Back to: Jss2 Computer Science  – ICT (BST)

 Internet browser

Web browsers are special software designed to enable users to access the World Wide Web on the internet. Without web browsers, websites cannot be viewed. There are different examples of web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Netscape, and Google Chrome, among others. These web browsers allow users to browse the internet, access web pages and other digital content and carry out online transactions.

On the other hand, the term “e-mail” is an abbreviation for electronic mail. It enables local and global computer users to exchange messages electronically. The e-mail system functions like the conventional post office, but instead of paper mail, messages are produced and sent electronically.

Just as in the conventional post office where each user has a unique postal address, the e-mail assigns to each user a unique address known as “the e-mail address.” However, unlike conventional mail that can only be retrieved from the postal address given, electronic mail can be retrieved from anywhere with internet connectivity.

The e-mail address is used to identify the user’s mailbox on the internet. It is usually composed of four parts, all written in lowercase. These parts include the username, a unique name to be used by the person who owns the e-mail address; the symbol (called the “at” sign); the host, which is the company or organization maintaining or owning the internet site with the mail server (e.g., Yahoo!, Google, and so on); and the site type, which is the type of internet site used by the host (e.g., .edu for Education, .com for Commercial, .org for Organization, among others).

It is important to note that some e-mail addresses also have country codes attached to them, depending on the host site. For example, .ng for Nigeria, .za for South Africa, and .uk for the United Kingdom, among others.

In comparison, a website can be likened to an office or house. Just as every house/office has an address that is used to locate it, a website also has an address used to locate it on the internet. This address is referred to as the website address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

The website address allows users to locate the site they want to obtain information. Examples of website addresses include http://www.yahoo.com and http://www.google.com, among others. It is not mandatory to add “http://” when writing the name of your website. For instance, http://yahoo.com can be written as www.yahoo.com.

A typical website address also has four parts. These include the protocol name (HTTP), which is the rules governing the exchange of information on the internet; the site location (WWW), which shows that the site is on the web; the web server (Host), which is the name given by the owner of the web server or the organization maintaining the web server; and the site type, which depends on the type of organization that owns or maintains the web server.