Function

The primary purpose of a web browser is to accompany advice assets to the user ("retrieval" or "fetching"), acquiesce them to appearance the advice ("display", "rendering"), and afresh admission added advice ("navigation", "following links").

This action begins if the user inputs a Uniform Ability Locator (URL), for archetype http://en.wikipedia.org/, into the browser. The prefix of the URL, the Uniform Ability Identifier or URI, determines how the URL will be interpreted. The a lot of frequently acclimated affectionate of URI starts with http: and identifies a ability to be Retrieved over the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).10 Many browsers aswell abutment a array of added prefixes, such as https: for HTTPS, ftp: for the Book Transfer Protocol, and file: for bounded files. Prefixes that the web browser cannot anon handle are about handed off to addition appliance entirely. For example, mailto: URIs are usually anesthetized to the user's absence e-mail application, and news: URIs are anesthetized to the user's absence newsgroup reader.

In the case of http, https, file, and others, already the ability has been Retrieved the web browser will affectation it. HTML and associated agreeable (image files, formatting advice such as CSS, etc.) is anesthetized to the browser's blueprint engine to be adapted from markup to an alternate document, a action accepted as "rendering". Aside from HTML, web browsers can about affectation any affectionate of agreeable that can be allotment of a web page. A lot of browsers can affectation images, audio, video, and XML files, and about accept plug-ins to abutment Flash applications and Java applets. Upon encountering a book of an bottomless blazon or a book that is set up to be downloaded rather than displayed, the browser prompts the user to save the book to disk.

Information assets may accommodate hyperlinks to added advice resources. Each hotlink contains the URI of a ability to go to. If a hotlink is clicked, the browser navigates to the ability adumbrated by the link's ambition URI, and the action of bringing agreeable to the user begins again.