The text you are currently reading is contained within a page or document. A document can be in text form only, it may contain images, or it might support an interactive search facility. It is also possible to download sound over the Internet (you'll need speakers of course). However, there is a lot of free software available in relation to the Web.
The software that you are running in order to read this document is defined
as a client. It is also termed as a Web browser by the WWW
community of users. Various browsers exist for various machines and operating
systems. Probably the most common browsers nowadays are NCSA Mosaic,
developed by the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (at the
University of Illinois, USA) and Netscape Navigator from Netscape Communications
Corporation.
Mosaic was the forerunner of all browsers. Netscape was developed by a group
of developers from the original Mosaic team which went off to set up their
own company - Netscape Communications. Arguably the most popular browser
for personal computers and UNIX platforms, available in a variety of forms
and versions, it also supports the most features. Beta versions (pre-release
testing versions) of the newest browsers are available directly from Netscape
(http://www.netscape.com) and from NCSA and are free for use by
educational establishments and persons related to such an establishment.
Web browsers retrieve documents from a source known as a server. Web servers are machines which run the WWW server software that has been implemented onto it. Server software is available for various machines and operating systems. There are many WWW servers set up across the globe, containing information on all kinds of subjects from academia to recreational.
If you want to, you can seek out more information on Web browsers and servers in a short while via a link to CERN. However, before we let you loose there are still a couple more documents to be read !
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