Also called Web browser. Digital Technology. a software program that allows the user to find and read encoded documents in a form suitable for display, especially such a program for use on the World Wide Web.
1845, "animal which browses," agent noun from browse (v.). In the computer sense by 1982.
The first browser was invented at PARC by Larry Tesler, now a designer at Apple Computer. Tesler's first Smalltalk browser was a tree-structured device. It enabled programmers to hunt quickly for items in a Smalltalk dictionary. ["InfoWorld" magazine, vol. v., no. 4, Jan. 24, 1983]
A program that accesses and displays files and other data available on the Internet and other networks. Entering a website's URL in the address window of a browser will bring up that website in the browser's main window.
