1. 1 3 Computing System Fundamentals 3.4 Networked Computer Systems

2. 3.4.7 Browsers and Search Engines

3. 3 Browser functions A browser will: send request for a web page to the uniform resource locator, URL (web address), interpret HTML in order to display the page, embed and interpret other file formats/scripts e.g. Flash, Javascript,

4. 4 Browser functions provide back, forward, home, history, favourites/bookmarks buttons, save some regularly used data (cookies) allowing some saving of data for individual pages, handle security (encryption using HTTPS).

5. 5 Browser standards In theory, all browsers conform to HTML standards from the W3C (latest version is HTML5). Examples: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera. HTML produces fairly static pages - animation is possible with Flash and data handling with XML.

6. 6 Browser security Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections are encrypted for security (look for https:// in the URL). Scripts can possibly run without users' knowledge and act as a virus. The saving of cookies may pass on private data to third parties.

7. 7 Search engines These allow searches based on key words. “Quotation marks” can be used for whole phrases. Boolean operators (and, or, not) can combine search terms.

8. 8 Search engines Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. keep a catalogue of the web. Pages are categorised by content, keywords in the metadata, pages linking to them... Programs called spiders are continually updating the catalogues.