. What is the name of the company?

20.When was Mozilla Firefox 1.0, the Web browser developed byMountainView, CA-based not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation, released?_________________________________________________________________
ANSWERS TO CYBER QUIZ – 4: Browsing the Web by Dr D.C.Misra
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1.(a) It is a software program, which is used to access and view thepages on the World Wide Web called Web pages. Often called anInternet browser, its correct name, however, is World Wide Webbrowser or just Web browser, and

(b) In information retrieval,information is obtained as it is. For example, under the filetransfer protocol (ftp), on retrieval, a file is obtained as it is,without any contents, etc. On the other hand, in browsing not onlythe contents of the information are obtained but one can retrieve the information indicated in the contents.

2. None. These two terms are used interchangeably.

3. A layout engine takes content (such as HTML, XML, image files,applets, etc.) and formatting information (such as cascading stylesheets, hard – code HTML tags, etc.) and displays the formattedcontent on the screen. It thus defines the placement policy for adocument and places content on a page. A browser, on the other hand, packages various components, includingthe results of the layout engine, in a coherent, user–friendlyWeb applications (including menus, tool bars, etc.)

4. Mosaic, designed by Marc Andreeson and Eric Bina , and released bythe U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois in 1993. It was the first Web browser andit triggered the World Wide Web (WWW) explosion as it enabled displayof images over the Web. Mosaic was created by government funding fordeveloping a standard Web browser. The NCSA gave a license to Spyglass, Inc. for its commercialization. However, the attempt did not succeed as it was eclipsed by Netscape Navigator.

5.Mozilla, the Mosaic–killer. It was developed in six months by Mosaic Communications Corporation started by Jim Clark of SiliconGraphics in 1994 and subsequently called Netscape Communications. Mozilla was an in–house name, developed by creators of Mosaic who left NCSA and it was designed to be incompatible with Mosaic.

6.Marc Andreesen in 1994. He distributed the browser free of chargeon the Internet which helped its explosive growth.

7.(a) 1. Microsoft (76 percent), 2. Netscape (20 percent) and 3. America On Line (AOL) (1 percent) (Figures in parentheses indicatethe percentage of web surfers) (Data as on June 8, 2000). (Source:http://websnapshot.mycomputer.com), and

(b) 1. Internet Explorer (71.7 percent) (IE 6 - 67.0 percent; IE 5–4.7 percent), 2. Mozilla (21.2 percent) and 3. Opera (2.1 percent–Opera 7) (Netscape, at the 4th place has a share of only 1.6 percent (Netscape 3 – 0.2 percent; Netscape 4 - 0.2 percent; andNetscape 7 –1.2 percent) (Data as for December 2004) (Source:http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp).

Internet Explorer was launched by Bill Gate's Microsoft Corporation and Netscape Navigator by Netscape Communications Corporation, now a subsidiary of America Online (AOL). Though Netscape Navigator was launched first and believed to be technically superior by many, an aggressive marketing strategy by Microsoft, particularly its bundling with the Windows operating system, has made the Internet Explorer as the dominant Internet browser to-day.

8. Netscape Navigator 6.1 (Download size: 26 MB for Windows, 36 MB forMacOS) and Internet Explorer 6 (Download size: Minimalinstallation – 45 MB, typical installation – 70 MB, and fullinstallation – 111 MB) (October 2001).

9. It is small, fast, standards – compliant layout engine on whichNetscape 6.1 (which includes Netscape Navigator, the Web browser) is based.

10. 1. Opera 3.61 (1.3 MB), 2. Smart Browse (3.9 MB), 3. Net Quest(3.2 MB), 4. Net Captor 5.04 (770 k), and 5. Neo Planet 5.0 (3.5 MB).(Figures in parentheses indicate download size).

11.Mosaic. This was subsequently commercialized as Netscape Navigator.

12.1996. It was offered as a shareware for Windows platform. It has now been made free. Opera Software ASA is Oslo, Norway – based company with satellite offices in US, UK, Sweden, and theNetherlands. For details visit http://www.myopera.com.

13.(a) Bad request (for example, URL may not exist),
(b)Unauthorised,
(c) Forbidden (for example, it is password protected or restricted),
(d) Not found (for example, the page may no longer exist),
(e) Internal error (for example, something wrong with the server),
(f) Bad gateway, and
(g) Service unavailable.

14.(a) A Web browser for the Macintosh (http://www.icab.de) ,
(b) AnInternet browser for the visually impaired (http://www.sensus.de),
(c) A multipurpose Internet browser developed by Thomas R. Bruce ofthe Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School(http://www.law.cornell.edu/cello/cellotop.htm),
(d) A Web browsersupport add–on which works with WinZip and automats much of thework associated with downloading compressed files from the Internet(http://www.winzip.com/browser.htm), and
(e) An extensible Internetbrowser written in Python, a free object–oriented language(grail.sourceforge.net/).

15.They are all Web browsers for children.

16.They are all open source Web browsers.

17. Like the Web browser, it is a Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browser. It is thus a software designed to run on a handheld deviceand to interpret Wireless Markup Language (WML). As many as 50 microbrowsers are currently available.

18.They all are Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) browsers.

19. Jataayu Software Ltd., a 100 per cent subsidiary of Bangalore–based Integra Micro Systems (P) Ltd. (Source: Sanjay K. Pillai,Business Standard, July 11, 2000).

20. November 9, 2004. It is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems (OSs) - as a free download from mozilla.org(http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/).
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Cyber Quiz Series: My three earlier quizzes in the series are also available on this Cyber Quiz blog .

1. Cyber Quiz 1: The Internet,
2. Cyber Quiz 2: The World Wide Web
3. Cyber Quiz 3: Check your E-mail
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Disclaimer: While reasonable care has been taken to compile the quiz, the author is not responsible for the accuracy, inclusion, exclusion or the interpretation of the contents. Readers are advised to consult authoritative sources before acting on the information contained here. The purpose of the quiz is educational and popularisation of information and communication technologies (ICT). No responsibilityfor the content is, therefore, assumed.
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© Dinesh Chandra Misra 2004 (Beta Version – December 23, 2004)
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Dr D.C.Misra
December 23, 2004.

(Source:http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberquiz/message/264)