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"for all your home and business computer needs" Web Browsers – Part 1
Web Browsers – Part 1
Over the past few months Microsoft have been offering all of its Windows users (you guys) an optional upgrade as part of the Windows Updates programme. Most of you will have seen a message offering to upgrade your computer to include Internet Explorer 9 at some point over the past few months.
So this month and next I thought we would talk about what web browsers are, why there are so many and what is new in Internet Explorer 9 and whether you should bother downloading it.
I guess the first thing to cover off is that if you haven’t seen this message on your computer and are sitting reading this thinking “what is Richard going on about?” then it’s likely that you are not receiving Windows updates and you should therefore check to ensure that your computer is up to date with at least the critical updates as if it is not then your computer security could be effected. You can do this by clicking on the “start button” in Windows Vista or Windows 7, then clicking “Control Panel”, then “System and Security” and finally “Windows Update“. Those of you (and I know there are many) that are still using Windows XP are going to lose out I’m afraid as Internet Explorer 9 is not available for your operating system.
You should regularly check that your computer has all the necessary updates, Microsoft categorise updates as either “important” – in which case you should install the update as it plugs a potential security hole in your system, or “optional” – in which case you can choose whether you think you would find the update useful or not and install it accordingly. If you are ever unsure then you should give your computer guy a call and he should be able to advise you accordingly.
Now – back to web browsers and Internet Explorer 9. Firstly some of you may be asking what on earth is a web browser so let’s cover this off first; a web browser is any program that will enable you to view pages stored on the “world wide web” – the Internet. There are a number of web browsers available, the most commonly used ones are Internet Explorer (made by a small American software company called Microsoft), Mozilla Firefox (an excellent and popular alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer), Google Chrome (the clue’s in the name!) and Safari (this is the web browser that ships with Apple computers, however most people generally accept that Mozilla Firefox is a much better alternative and quickly install that).
According to Wikipedia (the online encyclopedia), currently 43.5% of people use Internet Explorer, 29.7% of people use Firefox, 16.8% of people use Google Chrome and 7.3% of people use Safari. In reality it really makes very little difference which web browser you use, most websites will work just fine with all of the web browsers I have mentioned, so I guess the best advice I can give is that if you are not happy with or are having trouble with your web browser you should download one of the alternatives (they are all free), try it and use it, if you like it then you should use it. As I mentioned before, if you have a Windows computer then you will automatically be offered any updated version of Internet Explorer that comes available (as long as you are keeping up to date with your Windows updates). If you would like to download Firefox then you can get it from www.mozilla.com, or if you would prefer to try Google Chrome then you can download it from www.google.com/chrome and if you really want to try Safari then you can find it at www.apple.com/safari although I would advise you to look at the other alternatives first.
Next month we look at Internet Explorer 9 in more depth.
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