Introduction and Dedication
These tips and tutorials were written for and dedicated to my friends who wish they had more computer skills and haven't the time or interest in reading entire books on the subject, and have no classroom opportunities for this study.The site is a series of articles categorized on the menu in the left side bar. The topics include some of the computer basics that will help you understand how computers behave and answers to some of the questions that have come from various individuals. To see all of the content listed, pass your cursor over the left side bar, and look for additional articles listed in fly-outs to the right of the main list. To open files listed in the fly-outs move the cursor slowly directly to the right until the something in that list is highlighted, then pass the cursor down or up the list in the fly-out. When the topic is highlighted it is ready for a click to be displayed.
What is a browser?
One question that often comes from new users is: "What is a browser?"That question really requires a deeper explanation than just the simple answer. Here is the short version: Computers require software programs to tell them what to do and how to do it. Everything! Computers are really very complex machines. First, they need an operating system that tells them how to read and write to the system disks and how to display anything on a screen, and even how to read and display the keys that are pressed on a keyboard. Some of the more popular operating systems are Microsoft Windows for the PC, Apple's OS X for the Macintosh, and Linux which comes in a variety of flavors for a variety of computers. From there we need printer drivers that tell the specific operating system how to print a document with a very specific printer. If you want to write a letter or a note, you must have an application program that tells the computer how to do this.
With all that in mind it is easy to understand that a computer needs a specialized program to display documents that are stored on server computers that are attached to the Internet. That is a class of software is known as Web browsers (browser for short). Among the more popular browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome, Opera, and Apple's Safari.